Board of Education Monthly Meeting 10/25/2021

001[Music] i called to order the monday october 25th regular meeting of the river falls board of education this meeting has been properly notified i'm going to make at the beginning of this meeting some comments to lay out expectations for participating in the public comment time as our track record indicates the school board welcomes and values public comment the board is anxious for people to be able to express their ideas and know that we as a board are paying attention public comments at board meetings are a good opportunity for board members to gauge how community members stand on issues board members also meet with community members outside of meetings as well as respond to emails and phone calls at the same time i do have some guidance about how the public comments will be delivered first

002of all as we have respectfully mentioned in recent months please remember that this is a school board meeting that takes place in public it is not a public forum and so accordingly all comments should be addressed to the board not to other members of the audience this school board sets a clear example of remaining respectful and professional during times of debate discussion and even in times of disagreement and actually the word civility comes to mind and we ask the same measure of civility of anyone who chooses to speak to the board at the last regular board meeting a speaker turned and addressed a previous speaker challenging his comments about his own personal experience certainly we can all agree that that is not a respectful nor a productive use of public comment time it is also

003not respectful or appropriate to swear or make personal attacks which unfortunately have been on display at some of our other meetings secondly it is also important to limit your comments to two minutes other districts require speakers to register ahead of time for meetings indicating their desire to address the board some districts limit the number of speakers and use a timer we have not done that we welcome speakers and have not interrupted past speakers when they have spoken for four five six seven eight nine minutes at a time however this is a board meeting and we need to conduct school board business at these meetings we cannot allow our time to be consumed by long repetitive redundant comments thirdly while i cannot stop people from clapping i ask you that you please don't in the end

004clapping is time-consuming disruptive and divisive clapping can become like a competition regarding who claps the loudest which ultimately divides people everyone involved in this meeting shares a common commitment to the children that we serve recognizing and valuing that shared concern is much more productive than encouraging and exaggerating division so thank you for listening to and for following the guidance that i've provided but i have two more really quick points and the first thing is to say that public comment time this evening is actually going to follow the spotlight that is going to be presented by greenwood elementary school and then when we do return to public comment time we will be taking and hearing comments about issues that are not related to critical race theory we will listen to comments about critical race theory when

005we get to agenda item age so with that i turn to greenwood and thank you for being here tonight well good evening thanks for having us improvement and also collaboration and of course we want to make sure that what we're working on is action and results oriented tonight i have three teachers that have taught at various grade levels and in different places not just here in wisconsin but also around the world i'd like to introduce gary who's currently a kindergarten teacher for us she previously taught fourth grade with us and has brought overseas but she was a kindergarten and a first grade teacher and actually did some k1 looping for us and tony larson is our literacy coach and tanya has taught i think just about every grade and maybe at every school in the

006district out at one point or another so i'm grateful for the work that these ladies have done and like i said they are resident experts for us at greenwood professional development has some challenges with it oftentimes teachers are sent off they receive training and they come back and they're unsupported as they continue to pursue the work that they learned about in this setting these experts are are living in the same world and universe that their teachers are so the people that they're supporting they're connected with and they're there to support them each and every day after the training they provided so tonight they're going to talk to you about the science of reading and some work that they've done during the first month of the school year thank you for having us tonight during the

007month of september at greenwood we spent our first four collaboration meetings from kindergarten through second grade learning about the science of reading we believe that this information is crucial for educators next slide please tonight we are going we are here to give you a brief overview of the history of reading instruction what the term science of reading means explain how we learn to read examine why this information is valuable and tell how we are implementing the science of reading at greenwood next slide please um before we talk about the science of reading i kind of wanted to run you through um the history of reading the discussion of best practice and literacy instruction has been an evolution in the 1800s the prevailing idea was that reading requires the knowledge of the relationships between sounds and

008letters students learn to read by sounding out words this approach was known as and is known as phonics it was popularized by the mcguffey readers in about the 1930s reading instruction moved into a whole word approach if you see a word often enough you store it in your mind in the late 1960s it was decided that people read by making predictions about the words on the page by using three cues visual cues grammatical cues and context clues does it look right does it sound right literacy leaders believed that letters were the least reliable of the three cues and that as people became better readers they no longer needed to pay attention to all the letters in the words they believed accurate word recognition was not necessarily the goal of reading instead the goal was to

009comprehend the text the 1970s birthed the whole language movement with the thought that learning to read was very much like learning to speak if children are surrounded by lots of books and are read to a lot and naturally they will learn how to read in 2000 the national early learning panel released a report recommending explicit instruction and phonemic awareness systematic phonics instruction methods to improve fluency and ways to enhance reading comprehension from that balanced literacy was born balanced literacy is not well defined but it was intended to be a blend of whole language literacy-rich experiences blended with some phonics instruction now in 2020 the the shift is focusing to the science of reading and why that is a valid basis for our literacy instruction next slide so the science of reading is not a philosophy

010it is not a fad trend new idea or a pendulum swing it's not a political agenda it's not a one-size-fit-all fits-all approach it's not a program of instruction it's not a single or specific component of instruction such as phonics the science of reading is the term science of reading refers to re to the research that reading experts especially cognitive scientists have conducted on how we learn how to read this body of knowledge over 20 years in the making has helped debunked older methods of reading instruction that were based on tradition and observation and not evidence so how does the brain learn to read my task is going to be to walk you through what has to happen in the human brain in order for us to learn to read as our quote here says human

011brains were not created or didn't evolve to read we learn to talk by just being surrounded by our native language our brains are wired for this but reading is different to learn to read we have to repurpose the language processing parts of our brain and this requires direct instruction so in order to read all humans must first speak a language we have to learn to recognize that speech is made of individual words that some words rhyme some or all words have different numbers of syllables we can put words together to make sentences and eventually we have to become aware that spoken words can be broken down into individual sounds which we call phonemes we need to learn the letter names of the letters of our alphabet and most importantly we have to understand the alphabetic

012principle this is the aha moment when children learn that letters map onto the sounds that they speak when we can speak a language when we have a collection of oral vocabulary in our brains when we understand that words are made up of individual sounds and that letters can represent the sounds of the words we say then we are ready to learn to read and how does this happen well it happens through phonics instruction we use phonics instruction to teach the relationship between letters or groups of letters and the sounds that they represent students learn to map the letters onto the sounds they speak at first this is challenging and takes conscious effort but as we'll see with explicit instruction and lots of application this happens much more automatically as our brains are rewired to convert

013the visual image of letters into sounds and then back into words as we blend the words together so what is going on in our brains when we are actually reading words next slide please so i'm going to take you through a model of reading called the four-part processing model which demonstrates what happens in our brains when we read it's interesting that seinenberg and mcclellan developed this model a theoretical model back in 1984 but it has since been validated by modern brain imaging techniques keep in mind that what actually happens in the brain is much more complex than what i'm describing but it will give us an overall picture of what actually happens so as you can see on the slide we have four parts of our brain that help us when we read we have

014the orthographic or the visual processor the phonological or sound processor the meaning processor and the context processor so when we read a word first our eyes see the written word on the page in this case it's the word bat this visual information is sent to the orthographic processor at the back of the brain from there the brain has to convert that visual information the letters into its speech sounds which is done in the phonological processor toward the front and the left side of the brain so in this case the brain develops this ability to communicate between the orthographic and phonological processors by applying the phonics knowledge we gain from instruction when the word we see on the page has been converted to the sounds we know and we have that word in our spoken vocabulary

015it triggers a mental image in our meaning processor we will picture the word in our minds in fact we may have more than one image in mind for the various meanings of the word in our case is that the animal a bat is it who's at that or is it the actual bat the batter is holding to help our brain decide which picture we need at that moment our context processor joins in to help our brain determine which meaning of the word we need in this case our sentence is mary batted her eyelashes at time since this was not one of the images we had stored in our brain for this word bat our brain then adds that meaning into our meaning file what's interesting is that our meaning and context processors continue to develop

016throughout our lives as we read more and have more life experiences through instruction and practice and world experiences our brains get faster and faster as they move through this four part processor until the word is recognized on site it happens in less than a second but even though it seems automatic to us our brains are seeing every letter of every word we read or as chunks of letters in words instantaneously this process of learning to read actually changes our the white and gray matter in our brains and the more we read the more our brains develop connections and our brains statistically analyze words so that our brain learns which letters tend to go together in words or which words tend to appear together in sentences which helps increase our brain's recognition of words and increases

017our fluency being able to decode fluently frees up our short-term memory for the more complicated task of comprehending what we are reading so in summary the science of reading research has shown that a child's brain needs to first know the different sounds in the native language and then be able to connect these sounds to written letters and then blend the sounds into to make words and we call this decoding this happens through direct instruction and lots of practice so we have a video that a video clip that shows how brain connections are developed when practicing a task in the video it's talking about basketball but instead think about how it parallels the process of what happens when a child learns to read when you learn in order to learn anything whether it's math a foreign

018language guitar or how to dribble a basketball you need to create and strengthen pathways in your brain think about shooting a free throw know that feeling when you've got it down and don't even have to think about it that's muscle memory here's the thing muscle memory lives in the brain not the muscles your brain controls everything your muscles do and it does this by activating specific neural pathways for each and every movement these are functional pathways neurons working together to achieve a goal say you're learning how to shoot a free throw if it's your first time doing it you don't yet have a pathway for that movement in your brain you need to create it [Music] let's use an analogy to look at what's happening in the brain during this time when you're first learning

019your brain is like a forest full of trees and dense foliage with no clear pathway between point a and point b as you learn the mechanics of shooting a free throw you create a trail through the forest now you can shoot the free throw because you've created that pathway in your brain but you probably don't make many shots because it's so new the pathway isn't very clear yet in order to improve your free throw you need to refine and strengthen the free throw pathway in your brain the way you do that is through practice practice gradually widens the trail through the trees turning it into a dirt road between a and b you're starting to get pretty good now you're making more free throws than not you don't have to think about the mechanics as

020much that's because the pathway gets stronger after each practice rep and you've done a lot of reps with even more practice the dirt road turns into a paved road connecting a and b allowing information to be transmitted at a faster rate now you're a 70 free throw shooter and when you step up to the line you don't even have to think about it eventually with enough practice what started as a trail has become a full-blown highway now you're a master draining almost every free throw and the movement is completely second nature scientists call this plasticity and it's your brain's innate ability to create and strengthen connections between neurons these connections are the path through the forest what's going on in the brain thank you so it's through phonics instruction and practice that helps the beginning

021reader to navigate that initial path twisting pathway through the forest into that super highway of fluent reading next slide please so now that you have an understanding of how the brain learns how to read we can break the complexity of reading down into a simple view of reading next slide please thank you the simple view of reading is a formula that is supported by scientific research which states that reading comprehension is a product of decoding skills and language comprehension skills because this formula uses multiplication not addition a reader cannot make up for deficits in either decoding or language comprehension next slide please as you can see here a reader with strong decoding skills and strong language comprehension skills results in strong reading comprehension next slide please however as you can see from the next examples

022if a reader is only strong in one of these areas or has motor mediocre skills in both areas their reading comprehension suffers next slide in order to be sure that the educators are teaching the necessary skills in decoding and language comprehension we can use the model of scarborough's reading rope dr hollis scarborough developed this model in 2001 dr scarborough compared skilled reading with the many strands in a rope each strand represents a specific skill that when combined with the others creates a strong proficient reader if any skills or strands are weak the entire rope will be weaker the upper strands consist of language comprehension skills these skills include background knowledge vocabulary language structure verbal reasoning and literacy knowledge the lower strands of the rope consist of word recognition skills these skills include phonological awareness decoding

023and site recognition together with a great deal of practice time and explicit instruction these two strands are woven into the outcome of a skilled reader who can fully comprehend a myriad of texts next slide structured literacy is a term that has been coined by the international dyslexia association structured literacy is the systematic explicit and diagnostic teaching of the reading skills identified in scarborough's reading rope structured literacy instruction follows the logical order of language it begins with the most basic concepts that are easiest for students to master and progresses to more complex concepts structured literacy is cumulative meaning that each step is based on concepts previously learned concepts are deliberately taught no learning is assumed structured literacy is also diagnostic instruction meets the needs of each of the students in order to ensure this educators must

024use ongoing assessment either formal or informal students should master material to the degree of automaticity next slide so why use structured literacy balanced literacy which was whole language based was widely used among school districts and educators across the country for the past 20 years however as you can see from this slide it only benefited approximately 40 percent of our students represented in green using a structured literacy approach will benefit all of our students by explicitly teaching all concepts students who readily internalize the patterns of language will learn quickly and easily and those who otherwise may struggle will get the instruction they need for success next slide greenwood devoted four of our valuable collaboration mornings to learning about the science of reading and reflecting on our current practices we wanted to ensure that our literacy block

025was designed with scarborough's reading rope in mind that our intervention block instruction was intentional focused on skills and not reading levels as well as re-evaluating our instruction ensuring that it was explicit systematic and diagnostic across all the strands so with this last slide we just want to end by reminding everyone that just like in the past we're going to be hearing lots of buzzwords as we always do balanced literacy structured literacy the reading wars the science of reading new programs will be coming out saying aligned with the science of reading so it will be important to just stay focused on remembering these two things the importance of direct systematic instruction in the strands of the reading rope and making sure that all the strands of the reading rope are being targeted for instruction this will

026ensure that all of our students are given the gift of learning to read thank you so a couple of things first of all all of the components that were talked about tonight we can find in our benchmark assessment or excuse me our benchmark advanced reading series they're all there there's so much there that you have to dig and search and find all of the pieces but they're available for all of us we really wanted to normalize the process we were using to teach reading to our most important reading learners because we want to make sure those students are at grade level before they get to third grade so we're not being renegades and and jumping off the page of the curriculum we're using what's available to us we're just maybe being a little bit more

027explicit and intentional in those early teaching grades and these teachers now have done that instruction for our teachers and they'll be there to support them during the course of the year and it won't be too long and we'll be providing some more support in terms of professional development for the rest of our grade level teachers as well third fourth and fifth grade because there are some students who still need some of these foundational skills even though they've already advanced to those grade levels thank you are there questions or comments so i just have to tell you i have been looking forward to your presentation ever since i saw it come through in our board packet on friday this is in my wheelhouse and something that i feel so passionately about and so i just want

028to commend you all those of you who are here and then also your team of teachers back at greenwood who have been you know all hands on deck trying to deliver top-notch reading instruction to your students i have a firm belief that early literacy skills are so so critical and lay such a an important foundation for the success of students as they move through their entire k-12 experience and so it's impressive to see you taking such a professional approach to teaching our students how to read and so i just i thank you for coming to share with us and i hope we can hear more i would love to see in action what this looks like um but thank you really appreciate the work you're doing and for the presentation tonight yeah i i want

029to agree with with lindsay this is this is really good presentation helpful for me um i like several of these slides where you give us some some good things to kind of hang on to because in my mind reading is absolutely the most basic fundamental thing right we need i mean i don't want to pit disciplines against each other but boy if you don't have good reading ability the rest of your education is going to be really really tough so this is just so critical to the foundation of stuff and i i like the fact that dr sherman you've got a greenwood team here and they're so passionate about this this is really good and i think it's contagious for us as a district we just need to know going forward what do we need

030to do and what do we need to know as a board to help support this kind of work so anything else i particularly appreciate the collaborative approach that you have the three of you working together and supporting all of the other teachers because that's how this really will keep all of those strands together so thank you for the presentation thank you for your work thank you for being with us tonight all right at this point we are going to move on to public comment time about issues that are not related to letter h we will take letter h critical race theory when we get further on in the agenda thank you for the time my name is jim sauder i'm a community member i was going to address letter g and h at the same

031time i will withhold h take another two minutes at that point letter g talks about controversial topics i do see those kind of fitting together i'm sure you do too but before i start first of all thank you for at least sunshining these policies and opening them up for comment and for tackling these topics in the light of our current political climate it's brave to do that i think when it comes to controversial topics i didn't prepare specifically for that but i do want to address the fact that when you have a political or not a political i'm sorry a controversial topic that comes up to me it falls into two different camps number one is did a teacher plan a controversial topic so that's that i believe that that needs to be part of

032a good policy how does a teacher plan to introduce material teach the standards and evaluate those standards and do you have some content in which a teacher can make a choice there if so i would i would recommend that a teacher try to teach those learning outcomes by staying away from controversial topics that is one way to look at it now the other side of that coin is what happens if the teacher tries to avoid controversial topics and it comes up naturally in the classroom how does a teacher handle that so i think there needs to be two sides to this policy number one is what does a teacher do when they're going into the lesson for planning and number two how do they handle it when things come up naturally as students discuss issues

033that they deem as as controversial and i believe the last time i read that there was a lot of ambiguity when it came to the vocabulary in the policy about what could or could not be deemed as controversial so what i had planned to ask the board to do tonight and i will ask again when i address the board for letter h is to table this pull it from the agenda and allow the community to have more time and provide better input on how this works we want to be sensitive to students freedom and the ability to talk in the classroom we also want to give guidance to how teachers should plan their lessons to avoid obvious controversial topics i'll see you in a little bit hi i'm anna white i have two children at

034greenwood um i was at a committee meeting i don't remember which committee but it talked about the redefining readiness in the high school and i thought it was so important for those kids to have options to be able to take ownership of their education and how great that will be for the success of our high school students and it got me just thinking and thinking how can we do that for our younger students because we have 4k now they're starting to talk more about 3k so if we don't start that until they're that's a decade of them getting the wrong thing in school and already turning off and saying i'm not good at school there are four-year-olds there are five-year-olds that say i'm the bad kid i don't like school i'm bad at school and

035it's not because they're the bad kid it's because the school is not structured appropriately for them so the national association for the education of young children called nacie have just updated some of their guidelines and specifically on developmentally appropriate practice and they had equity and diversity in mind the nac president is the one who speaks directly to the white house and she said that we won't get what we need for those 3k kids for those 4k kids all the way up to our elementary school kids if we don't also talk about it locally so i'm here fulfilling her mission to talk about it locally first i'll just read their new position statement on what developmentally appropriate means for early childhood each and every child birth through age eight has the right to equitable learning opportunities

036that fully support their optimal development and learning across all domains and content areas children are born eager to learn they take delight exploring their world and making connections the degree to which early learning programs support children's delight and wonder and learning reflects the quality of that setting educators who engage in developmentally appropriate practice foster young children's joyful learning and maximize the opportunities for each and every child to achieve their full potential so this is not dividing people this is bringing those children together this is letting them do what they're supposed to be doing so there is a lot of guidance for what the educators should do that i'm going to skip because i know two minutes is not a lot but i did want to mention play is a part of their principles for how

037we achieve that developmentally appropriateness play promotes joyful learning that fosters self-regulation language cognitive and social competencies as well as content knowledge across disciplines a lot of that sounds like what they were just talking about with reading this is going to cover all areas of learning play is essential for all children birth through age eight i'm going to skip ahead so play is often viewed at being at odds with the demands of formal schooling especially for children growing up in under-resourced communities so the highly didactic highly controlling curriculum found in kindergarten primary grades is generally narrow focused on test-focused skill development it's unlikely to be engaging or meaningful for children it's likely to have them thinking that they are not valued and that they are not successful learners so that is where i would love us

038to see just like we redefined readiness in high school if we could work on doing that for other elementary schools play is essential in a normal year play is essential my oldest daughter is in second grade at greenwood she has never had a normal school year she has never had normal so these children are trying to learn and they can't even have a normal time at school and play is really the key that will unlock their learning and it's also when you start getting into play therapy play is how they're going to heal too and get back to their own normal thank you so sorry i'd like to see if we can focus on that and i'd be happy to be part of the process uh my name is angie krause i want to address

039tonight the board in the community tonight about the mask matrix i would like to see it revised because it does not reflect the needs of the community when i looked more closely i was surprised to see that it is including twenty four thousand people when our district has about thirty five hundred kids last year you focused on cases in school and this year you decided to include over 20 000 more people in the community in your numbers i also was surprised and concerned the numbers reported for the school district boundary which was 43 this week also includes probable cases um i also would like to see that updated the chart in yellow the bar on the link it says confirmed cases if that's including probable cases i would like to see that added because it

040is a bit misleading in the link it doesn't make sense none of it was really explained it was thrown up on the screen and then sent in a link so i guess i just looked at it a little more closely and i was a little bit shocked that just understanding it and getting clarification about it right now the community and the school cases remain low and other districts nearby with an optional stance are faring about the same in some cases even have lower numbers i wouldn't expect anything to change overnight but if cases remain low in our schools and community it is only fair that the option to mass should be the individual's decision the gloom and doom predictions that were discussed here in august especially from dr morgan and her misinformation just isn't happening

041here and where is the accountability i'm glad all the other mitigation was removed because it certainly is proving to be in the right direction please remove the matrix or revise it and let's give people a choice thank you hi again cassie howard h-o-w-a-r-d i have three kids in the district um i'm kind of hoping here tonight i guess i don't know how these things are supposed to go the proper way to do it but i'm hoping maybe we can see like a motion for the mask thing and go mask optional the grid needs to be reworked if we're going to keep that the first column has 12 cases i think for the community 12 of 24 000 is 0.0 percent so that would be a goal of zero covid which is just not realistic it

042is endemic at this point if you don't know what endemic means you should look that up if you're making these grids you should know what a healthcare worker actually wears for a communicable disease it's called an n95 respirator um what that is is a face covering that doesn't work by filtration it works actually if you think like static electricity doesn't actually filter anything and the important part with this is the seal that you get around your face on it so the cotton one theoretically is going to work by filtration i think if you're pouring water and rice through fabric you're going to get the rice the blue ones are actually made for splash protection so they don't filter anything you get leakage jets on those the n95 respirator the fit on that is so important

043that healthcare workers have to go every single year to get tested for it we hook it up to our face and we do a fit test on it we do it ourselves we do that every time we put them on once a year this is so important this seal that we do if you're fancy and work at a great hospital they hook a machine up to it yay technology and then we have to go through a series of tests to make sure that one i'm safe wearing it i'm not re-inhaling anything i'm i'm safe and two i'm safe in a room with somebody else right so i have to sing a song i have to read a sentence i have to turn my head left and right for 20 seconds then i have to go

044up and down for 20 seconds then i have to run in place right then i have to jump then i have to look to the side and talk look to the other side and talk all these things go on for 20 seconds so this is like an in-depth thing lots of people don't pass this every year if your face changes you gain weight you lose weight something's different because that seal is so important you cannot safely be with a patient with a comical disease if you don't work at a fancy hospital or what we used to do back in the day you would put a giant plastic hood over your head like an umbrella and you'd put your mask on and check your fit and then they would spray something in there and if you

045could smell it your mask doesn't work can you smell in your mask can you smell other people can you smell walking into a restaurant can you smell your food you can smell what they spray into that hood your mask does not work i know my kid would never get a seal on a mask ever after you leave a patient's room you very delicately remove these things you never touch the side and then you throw that respirator in the garbage can you would never put that back on you do not re-wear these more than one time they are disposable wearing a mask all day long is disgusting i can't imagine making children do that so if somebody has coveted that cotton mask is not doing anything if somebody doesn't have coved why do you need the

046mask i don't know i mean if we're thinking about this critically you know i got three kids i don't mom's not always right let's talk about it right i mean let's think about that critically for a second can you smell in your mask at the very least we should make a motion to maybe talk about changing the grid next time but i would love to see emotion here tonight about making masks optional i mean i think something could be made to say let's not put masks in kids i mean the cardinal rule of medicine is do no harm first do no harm we just spent however long talking about early literacy i mean shouldn't we make this an engaging environment for children that's doing harm at the very least you're supposed to do no harm

047um i don't know just thinking about that critically this doesn't make any common sense here but i appreciate thank you for your time if there are more further comments we are going to move into informational items and the first one is a really enjoyable item and that's our wildcat pride award and i will turn it over to todd thank you you guys hear me this one work yep thanks stacy troy do you want to come down here for a second so we have it's been a while since we've given a wildcat pride award but we try to highlight people in the district students in the district who are doing great things that sometimes go unnoticed but we'd like to make note of them here at the meeting so we've got troy zakrusky and we want

048to thank troy he made a recent 500 donation to the middle school band program with his generosity the band department at meyer middle school is able to promote a sense of belonging and enthusiasm by providing each sixth grade band member with a new band t-shirt so the interest and support uh that troy has shown for the music program shows that he's a true ambassador of wildcat pride and went above and beyond we thank you troy for doing that troy also serves in our district keeping the high school building safe and clean and ready for our students for learning so thank you troy for the work that you do day in and day out as well as for your kindness to our sixth grade students their band experience is likely to help them to travel through

049school well so thank you that's right go wildcats all right we are going to move on to reports and the first one is the superintendent's report and i believe we will start with the kovitz status report so this first slide here just to kind of cover the bases a little bit on some of the thoughts and the considerations uh related to where we are at with our masking decision at this point with our matrix a community of care defined as yeah we're certainly keeping an eye on the covent case numbers our matrix bakes together two different sets of data one is from our in-district student and staff positive cases and the other factor in that matrix has to do with the number of uh positive and probable cases within our district boundary that 24 000

050population we also under that community of care recognize that it's not just about our students and our staff but there's a community effort being made along with the city the university cbtc the unified effort that we're all trying to make in this endeavor and then of course the hospitalization capacity not just the beds available but more so where our hospitals are at with their capacity and i'll show you some excuse me not just the beds that are available when we talk about capacity but staffing levels uh in particular i'll show you a couple slides on that in a minute the science obviously following medical advice from reputable sources pointing out the close quarters i.e the classroom settings that we have a 30 foot by 30 foot area more confined smaller space anywhere from mid 20s

051to mid 30s depending on the class or course that the students have [Music] the vaccine rate currently for our area is at 54 and then ultimately really the goal that the board has established face related to in school instruction five days a week so these are some things just wanted to kind of remind ourselves and [Music] point out those issues that we put into this consideration when developing that matrix next slide please so here again you've seen this before i'm just pointing out in july 15th middle of summer this is the northwest region of wisconsin hospitals in the northwest region in wisconsin middle of july had 11 covet cases hospitals hospitalized patients with cove next slide most recent number i have is 112. next slide minnesota metro area mid-july 16 patients next slide october 21

052120. so under that community of care part of the consideration obviously we want to make sure that we're considering and looking at hospital capacity is the point of these last slides next slide please this information is sent home every friday this just simply shows you that um school district boundary over the past seven days that's a rolling number next slide this line graph just shows you when we send the memo home on fridays these dates are fridays of this school year where we are at with our in school staff and student cases you can see some good news on the right side those numbers have been on the decline knock on wood we hope to see that that decline will continue next slide just a kind of a quick fact for you here i found

053it interesting to go back to look at this year's coven case numbers in district students and staff this year 85 cases in september and so far in october uh 36. the green numbers below show last year in september we had five cases in october the entire month we had 21. just to point out again some quick facts to show you uh comparison from last year to this year number of positive cases in our district next slide i showed you on october 1st i i shared this slide i don't know what date if it was october one but i i shared uh the far left side comparing the seven day case number per 100 000 population that's how you can show apples to apples comparison is by looking at that hundred thousand population comparable number and

054so i've shared that here on the far right side you can see october 21 where we were at at 178 compared to other districts in our region next life so the matrix again cooks together those those two different numbers next slide please i'm just illustrating the high school only i'm not going to pull up all the slides from all of our schools the matrix is designed a little bit differently at the elementary compared to the high school compared to the middle school and again as a reminder the reason it's a little bit different is because of the overall enrollment in each of those schools and therefore we felt the need to tweak the numbers a little bit but by comparison just to illustrate i wanted to again show the matrix so i'm only showing the

055high school the dotted red square says required that's where we were at last friday based on across the top horizontally across the top new cases in district boundary that range that is shown there again that's a rolling seven day number you go to a state website and you can find that number on a daily basis on the left side vertically on this matrix that's where we build in our in district covet case numbers again over that seven day period so at this point in time there's no recommended change we continue to follow the matrix and that is my update are there any questions i don't have a question jamie um is okay to make a comment just a quick comment um you know i've had people ask me um you know just what the trends

056are i mean i i've been pretty tuned into it all the way through and and look at a lot of different district information i wish it was easier to compare exactly what's happening in districts and communities to what's happening here versus places where they have have strict mask requirements in their communities and places where they don't but unfortunately i think there's just not enough of a line to be drawn with some of those things i i wish that wasn't the case but i guess the only thing i'll say for me and i think what i hear from from the administration too is that we're continuing to look at this and it's not um you know it's not like we've evaluated once and then we're just putting it away in a box somewhere and and i

057i think that people are looking for trends and trying to figure that out um as we get a month and a half into school now or two months into school and and see what's happening so um you're starting to get to the point where you could at least at least start to make a couple comparisons because there's been enough time at least and i i just the only comment i would have is is that work i'm continuing to do that and i get the sense that others are too um as we look at this stuff yeah i would i would agree when when we rolled out this matrix the board asked us to do to create such a matrix and uh we stated when we rolled it out and the board approved it on that

058uh that first approval that this is the proposed matrix for the here and now we will continue to look as i indicated on that first slide there's many things that go into this consideration even though on your matrix you have these two hard numbers the district boundary and the internal cases with students and staff we're still looking at and considering other other approaches i think from my understanding the board would say frankly we like the matrix so that we don't find ourselves on a week-to-week basis sitting here as a board having a boat on whether we're going to wear a mask this week or this month or not but at the same time disclaimer is moving forward we're going to continue to look at that matrix it doesn't mean that it's cemented in stone and

059that it will remain exactly as it is today and so i would agree with you todd that we can continue to try to look for patterns and trends take a take a look at what we see both from a scientific science medical recommendations but also our own learning lessons in-house which we have applied many of our own learning lessons already when you look at here's an example for you remember last year it was six feet that we used for a contact tracing so if there was a positive case in a in a classroom we would look at the six foot rule to determine who was within six feet to determine if they would be identified as a close contact and then we would inform the parent sorry your son or daughter has to be quarantined

060now originally fourteen days and it went down to ten yadda yadda at six feet this year to date so far we are following a three-foot rule because of the masks that allow us to go from six to three we would have had more than [Music] students that would have been identified as close contacts at three feet that's crazy and we said well we're still going to send a notification to home to parents but we're not going to say that you must quarantine that's an example of our own in-house learning lesson and we said we think the disadvantages that are created to students the lost learning the lost experiences the social emotional impact is not worth the risk by forcing them to be on quarantine it's a parent choice issue over 700 and we've said no

061we're not doing that we've applied a different practices with the mass school for after school hours we are sitting here having debates over whether we're going to continue co-curricular activities we're doing a host of other things differently really the the one pain in the backside that no one particularly enjoys is the mask and so yep we're open to continuing to look at whether or not that matrix should or could be changed without a doubt and i'm glad that you brought that up that we can convey the message to the public that we continue to look at it daily weekly and we'll consider whether or not we're comfortable bringing back a recommended change to the board in the future yeah i would also suggest too that we have some planning in place because if you're watching

062the news the littles the five to twelves it looks like the vaccination is going to get approved and i would like to see that taken in account too because if that option is there for some parents i we need to have a plan in place on how we're going to hopefully at some point in the year gracefully exit away from masks if there's a if there's an option for you know five and up to get vaccinated in agreement i would go back on that first slide in this presentation one of the things i listed was we currently in the river falls area have 54 vaccinate vaccination rate and to your point amy that number could increase significantly depending again on parent choice not every parent is going to be ready to take advantage of that

063certainly but it definitely sounds like in the coming weeks that they're going to roll out that vaccine option for parent choice for those littles age five to eleven that would be another influencing factor the vaccination rate is a part of this entire consideration for sure hopefully that would reduce the number of infections and so that our numbers would go down and we would then be able to have a different square in the matrix and i'm fully aware there are people listening right now that are shaking their heads saying vaccination rate should have nothing to do with this and i respect everyone's opinion on that wholeheartedly which is why i've repeatedly said at least twice tonight that's apparent choice that's that's apparent option but i'm also being transparent to say yep it's part of our consideration

064whether everybody agrees with it or not it is anything else on this thank you jamie would you like to turn to the school forest during big event more good news exciting stuff here on october 12th we had a big dream event related to our school forest over the last few months we've gained new access to that school forest because of a partnership with the kinney river land trust they graciously sought some significant grand dollars and we're able to purchase land that adjoins our existing property that's been landlocked for decades and so we're now in the process of bringing community members together on october 12th we had close to 70 people in the room and we're discussing ways that our community can join hands and work together to help make this legacy project that's going to

065add tremendous opportunities not just for students but for our community that's going to last for generations hence the term legacy project so we're excited about the turnout that evening we're going to come together again on november 2nd bring back some folks that were at that initial meeting and we're going to continue to move our plans forward related to some subcommittee work that will help to advance the vision for trail development signage fundraising efforts a facility curriculum and lesson plan development and so on and so we're very jazzed and very excited about the work that lies ahead and we're anxious to keep the momentum moving forward for this project and so that's a that's a definite good news story thank you i just want to say there's still time and opportunity if you still want to

066get involved to come to the next meeting because there's still plenty of um we still need plenty of people to do some of the work absolutely and thank you jamie for all your efforts to get that presentation ready and that to get that event organized it was significant anything else on that i don't believe we have any other administrative reports and so i'm going to turn for the student report uh goodnight everyone my name is jocelyn and i'm to talk about mass policy as everyone know masks are one of the things that students don't like i can say we hate them but we're trying hard to follow the rule of wearing the mass correctly of course there are some students who wear the masks under their their nose but it's understandable because it's fun to

067have isn't fun to have like the mask on for the whole day and also some teachers are helping us to mass breaks and i think it's a good way the second thing is about the end of the term they know the term is going to be this friday and us us all the students are uh who have a missing assignment on trying uh her best to submit all the missing works and to do retakes on time and also some future helping us a lot to bring like offering after school to do the retakes and submit of all of this stuff on time thank you so the end of the term is upon all of you and you're working on that and that means that the teachers are also busy so thank you for the report

068and we wish you and all of your classmates well and getting to the end of the term yeah that's good all right we are going to move on to action items and so at this point we have minutes from the september 20th regular board of education meeting we have bills that have been submitted for payment we also have employment recommendations so do we have a motion to approve the minutes bills and employment as presented thank you cindy is there a second second thank you bob any discussion all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried todd i'm going to turn to you for actually b and c sure so um we've had we had a f committee meeting prior to our last board meeting so that one is the reference from september 20th there's

069been a lot of overlap between those two two meetings one of the the main topics that we've been talking about is the kind of a long-range plan and that the number one item on that right now is our our ren facility and and what we're doing there so we've been talking there there's some discussion on a design team that have a couple board members um some administrators will be part of that process we'll be doing interviews starting in november with construction managers and i think architects and and um that the the timeline is going to come quickly for that um to to identify kind of a long-term site for for renaissance academy and and where we're going to go next so that was one of the things the 20th we also went through a brief

070update on student walk zones and and where we're at with bussing there was a discussion about that um centered a little bit on some of the shortage that you may have heard of and thankfully in other areas i mean i wouldn't say we're overstaffed with busing but i i think we we've mostly been covered as the report that we had with with a lot of people chipping in to help out we last year we had adjusted some student walk zones to expand that footprint and i believe we dialed that back just a little bit too to to allow for more more more of what we normally would would be doing for busing and then we also had kind of an update on some of them the information from the annual meeting as well um what

071we what we were talking about there and what what that would look like so that was um september 20th and then on the 11th of october we met again we had update there mainly on enrollment uh i'm not going to remember the exact number off the top of my head plus 34. roughly 34 35 students that we were ahead in terms of enrollment count from last year and um so we we did some long range talks about what that means for for district enrollment planning and and where our needs might be there was some talk about probably the need for a more in-depth study on that topic as as we do long-range planning in terms of facilities as well so again renaissance charter academy was the biggest biggest topic there and that'll be an ongoing

072item for probably the next 16 to 18 months thank you todd any questions all right we'll move to d and personnel with amy um we'll just have two action items tonight after our personnel committee meeting on october 11th we heard a certified staffing update we approved the new and approved special education specialist job descriptions approve the revised high school lmc technology paraprofessional job description and then we had an update on the teacher compensation steering committee which has been meeting for quite a few times and so we had an update on what's going to be happening there um we reviewed the preliminary certified staff ratios and then um short-term substitute fill rate and uh how we are kind of hurting for substitute teachers so and then finally to discuss the covet-related sick leave policies so would

073you like to make the recommendations from i would so do you want me to take them separate do them together so approve the new i would make a motion to approve the new and revised special education specialist job descriptions and approve the revised river falls high school lmc technology paraprofessional job description thank you amy is there a second a second thank you cindy discussion questions or comments all in favor opposed the motion is carried one of our annual responsibilities is to appoint a deputy clerk who is going to be able to shepherd through the election process and so the recommendation is that the school board appoint amanda taylor administrative assistant to the superintendent as the deputy election clerk for the 2022 school board elections in april is there a motion please thank you todd is

074there a second thank you amy okay she beat you there a little bit ellen any questions or comments thank you amanda for being willing to do that all those in favor aye opposed motion carried all right i am going to turn now to uh mr benson to outline the um tax levy it is now definite what we need to be doing action tonight is uh being recommended for the board to approve the tax levy at 20 million 484 the preliminary number for the tax levy was discussed at our annual meeting on september 20th i say preliminary because we still were waiting for the actual state aid amount that we would receive and just to clarify uh this is a little simple a little bit of a oversimplified explanation but essentially districts are bound by a

075revenue cap limit there's only so much money that a district can spend if you will and that's controlled by a formula and so the revenue that is obtained to put into that revenue cap limit is made up of two parts essentially one is the amount of money we get from the state in the form of state aid and we get that number in mid-october and then the remainder the remaining balance of that revenue cap is made up of the tax levy what we ask local taxpayers to contribute towards running our schools and so again once we in mid-october we know what our state aid is then we get to tonight where we ask the board to approve that remaining levy so the preliminary report that was provided at the annual meeting was based on some

076pretty sound fairly accurate estimates on what that state aid would be there's some other things that come into play that include some factors that become more clear such as the overall district property valuation so what's the value of all properties in the entire district homes businesses every all property value so the more value that we have throughout our entire district that helps to some extent to offset the amount of an individual levy at any rate bottom line is once we know that state aid which we find out in mid-october we now get to this evening where we ask the board to formally approve that levy amount of 20 million 484 that levy is it equates to a mill rate that is lower than last year there's some good news there uh it is a mill

077rate that's about 11 cents per 100 or excuse me per thousand less than was presented at the annual meeting and so sorry to throw so many numbers at you bottom line is we're asking the board to approve the tax levy 20 million 484. thank you jamie is there a motion i'll move to approve just just to be extra clear in case anyone's right twenty million four hundred eighty four thousand six fifty is the number that i've got so thank you todd and you've made the motion so is there a second i'll second thank you lindsay questions or comments on this now no oh no okay this represents a lot of work on chad's part in particular to be able to do the estimation and then to be able to manage everything so that it comes

078to us now um really very close to what his estimate was but even better news for taxpayers so is there a motion oh yes we have a motion that's been improved do we have a vote all is in favor opposed the motion is carried all right now if you please turn to page 29 this is the time for the board to consider the second reading of board policy 381 related to the study and discussion of controversial topics because it's been a while the board has had considerable conversation about this but i do want to go through and highlight some of the components of the policy for people to just be make sure that they're familiar the policy begins with an introduction it then identifies what constitutes a controversial topic and there are seven indicators there

079the the board the policy then moves into guidelines for discussion of controversial topics and it talks about the discussions should include the open expression of ideas as long as the views are not derogatory malicious abusive or discriminatory it talks about the expectation of educators to be prepared for the discussion of these topics it also um provides guidelines for educators when a conversation comes up that is not expected there are places where educators are expected to have the appropriate background and preparation for the lessons that they're going to be doing as well as providing advanced notice to parents when it's feasible we can't always do that at every single moment we don't always have the ability to predict what happens in a classroom but there are times when we can do this so parents know ahead

080of time um i think that that identifies some of the highlights of this policy and i think that overall the policy balances guidance for teachers as well as support for educators as they are doing this really complicated work with our students so i think i'll take a motion in a second and then we can have further conversation is there a motion please also move thank you alan is there a second second thank you cindy questions or comments you know i've got a comment about this um we've talked about this a lot and we um we need this policy for a couple of reasons one is it's kind of sad that we really gotta codify this but it's important and we have to do it right now i think that um the fact that we identify

081what controversial issues are and talk through i know the things here this really our teachers need this our administrators need is but our teachers need this guideline in this day and age i'm beginning to think that there's not anything that you can't that we can't talk about that can't be made controversial this is just everything everybody's it seems to be stirred up these days i don't want our teachers to feel intimidated i don't want our teachers to feel they can't teach but i do think that they need guidance from the board and from the district as to what they can and cannot do and how they should go about it and that this is should serve as a catalyst for their own professional development learning communities discussions in their buildings etc as to how to

082deal with issues going forward it's important that we deal with those issues that are on an ongoing basis not dredge up new things but but deal with the things that are coming up in their classes and that our teachers feel they have support and um some guidelines to do that so thank you alan anything else yes stacey if you don't mind i do i have a few comments i want to make um this obviously this is the first policy that's come before the board since i've joined the board so um i feel like there was a steep learning curve for me to kind of understand how this procedure works um so i realized we're on our second reading but i did have some comments i wanted to just share for the good of the group

083if that's okay um so i want to just start by acknowledging my appreciation for the time and effort that went into revising this policy this is not an easy task and so um for the team that has been working on this i really do appreciate that i agree with ellen i think this is a really important policy that we look at and take time to review um as he said there's no shortage of controversial topics that are kind of swirling around us right now um and when that happens there's likely to be an impact on the conversations and the topics that enter our classrooms particularly in the upper grades i think i think one of the primary objectives for our school district is to help students develop critical thinking skills to teach them how to

084think not what to think and i think this policy 381 lays a really good framework for doing that if i understand the the process and the procedure assuming this passes tonight then it kind of is left up to the administration to roll this policy out and really help teaching staff kind of get their arms around it and understand in practical terms what this looks like and and how they can and should be teaching in a way that upholds the standards in this policy um and so i guess in the past few weeks as we've been talking about this policy i've reached out to some classroom teachers and some administrators and um i know this technically is the job of the administrative team but for the good of the group i would just like to say

085i think it would be helpful um to dedicate some professional development time to helping teachers add a few tools to their tool belt and help them gain a little bit of confidence on how to approach these controversial topics whether they're planned or unplanned and you really do prepare in much different ways and in some of the conversations i've had with teachers it is intimidating to be in the middle of a group of kids and have something come up and and not know how to navigate that um so i would love to see us dedicate some time to helping teachers objectively and constructively manage the study of controversial topics and also those impromptu moments where those topics enter the classroom conversation you know i think we have highly competent professional teachers in our district we're really

086really really fortunate for that um i just want to be sure that they feel supported and prepared to uphold the standards that we lay out here um and then the other comment i have and nobody's spoken about this i don't think um is regarding the um section of the policy that speaks to parents and in that first paragraph it talks about this being a pathway for families to judge if they want their children to participate in the study of certain topics i think that's a really important piece of this policy um do you mean a love a point in lebanon yeah it's mentioned in point 11 but also yep but also in the introduction paragraph of the policy okay the purpose of the policy one of the purposes is to provide a pathway for families

087to judge if they want their children to participate in the study of certain topics i think that's really important um the sense that i'm getting from parents is that they really want to ensure that there is a partnership between them and our school district and what's being taught in the classrooms and um essentially just boiled down do they just want to know what's being taught that's all um and i i think we've done a good job up to this point i want to just ensure that that trusting partnership continues through transparency and accountability and so i think essentially what this policy is saying if i understand it correctly that there will be times when students encounter a controversial topic in the classroom as a district we find value in that we think that's important in

088developing critical thinking skills but we also recognize that we have a broad spectrum of families that we serve in this community and and we realize that everyone holds different values and beliefs and we want to be respectful of that so ultimately i guess i think it's important that parents know that if there is a concern about the content of a class in this policy they should be comfortable coming to a teacher or an administrator respectfully and civilly and just asking for more information or asking for clarification or potentially some sort of alternative assignment or an alternative book or something like that i just think that's a really important message to send out there for the sake of transparency so um anyway sorry i didn't want to get too in the weeds but i do i

089think this this policy is very very important tonight i want to be sure that if anybody is interested in learning more it's posted on our website you can read it and and better understand um the sense of of what we're trying to do here with us exactly and i think that you raised the point about families feeling comfortable reaching out and that's a very important dimension of the policy i think that there's another part of this that says we will also be reaching out and providing information so that's another way that we continue to have this trust and transparency with the districts and families and i think my understanding is professional development that that's already a done deal that that's going to be a focus for teachers to support them in their work are there

090any other comments or questions on this all those in favor i opposed the motion is carried now at this point we are going to turn to action item h i want to give a very brief background about this topic so over the past few months the board has heard comments and received questions about critical race theory and how it relates to the curriculum in the school district of river falls tonight the school board will vote on a document that articulates the district's position on critical race theory through this statement the board desires to address questions from the community avoid confusion about what crt is and isn't and clarified the district's stance on crt as a board we hope that this statement will show the board's commitment to transparency and quite frankly we also hope that

091this statement will prevent divisiveness over crt from becoming a distraction in our school district this district has a lot to do and we don't need distractions that pull us away from the core mission of educating our students and we certainly don't want to diminish trust between the district and the community hence we have this statement about critical race theory so we are going to at this this moment we are going to have conversation as a board and do our work and then we will take any comments from the from the community so if the statement is on page 32 and i believe what i will do is take a motion in a second and then we will have conversation i'll move that we adopted thank you ellen and thank you bob for the second conversation

092well i'll pick up on my last comment on the last one again we need to say something um there's just um the statement in here i underlined is that the amount of misinformation that's going on around this i've talked to people who are really concerned that we're teaching critical race theory and when impressed a number of them can't really define what it is i've talked to people who defend the critical race theory when pressed can't really defend what it is others can i know a number of colleagues who are in higher education who deal with critical race theory a lot and have quite a bit in their career and they're puzzled as to why people think critical race theory is a curriculum because it's not so we don't teach critical race theory here i think

093we're clear in this statement we do have some very good work going on in this district around equity and inclusion those aren't critical race theory and i think we've clarified that here so again to come back to my comments that i made about the earlier ones we need to say something about this so there's clarity for our teachers and our staff about what it is we're doing are they comfortable doing it and um are they comfortable teaching their subject matter the way they're supposed to teach their subject matter especially based on the previous policy we just passed thank you alan other comments what i like about the statement is it's extremely clear i mean it it as allen had mentioned it it removes all ambiguity there's so much misinformation i've talked to same uh some

094of the similar people that they'll say well what are you doing about critical race theory and you ask them well tell me what your understanding of critical race theory is and they don't they can't they can't um articulate it this document does state as to what critical race theory is and it's explicitly states that river falls school district does not teach it and i think it it also gives it gives a heads up for the community as to where we're at how we deal with the issue and more importantly what critical race theory what um what what we don't teach you know as far as uh states that river falls school district could not teach or um critical race theory so other comments stacy um a couple of the things um that that i'd kind

095of gravitate towards when i'm when i read this and some of the things i like i guess maybe first before that for for as much feedback as we've had um on covid related things over the last year and a half uh i i will say i haven't had anyone walk into my workplace and say anything to me about covid but i have had um a number of people who have done that in regard to critical race theory so i'm glad that there's something concrete that we're putting out there that again helps you know i've had just general questions in passing and maybe a little bit more in-depth discussion too and i think this would help a lot of the people that i've heard from um in regard to some of the concerns that have been

096expressed or or where it goes but um i guess the thing for me that i really like is maybe the character education piece i have a lot of faith in what our district does in regards to character education and um you know i would i would define a lot of the things that we're trying to do as in my mind character education whether it's things like equity equity inclusivity diversity um critical thinking or or just um you know the some of the the more specific character education things to me that falls under a lot of the same umbrella and i would i would define a lot a lot of what we're trying to do in in educating under that character education piece and so um i would hope that that message would come through to

097people here and they would they would realize that a lot of what's being taught is is under that umbrella um you know trying to raise people who are going to be respectful and and honor others and things like that too so i i'm supportive of it and and i really focus on on that that last bullet point on what is it page three or page two thank you todd so my comments about policy really are kind of in the same vein as my comments about policy 381 i think transparency is extremely important in maintaining trust and um you know i appreciate those community members that have raised some alarm bells and said hey what's going on here is what's going on in our school district what are your stance it created an opportunity for us

098to have some good conversations and really clearly define um some language that i think is sometimes we have big umbrella terms that we all use but we don't really know obviously you know there's different things for different people that fall under those big umbrella words um so i i personally appreciate our community members reaching out and saying hey tell us more tell you tell us what are you teaching what are you not teaching and so um i'm i'm hopeful and optimistic that um this statement brings some clarity um and i i would just encourage us to continue having that open dialogue with our community allowing communities community members to reach out when they are concerned and and to respond in a way that um is very clear and transparent this is i'm sure not the

099first topic that we will encounter um that gets people riled up obviously we just we don't know what's around the corner um but i think this sets a good precedent in sharing with the community we hear you we know this is something that you're worried about this is what we're teaching that's what we're not teaching and i agree with todd i might i particularly appreciate those four bullet points on page two um that really explains what our priorities are as a district what we're focusing our time attention and resources on um and for me that character education bullet is a very important one anyone else yeah i'm gonna say yeah i'm gonna say that i'm really glad that we had the board retreat with the school board in administration because i'm going to be completely

100honest with you crt came out of left field for me about a year ago i had no idea what it was so i couldn't even explain it to you so after sitting down and having all these conversations i like having something [Music] something concrete to be able to not only to you know more so inform myself but to be able to talk about with the community so if i'm going to be really honest with you on that i'm glad that we did have this dialogue not only about this but also the controversial topics which sometimes those kind of go hand in hand so yeah thank you cynthia amy i agree they definitely go hand in hand and i also really value the time that the board and the administrative team got to spend together talking

101about this in a in a big group and really take different perspectives um and have an in-depth conversation about it so i just wanted to make a quick comment about this and i wrote a couple notes real quick so to i think to our board and to me and education is learning and being exposed to new and different information perspectives and then being able to think critically and discuss that information to add depth and context so ultimately developing lifelong learners and problem solvers is the foundational goal of education so if we're doing learning right it's challenging and expands what we know it builds understanding of connections in history it says sets us up to do better and appreciate the value of differences our district commitment to cultural competence critical thought connected connectedness and inclusion and

102character education i think shows our commitment to preparing students in river falls for the world so i'm really proud that we're staying true to our values and not getting wrapped into a misrepresentation or misunderstanding of a graduate level academic concept that really at the end of the day can't be taught at the elementary or secondary level so i'm really proud of the approach that we took to this and the amount of conversation that we had about it and that we took the time to figure out to learn more about it i think as a board and an administrative team i like where we landed on this i'm with lindsay's comments about 381 and the importance of critical thought that is extraordinarily important to me and my work and um in my work on the school

103board as well so i like that that bullet point is in there in terms of that's what our goal is to help our students become critical thinkers i also want to thank the administration this was a significant undertaking to be able to come up with a document that is not even quite two pages that articulates what this is it's um thank you jamie and to your team i'm wondering at this point now are there any community members who would like to address the board about this before we finish the conversation yes i would thank you see this way you got two times of two minutes that's right and i've got my little timer going too so um here's my comment about this and and i read when i first read this i was thankful and

104i thought what a great thing that the school district was transparent enough to try to get something out that clearly says we don't teach critical race theory in the river falls school district i applaud that that's a great start when i read it further something ate at me and i thought what's eating at me and i read in paragraph four where it says some definitions of crt conflate and or co-mingle crt with our local school district of river falls work related to equity inclusivity and diversity then this is where i really got a little irritated the result of this error or an error is misunderstanding so you guys go on a retreat you don't even know what crt is admittedly you go on a retreat you talk about it you come to a decision we're

105not crt let's put this together and put an end to it and you emphasize that by putting what you're not not you put an extra font you bold not you underlined it so like what we say goes what i'm asking is simple pull this from the agenda if you guys know what it is have several community nights that are open for people to attend let everybody hear your views now about crt that you've come to let you hear this in an open forum let there be a dialogue because this isn't one and then if you agree that you know what now that we've gotten a lot more input we agree that there's air and misunderstanding great we all win if you might come to the conclusion that some of the underpinning philosophies of crt is

106very clearly embedded in eid and the reason i say that is because it's very similar to dei at my place of employment and many of your places of employment and if you look at all of these initiatives the very words diversity inclusion and and equity they already create a situation where there's this oppressed oppressor systemic feeling that i don't believe exists or needs to be talked about at a minimum so let's talk about it pull it from the agenda have some open nights let people come down and give their opinion on what they're thinking don't just go to retreat and go gosh we didn't know now we know we're going to write this and get this off our plate so we can send a message to this community that we don't have anything to do

107with this we think about this all the time and so i just think it's really a disservice that you would just very quickly let's just get this done so that we can show the world that we're not a crt district when i think if we really slow down look at the evidence there might be another side to that story thank you are there any other comments so at this point the board has before it a statement about critical race theory oh i think a lot of you guys know me i'm pam sowder i'm married to jim um i will to tell you that there are people um in the community that do have an issue with the transparency and part of it has to do with the fact that um you guys know i've been

108going to the eid committee and um and joining you guys to kind of see what you know it's about but there has been a big change on the eid website and between probably 2000 um 20 21 and the new goals and i know that you are revising your mission and your your values but something that would lead people to think that there's a lack of transparency is the fact that um there were a whole bunch of links on there that did lead people to believe that there were books videos by flocabulary and a lot of other things that social justice related that talk about intersectionality talk about a lot of things that are terms that come from crt and so the reason why people are concerned is because that was on the website and people

109have learned more about some of these things from the eid website and so um i just want to to echo what jim is saying would you please give the community a chance to take a look at what it's about because there's a fear there are parents there are community members that are fearful about something and so to take something like this and then just push it forward really does not um forward your mission because the mission is transparency the mission is critical thinking and you can think critically without certain topics and that's all the parents i think the ones that i've heard from and community members that there's a concern they wonder why the um the links that were there before in the past couple of weeks have disappeared and some of those things do

110reflect ideologies that could be considered critical race theory so again i would like to see it also um for you to table this or whatever you do and think about it and invite the public to engage and then i have one other question is what happened to all that information that was on those links related to eid if you want to be transparent then you know as a board as a school district you should allow parents to look at the curriculum you should allow them to look at what you had and and i mean do teachers have access to it now but parents don't have access to it those are all questions that are concerning to the community and that's probably why they bring that up thank you are there any comments so at this

111point before the board is a statement about critical race theory that the board has had considerable conversation about as uh during a board retreat and then with looking at drafts providing responses to the superintendent having conversation about it with the superintendent so that we would be ready to come to this conversation tonight um one of the responsibilities as a school board is actually to take this kind of work on and to make statements in for the school district and so that's what we are fulfilling tonight i think that any specific conversations about the curriculum are really best answered by the superintendent and by our director of curriculum and that's not what we're looking at tonight we are looking at a definition of critical race theory what it is and what it isn't as well as

112our district's concerted effort as an as an educational institution to focus on cultural competence critical thought connectedness and character education do any school board members have any other comments to make todd i would make one more comment i guess the way i would interpret a statement like this um and maybe in response to some of the things that have been said but for myself too is not exactly the way that we've approached things um in terms of some of the coveted mitigation and plans there but i i don't view this as like you're making a decision and you just put it away forever to me this is a fluid topic similar to what we're dealing with as cobit has evolved over the last two years and and things that we're learning what we know now

113what we're seeing how we have to adjust and and i guess i would view this as as our starting point for that to just kind of formalize where we're at now and there i don't envision that that either the conversation would end or that the self-reflection piece of it would end as far as the district is concerned too so um you know that that would be my response to a few of the comments that were raised but i i wouldn't i don't know that i would say i envisioned the statement changing over time but as as the id committee continues to do their work and things come out again i don't see anything as being 100 set in stone forever and i i view this as something that would continue continually be under under self-reflection

114as far as the district's concerned i hope as school board members we are always continuously learning we started the meeting today with a historical look at the understanding of literacy we're always learning any other comments i would also just add that they're not going to pin the board members down and ask for a show of hands but i would be willing to well i i know for a fact that board members have heard from a number of community members about this topic one board member testified earlier that he's had people talk to him face to face about this topic i know factually that several board members have received emails from community members on this topic i know factually that there have been a number of comments made in this public forum at board meetings related

115to this topic not just a discussion that took place at one board retreat there has been uh months of discussion deliberation study and i think that the board is taking a brave step to put something on paper one could argue it might have been easier to not put yourself out there and put this into writing but i think the effort and the intent to be transparent is driven by the fact that we have heard from community members if not so we maybe wouldn't be putting this in front of the board uh as a formal document as a as a document that we'll be asking the board to vote on so let there be no confusion that it was simply visited one evening at a board retreat and we suddenly decided to slap something on a

116piece of paper that's not the process that leads us here tonight that's not how this board works we're more deliberative than that can i ask a question yes and forgive me this is very much a new new board member question i think um are there policy implications associated with this statement or is this more or less a way of responding to community concern and that mr vince may be a question for you is this a response to uh the community wanting some clarification and and we're just saying this is where we stand i think i think it's two part i think admittedly a part of it is in response to the fact that the board and administration has heard from a number of community members on this topic asking questions where do we stand as

117a district but also regardless of that community input i think it has to do with your own individual opinions and desires to address this head-on so i think it's a combination of the board's um integrity at play here and your desire to let the record show this is where we stand while also uh responding to the wide number of community questions and comments and opinions that have been expressed i think it's a little no formal policy implication though no other than i think it's the most direct implication is connected to as was mentioned earlier the controversial uh topics policy is probably the closest piece to that but typically we have policies about what we are going to do yeah we don't just have generic policies about what we aren't doing anything else one more comment

118stacey as i read this i liked it but i also knew the minute that i read it that i'm going to get emails and comments from people who stop and talk to me and there's been a ton of input on this one we all know is that there are people on the far left who are going to think this they're going to be mad at us for this and they're going to people on the far right that we didn't do their statement and are not going to like it and we're going to get emails from both of them and they're not going to they're not going to like that we get that that's part of being a board member is we've got to come up with this this is a good statement we put a

119lot of time into this i like it [Music] anything else well i'm going to make one last comment because i think that the number one concern that i personally have heard and read and frankly i agree with uh related to critical race theory is i want to know if you're teaching my kids and my grandkids in your school system whether or not that the color of their skin makes them an oppressor the answer to that is no this district is not indoctrinating children that because of whatever their life experiences or color of skin or the amount of income that their family has that that automatically makes them an oppressor there's a lot more that goes into this i know and there's a lot more that we put down in writing but to me that's the

120number one concern and criticism that i have heard that i would have is if we were going to stand in front of our kids and indoctrinate them into those kind of beliefs that would be wrong and to allen's point there are some people that would disagree with that statement i don't line up with that and i don't believe this district does either as the statement here says that we use age-appropriate classroom learning activities age-appropriate anything else all those in favor aye opposed the motion is carried 7-0 at this point do we have any proposed items for future board meeting agendas all right then we're going to schedule meetings there will be an educational program meeting on monday november 1st at 6 o'clock at the district office conference room there will be a finance and facilities

121committee meeting on monday november 8th at 5 45 at the amplexer building on whitetail boulevard please make sure you remember that personnel will meet monday november 8th at seven o'clock in the district conference room and the next regular board meeting will be monday november 15th at six o'clock i assume it will be here we are we need to share space with the uh choir and band and so we might need to do a little bit of juggling um but we can do that and at that