February 5, 2026 at 4:45 PM - Monthly Committee of the Whole Board Meeting

001Vice Chair Loel >> present. >> I am Clerk Mel. I am here. Treasure Sidowski >> here. >> Member Williams >> here. >> Superintendent Maggus will be joining us remotely momentarily. >> Assistant Superintendent Bonds >> present. Uh, Secretary Brown, sorry. >> And we have our student reps joining us from East >> information. Um, so first up, without further ado, we're going to bring up the director for advancing equity. Uh, she will be providing an update related to our American Indian Ed uh resolution of concurrence or non-concurrence uh, from last year. So, I'll bring up our director of events and equity. >> Good evening. Good to see you all again. Uh, Marisa Marica Garver Carrera, director of advancing equity. excited to be here with you all tonight uh to discuss American Indian education in our district along

002with our partners uh and members from APAC. Um so I wanted to talk a little bit tonight about kind of my learning journey of American Indian ed as a uh fairly new motan. Um, it's been a journey for me to really understand the protections and historical context and the history of our our region and also of the state. So, I'm happy to talk to you a little bit about that today and then also to introduce the APAC members uh to talk about concurrence non-concurrence. Thanks, Shannon. Uh, just so Thanks, Shannon. Um and and so just to be clear that you know we're really I'm my job and my aim is to always center equity in everything we do right and that that being you know really part of our our core mission here. And so

003I always I just want to just show this and to make sure that we are always centering ourselves um in an equitable mindset and that we're giving every kid what they needs. So, I wanted to talk a little bit and there's one little typo I just found in here. So, I apologize for that. But, um, I want to talk a little bit about my approach. Um, and so kind of my theory of action here. As I said, this um, being a learning journey for me. And so, I wanted to talk about how I approached this in a very educator way, which is a theory of action. So what how I've approached this is if I really spend time um you know doing some authentic listening and building deep relationships um while also educating myself on

004the current legislation again that historical context and best practices around um the state and the country. then I will build the necessary trust um and sharpen our organizational focus to really create a culture of genuine collaboration and all of this is so that we can drive a meaningful uh progress for American Indian and students and families and so um you know we'll talk about how we still have a long way to go there um but we are making small steps forward and um you know that is the goal that we are really making meaningful progress with our American Indian students and families. So again, just a little bit about my approach. Shannon, you can just click through. Um, so again, listening is a huge thing for me. Um, to be able to build relationships and

005to understand, we really had to prioritize listening. And so examples of ways that I have intentionally tried to do that if you can just click through um is visited schools, talked with principles, met with our American Indian home school leaison, attended Apac meetings, met with Apac members. Um and so that has been like very important to me uh to be able to to speak with our American Indian community directly and also speak to our leaders in schools on um you know the things that they are jumping the things that we need to work on and the experiences currently that our American Indian students are having in our schools and all of this of course is to learn right learning from those conversations and meetings um but also learning with the leaders of the state right

006So meeting with um the MDE director of American Indian education, attending Apac training with some of you and some of our other lead leaders hosted by Tene and working with expert Jen Murray who is also part of TAK has been really really helpful in me getting up to speed quickly on what I need to know. Um and then also spending of course time on my own researching around mte and American Indian and practices and policies. And all of this again is to really uh make sure that we are partnering and Shannon you can click through. Thank you. Um and and so to me partnering is really making sure you know continuing to clarify those roles and responsibilities of everyone um and our partners and then you know arranging those pre meetings and meeting with chair

007members and again working to align on our goals and our priorities to make meaningful progress for our students and their families. And so wanted to talk a little bit about um the concurrence non-concurrence process. Um, so this is all the same content that you all uh the AP pack and you all um did last year before I was here. I just put it in a slightly different format. Um, you should have received that information ahead of time. Uh on 121 we met with APEC and I went through line by line through the 16 um recommendations that APEC had put forward last year and we talked uh had really good discussions and really honest discussions and I thank them for their grace as you know for a lot of these things we were not necessarily where

008we wanted to be and that's for a number of reasons right um some of that is around um turnover um and knowing that we have had a lot of folks in different uh in the American Indian um ED coordinator role and also acknowledging that my position is new, right? We had a coordinator role that now is a director role and so that is slightly different. Um and so, you know, it's helping ensure that there is more dedicated capacity to overseeing this work. And so, um, once we fully get an American Indian coordinator, uh, on board, I'm really excited to support them and have, um, more people dedicated to making sure we are building a sustainable program and making sufficient progress for our American Indian um, students and families. And and so again, I I have

009been really showing up at APAC and uh our other parent committee meetings um talking about, you know, acknowledging and learning a lot and also talking about how can we move forward and what's kind of also my um vision for that, right? and so uh expressed to them that really the state aid plan that you all should have a copy of and had a copy previously but um but that really is a guiding light for us right those are the agreed goals and budget and all the things and so that's going to be key for us moving forward and then consolidating priorities so we've talked a lot about um how can we get on the same page around priorities to to support each other and collaborate and partner together and we've been very you you know,

010grateful for their honest feedback around that. And we talked about, you know, how 16 things felt like a lot of things and we want to make sure that we're doing a few things well and after some of us had the opportunity to go to that team act journey and they were providing some recommendations around narrowing our focus. Um that was really helpful I think to both of us to to APAC and then also to me um to figure out okay what is our our our priorities? how do we move forward? And then for me that I have the opportunity to really build from the ground up. I have been stressing with our teams and with APEC that um my focus is really around systems and structures because I really think that's the only way to

011create systemic and equitable change. Um and also just that you know you need people over time to do that and so turnover and things like that. It is hard to make movement and momentum and to implement and sustain systems and structures. And so I'm I'm hopeful with also now this position being a director um and um that we can work together to build those systems and support one another um so that we have the opportunity to you know be successful and work together. >> Thank you. I'll just step in here real quick for Assistant Superintendent Bonds. Do we have any questions? turn it back over to you, assistant superintendent bonds. >> Thank you, Member Lo. >> I just have a more of a comment just um I've really appreciated getting to know you too at

012the EAC meetings and you know I I certainly think that you understand how to gain trust and how to build from getting to know people, learning, listening. I I really love your action plan of listen, learn, and partner, you know. So, thank you for taking the time and the work to do that. And we're lucky to have you join our team and our family here at at the public schools. I appreciate you. >> Thank you. >> Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Would you like to um go ahead? >> Yeah. I'm going to pass it over to um our American Indian parent advisory committee to talk about their resolution, a vote of concurrence, non-concurrence the mic and pass it if you're going to share it. Just make sure who who is ever speaking um

013that they have the mic in front of. So, thank you and welcome. >> Thank you for having us here today. We're uh just a small representation of the AP pack. Um first, we'll just introduce ourselves. I'm Lydia Shinkle. I'm a parent within the district and a member of the APAC committee. >> My name is Jamie Dela Cruz and I work for the Indian Education Department. >> I'm T Good Sky. I'm a parent on the APAC committee. >> For the purpose of this, I am a parent of an East High School student. I'm Emily Silverness. I'm also an employee of ISD 709. I'm a special education teacher at Congden. >> Welcome. >> Uh, as this many of the board members know, so um by state statute, we as a committee uh have a responsibility to vote

014for a resolution of concurrence and non-concurrence every year. And the um agenda cover sheet does talk a little bit about um what that means and the statutes related to that. So um we did as a an APAC committee take um a vote of concurrence and non-concurrence and we did unanimously vote non-concurrence um for for the school district and as a part of our responsibilities in that to bring some recommendations to the district of some things that we would like to see happen over the next year specifically um to help bring that district into concurrence and they're this year I feel they're very simple um as Uh, Miss Garva Carrera talked about just really trying to focus in on a few things and do really well on those. Um, and then just continue to get better

015and better and expand and get more detailed as time goes. Uh, so I think we'll just read them and then if there's any discussion or questions that the board has, we're here to answer that. Um so the first recommendation is that we recommend continuous and intentional tracking and compiling of school data on all American Indian student at the prek and elementary level attendance behavior MCA testing data and the same uh information set at the middle school level and for high school students graduation attendance behavior rates of 15-day drop credits earned and the extracurricular activities ities that our students are involved in. >> Um, we also want data specifically on the indigenous cohort at the high school level. Um, can I just add to this that uh we do hear that there's some positive things happening

016with that indigenous cohort. Something that came up um in our group is that um we don't have the data. So to make a concurrence non-concurrence, this is supposed to be a data driven decision. we don't have the data to say yes this is working or not working and without the data it's really hard to say yeah we agree or we don't agree so um data is really important to us our second recommendation is we want solid and continuous onboarding and training for the American Indian education staff we want to prevent this turnover and we want to strengthen our our Indian education team you cannot talk to me right now >> uh the third recommendation that we have is to prioritize the hiring training and the support of a dedicated Indian education coordinator to ensure that

017Minnesota state statutes are being held to and adhered with fidelity. Um, as this board is well aware, we've had quite a high turnover with the coordinator for American Indian education in the past two school years. Um and um as Miss Garva Carrera talked about that turnover has created um some pretty significant issues with consistency and support for our staff and our students um and the ability to move forward in a positive way for our students when we don't have um consistent leadership to help move forward um and collaborate with. And so that is one of our really big uh priorities is that having that person and having them be supported and trained well that they will we can really start and move forward and not have to kind of go back to the drawing board

018every time a new coordinator is hired, which is what's been happening. Every time we have a new coordinator to the committee, it's kind of having to like retach the coordinator what we do and what that looks like. And so hopefully we can get somebody and then um just having that be a really that guiding light to know what our students are needing and to be consistent. >> Our fourth recommendation is participation in the American Indian Education Program self assessment for you for the administration for the teachers district staff the school board uh to help inform the services for American Indian students. We need the big picture of what's being done to support our students and make sure that all the key players know what's uh what's there. So, we need their voices in the room.

019We can't um we can do this via survey. We don't necessarily need everybody attending our APAC meeting, but without without their voices, we don't know what's going on um throughout the district. So, we would like that survey uh completed by everybody. >> Did you want to speak on that at all? >> I was asked to talk a little bit about that. That is kind of the for the state Indian education program that self- assessment rubric is really important for everyone to participate in not only to know what the Indian education program is doing for American Indian students but also for other people to consider um their role in programming opportunities and the education for American Indian students, but also to for you all for you to recognize and learn like what is happening to kind

020of put that together those opportunities and supports and to really kind of look at that so that we can start to build a system of resources and services that's been referred to and build on our strengths and grow and see what's missing. So that's what I wanted to say about that and then develop a strategic plan for the American Indian students based on that information. So those are the recommendations and we really try to narrow it down and consider a lot of the information that Marica talked about also in trying to establish some framework so that we can really build and see what this relationship should look like and work together. So thank you. Any questions? >> Member Michael. Thank you so much for taking time off this evening to come and um be with

021us and uh all the hard work that you do throughout the year um for your families and for all of our students across the district. Uh I'm curious about the self assessment tool that you speak of. Is that something that's already in existence that we have access to? Yes, it is in existence. Um, it comes in a paper format, but some of the parent committee and I worked together and we were able to put it into a Google form. So, that has been shared with our um, clerical and Marica and so at some point we can start to figure out how that should be shared in the district so people can start to participate. >> Yes. Yep. It's a state tool. It's something that was created by Department of Education. Yeah. MDE. So, it's something

022that's available and it's used by many school districts to guide this practice. >> Excellent. I look forward to hearing more about it as we go through the recommendations and have your response. >> And the the self assessment tool when we look at the concurrence and non-concurrence um when we look at voting for that, that self- assessment tool, it's not just for teachers and staff. There's also one for students. There's one for parents. So it's gathering information from all the stakeholders and that information is part of what when we look at the self assessment of is the district meeting these goals that MDE has put out that it's the same self assessment that when we're looking at the concurrence and non-concurrence that so it's the same information. So when you guys are you all are participating

023in that it helps us to really see is there concurrence is there non-concurrence is everybody on the same page and can help inform decisions moving forward to hopefully become concurrent at one point in time. >> Chair Derk Eater. >> Thank you. I had the same question. I'm thrilled to hear that it's an MDE tool. So that will be great for us and I look forward to any way that the board can participate. we would be willing participants in helping um move towards this goal. So, thank you. My quick question was um the data specifically on the indigenous cohort. Are you talking about data that's going to be reflecting like graduation attendance behavior 15day? So, is that something you're interested in looking at that data maybe um desegregated where you have um American Indian students data

024graduation attendance and then another data set that is the indigenous cohort data so that you can sort of compare and contrast that data. >> Yeah. And we did talk about we do actually almost have a fishbowl experiment because we have the indigenous cohort and we have American Indian students at Deneld. We also have American Indian students at East. So DUTH is sort of lucky in the fact that we do have um almost an experimental group by parent choice right now. So we can show in data whether this is working or not. We hear that it's working from the liaison. We hear that it's working from the families but they have access to that data and we don't have access to that data. Um we would like to support it. We hear Tuscan is doing amazing

025things at Deneld. Um we want to support that. We want to be celebrating those things. >> Great. Thank you. Um thank you for answering my questions. That's the only one. and thank you for appearing here today. I appreciate your time. >> Member Lo. >> So, yeah, we same thing. I I appreciate and I appreciate the um focus on um five um really deliberate and detailed um steps to work on. One has multiple areas, but I still think they're all connected. So I really um appreciate that when we look at number five to develop a strategic plan for our American Indian students are we is that the role of our inter integrationists that they would be able to help us with that. >> So that's from my understanding and um career might be able to speak

026more. So right now we do have um Jennifer Murray on contract with Indian ed um to help just kind of in this interim time while we're working getting a coordinator and then um so that the uh Indian Indian education strategic plan is actually something that is being discussed and developed with Jen Murray at this time. So it's something that is already I'm not sure the level of progress or like action steps that have been taken towards that but it is something that she has brought um to the committee when we've talked about how can we achieve these goals that we have and when we're we're making our state aid plan um some of the things that were more how can we make a strategic plan that leads into that because some of these things are

027bigger than a state aid plan. Some of these concerns are bigger than a a state aid plan with with five specific six specific areas um with small goals. Some of these are really lofty and more systemic um districtwide issues that are not really achievable in that kind of a plan. Um and so that that's something that is already being formulated within the district. I think this recommendation is to that we want to see that come to fruition. Right now it's conversations. I'm not sure the work that's being done on that, but um that we want to see that followed through on because our students, we know that there are there's issues and disparages disparities K preK12, right? And so we want to make sure that there is no matter who's a coordinator or who's on

028the board or who's superintendent, you know, that we have a plan that can be followed that our students are going to be able to succeed no matter who the leaders are. So, I'm going to further your um explanation for me because in my mind, I had an inflection on probably the wrong word that made it look like we were going to do a plan for each American Indian student. That's where my brain went as a teacher like, okay, how are we going to how who's doing that for every American Indian student? So, thanks for the clarification. Just a follow-up question and it's really um for me it goes back to my teaching years and I I don't know where the disconnect is with getting data. I don't know if that is a privacy right issue.

029I also know that at times when you come to the table or when I'm at um functions with American Indian students, I don't know how we identify all of them. And I don't know if we're focusing on our American Indian students that are tending not to be um as successful as we'd like in our school system um or are you know where or all students because then some students don't identify on that enrollment form about their culture. And so I'm always a bit confused when you continue to come back and I I appreciate that you you share it with us and I I'm following about how many how many American Indian students are receiving and that we're focused on that are identifiable. But is that sharable with our teaching staff or with our school board

030or with our with you as parent um as as parent a committee of parent? how how where does that line fall and if there's work we can do legislatively to open up um some data abilities. I don't know. I'm just sometimes I'm just confused about all what students are are we focusing on as far as receiving and wanting the data for and all of that. >> So, um that's so who's considered a an American Indian student? It's there's different programs that the district has and different funding sources and so those have their own statutory requirements. Some of them are it's a self-identified if they check it on the form right we can't force somebody to identify or not identified. So when um a family self-identifies that's a certain pool of funding when they're um an

031enrolled member or a descendant of a specific and it's a verified by the tribe then there's different types of funding. So there's forms that parents um that have to be submitted and verified. Some of it is self-identification. So when we talk about on our American Indian students, it's the families and students that have identified to the district that that is a classification that they want noted for them. Um it should be and as a staff you have access to Infinite Campus. It's a flag in infinite or it's in infinite campus. So like our staff can see, >> right? like it's it's part of the demographics for students. So it's it is a part of the demographics. >> Yeah. And right currently like sitting as a staff I can look up and I can tell you

032if a student is Native American. Like if I can say a student is Native there is absolutely no reason that the other people that are in sovereign nations who are working with the native students shouldn't have access to that data. Especially if we're supposed to vote on a law that is concurrent or non-concurrent whether or not something is working or not. To me, that doesn't make sense that they that there shouldn't be any data access. That doesn't make sense to me because I look at data every single day, both in special education and general education. I mean, I'm constantly looking at reading data, math data, MCA data. Are they growing? Are they not growing? We don't have any data. We don't have attendance data. We don't have reading data. We don't have graduation data. It's

033it's that's guesswork to me. That's not measurable right now. We could we could populate any of that data. It sounds like it's more like a matter of a person. A person maybe a person's job in tech I would imagine should be able to extrapolate that data. I would imagine I think some of it is that definitely there is a classification difference for each student and that's why some of this focus on making sure there's good solid training is also to understand how we're going to implement that programming. You know, we have to have a plan for the different statuses of the students and also like their sovereignty and their tribal status. That really is a essential part of this framework. Understanding what that is and what the role and the responsibility is to each different

034classification of those students and then how to implement that programming to make it equitable to make it um address the unique needs of each of those students. So those are some of the things that we really feel like in these other recommendations. Having somebody who is going to be very um solid in this knowledge in this job is going to come into play here in this strategic plan. even how we're servicing the students throughout the district, how we're meeting the needs of each individual student, how we're identifying those classifications and how we're developing programming, you know, and then the collaboration part are all the stakeholders participating in this program plan. So that to me and to the group is really what when we talk about the strategic plan, that's also what we're looking for in

035that. So yes, like how the forms are one part of it, but then there is a whole another piece of that and there are there are several groups that collect this information. It's again coming back to some of the things that Mara talked about and that you're even talking about Jill is how are we going to create the policies that we need to make sure that this information is available so that we're making those informed decisions you know >> and I I think that when um we're talking about like having data so we've gotten some data over time but um what we've talked about is when we want to look at what is the success, what's working and what's not. Being able to measure um you know like the MCA testing data, reading, math proficiency,

036graduation rates, attendance. So some of what we've some of what we get is more um we need things that are broken down to see this school or are we looking at like kindergarteners across the district? What does their reading proficiency look like? And then them as first like are they growing? Are they not growing? what schools are doing well and what aren't. And some of the data that we've we have received data um but it's not as um detailed within the limitations of student privacy, right? There are certain limitations that um are put on just because we are not district staff and so we don't have access and should not have access to all of the students data, right? That so we've gotten creative about cell size. you have to have 10 or more students

037to disseminate that data um to protect student privacy. We know that there are certain schools that don't have a lot of American Indian students. Homecraftoft, Lakewood, Congden, Lester, right? So like you couldn't say the students at Lester, if there's only three, you could maybe pick them out. Um so we've talked about ways to help create cell sizes of data that can help us show that. Um, and I think what we've gotten isn't the data that we've gotten isn't usable to us in the way that we would like to see when we're looking at are is the district meeting the goals are the plans that we're putting in place and the interventions that we're recommending in the district implementing is that effective because if it's not working then we shouldn't then we need to find a

038new plan and so I think it's and when we've did tribal consultation with Fondelac uh last year one of the things that they um really wanted to have more emphasis on or know more about was attendance and what that looks like. It's not just did you show up today. There's attendance about partial partial day or like did when did you leave? When did you come to help identify barriers? If we have elementary students who are coming to school late consistently, is it a family transportation problem? Is that something we can support? And so that was something that FondeLeac as our tribal partner and fiscal agent for federal funds had shared that they would like also to have more data around was the attendance at all grade levels and what that looks like. Um because we

039can have all the services in the world but if students aren't in the buildings they can't receive those services. So when we say data, that's more of like we can't make data driven decisions and make smart goals for our state aid plan when we don't have some of that more specific data about these especially these particular things. Um, so last year on August 13th, the Apac and the Title 6 had made resolutions for a pretty strong list of data. Um that did include the graduation rates, the attendance rates, but also other things that we want to look at with our American Indian students like how many of them are receiving special education services, how many of them are participating in extracurriculars because that speaks a little bit to the social and emotional health that these

040students are also going through. I think it would be helpful to be able to receive that data set quarterly so that we can compare by semester what are some of the trends that we're seeing in what grade in what school in what area. Um what are what are what are things that are working in those schools and in those areas. Um, I think being able to have the same set of data consistently, we just need to work on a schedule for that so that we make sure that when we're looking at things, it really is based on numbers. So then when we have our recommendations, they can be smart goals. >> Member Lo and then member Mike. >> I think you had your on first. >> You can go ahead. I I I love the

041idea of of what we need to help the advisory committee see what they need to see with the the students and and and help them grow. I'm I'm struggling with the the role where does that lie? Is that in the director that we're still um trying to hire right now? Does the advisory committee have funds through the Indian education to supply someone that can collect the data that you need when you don't know exact like if I were to ask you right now do you know how many American Indian students you would want us to collect data for do we have a a number that we can work with so we know what kind of job description or what what do we need for that data to happen and I can see Marica in the

042back too um maybe directors have more ideas of of where where that responsibility and I just asked that so the board has an idea about how we can work to support and where that where that um job of collecting data so specific that you want and that you need that we want to help you with >> but but I I know that that's a tough tough thing >> I can for so many >> provide a new perspective as like a newcomer to the district right um so I've worked in a a lot of districts across the country and I think a gap across the country is data systems and getting your systems to talk to one another, right? And so I know here we've have Edge of Climber is fairly, you know, kind of recent

043and so we're still getting used to that system and so um it takes a while to get your systems updated fully with all the information, train folks on them and then use them efficiently is a big gap across the country, right? And so I think for me as a newcomer, I'm thinking about okay, what are the systems we have? What are the pieces of things that we're tracking? And then how are those things talking? What story are they're telling them? Cuz I agree, a lot of these data should be theoretically very easy to get. And I also think we have a lot of we have some improvement to do on how are we using data, how are we inputting data, and then um how do we use it effectively? And so I have kind of

044also slow played this because I could jump and to somebody and say pull me the data on XYZ but I don't think that's the whole story and I'm also like trying to understand the story before I tell the story. And so um I think that that's something that I've been working on and is really important to me because I am I believe that we should be sharing data um and make that accessible in ways of course that protect student privacy. Um but um so I think that's something that when with the new coordinator, it's going to be really important for that person to be trained in our data systems. Um and also then we provide that support to our folks that are in schools as well uh to be able to make data informed decisions.

045That's something that I am really emphasizing with all of my folks, but we're not there yet, right? And so I just wanted to talk about, you know, data as a whole. I think we are very pro- data and we want to also make sure that, you know, when we're talking about progress to graduation, there's a lot of things uh that's not all in educ that that talk that you know indicates whether a kid's on track or not. And also like maybe we need to say we need to look at these additional things for American Indian students as well. And so those are the conversations I'm hoping to have soon. I think that's what I was talking about my ground approach is we are still kind of laying that dirt and seeds that I'm hoping that

046we're really going to pay off in the next year and so to come and also that we're not always playing catchup, right? I so I know um you know again just the lift of understanding the compliance side of things is a lot and I I've been very honest with the APAC members around you know that for me and and their grace there because it is a really big lift of making sure that we are um following all the compliance things on top of how are we making our current practices better. So, I know that was a long-winded answer, but I've just wanted to add some additional context on kind of my approach and also the the data piece. So, I think we have people in our district. Um, and I I've already talked to APAC

047about maybe I need to bring a certain person or perspective that has that and a more in-depth lens at one of our upcoming meetings to walk us through some of that. Um, but I'm still on that journey myself as well. Member Mel, >> I just um I did want to try to address um Miss Laughel. I don't know the specific number for sure, but I know that when we've been applying for federal funds, we've had around 671 students self-identify. Um we could be in the range of 7 to 800 American Indian students in this district. I'm a little bit concerned because I feel like those students have been invisible for a long time. I do feel like they need the care and the concern and the strategic planning. For me, that's what equity means is

048we lift from the bottom. If we help our native kids, if we help our black kids, if we help our immigrant kids, we're raising the academic outcomes for all of our students. But we have to start with those ones that need the help the most. Chair Derk. >> Thanks, member. >> Oh, I'm sorry. I thought I Yep. >> Again, I just want to take the opportunity to thank you all so so much for your commitment. Um, and recognize that there's long-term, you know, committee members here. We have staff involved as well. So, I'll again, thank you for that. Um, I really appreciate the recommendations that you provided. I I will admit as a on a personal note for number five, the developing our strategic plan, I'm going to be listening back to this meeting to

049really remember and uh make sure that I'm getting the details of what that exactly means to you. And I think that could be a challenge as we all work together with an administration to really make sure that um the district is is uh seeing the the purpose that you're hoping for for that strategic plan because you know strategic plans can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people. So wanting to make sure that we have the proper expectations um for the work that we'll be putting into that um and making sure that those conversations are ongoing so that when we get to next year and we review you know updates and outcomes um you know we aren't we don't have groups thinking that we've done a fabulous job and another group

050saying like you didn't even get close to it. So, just wanting to make sure that we really um get some more details on on what exactly you're hoping for there and making sure that we're able to provide those things. >> Thank you for sharing that because I want I'll jump in because I was going to add mine towards end. And I also want to say thank you to our AP pack um and Marica um our director for all of the work to getting us to this point because it feels like we have uh a number that is uh we can wrap our heads around, right? And we can really tackle. So I would offer just like you are uh bringing up uh member Mike so that as everyone knows we have 60 days 60 days

051as a a district to respond to the recommendations and typ typically what happens is we take the recommendations and then we go back and work with our team to decide uh how can we accomplish what is being asked of us. So I would offer to our APAC and um director um um Graphic Carrera if if there is an opportunity right away at the next APAC meeting even for the team to come back or the APAC to just really focus on getting deeper on what some of these pieces mean so we can know exactly what data sets we need for each of these each and every one of these areas so that we can really try to achieve um hitting the the goals that are um you aspired here. And so I guess there's a time

052for us to really get together and figure out what data sets we need for each and every one of these things sooner than later. Um and I think that uh ensure that we accomplish them. Member Chair Derek Eer, >> thank you. I'm just taking some time and digesting the first recommendation on the compilation of all the data that you're asking for. And I think um the collection of data is very very important and I think um what is probably more important than the collection of data is the why you're collecting the data. So figuring out um this is the question that we're asking and this is the data set that we need to answer that question. So I would ask maybe for recommendation one to help for clarification for the board and then also that

053may help reflect on that um development of a strategic plan is those questions around these are the or those clarifications around this is the why that we have and this is the data set that we need in order to answer the why because that might be a little bit more clarifying because this is a lot. Um, and sometimes you can get sort of buried underneath a lot of the data. I that's happened to me a a lot. It all comes at you and and it can be sort of overwhelming. So, I would maybe ask for some clarifications around why are we looking at what is the question we're trying to get to? Why are we trying to get to that question? And then how can the data support answering the why? That would just be

054one um suggestion that I would have. But I but I appreciate um listening to you all have this uniform message of wanting to focus on smart goals and wanting to have those decisions be driven by um be be driven by the collection of that data and making sure that the data that you're looking at is authenticated and can be corroborated if that makes that would maybe help that development of that strategic plan. So thank you for um thank you for your time >> member Williams. Thank you. Um I would echo what chair um Derek Eer said as well. That's really um yeah just helpful and I really appreciate um you talking differentiating between um the strategic plan and the concurrence and non-concurrence. Um I think that is really helpful for all of us um to

055keep in mind um because the strategic plan, strategic goals are big and lofty. And um yeah, the concurrence and non-concurrence are more byte-size what we can do right now. And I I appreciate you guys talking about that. And it's really nice to see you at the table, Emily. I feel like this is the first time I've seen you here. So I appreciate it as a Yeah. as a parent and as staff, it's nice to see you here. So, thank you. Oh, I was going to say one more thing. I'm sorry. Um um we've all kind of acknowledged at the table, too. Um just the rough couple of years it's been with um the staff turnover and everything. And so, I also want to say how much I appreciate the resiliency and the tenacity of APAC.

056This has been a journey and it's it's been tough. None of us is going to say that it's been a fun easy ride the last couple of years, but I I appreciate that we are coming together in a good way and and just trying to put our best foot forward and and to look out for our kids. So, um I thank each of you and I hope that you put that same faith in us because we believe we believe in your kids. Your kids are our kids and um we want the best for them. So, thank you. >> Thank you. Any additional uh closing comments? APEC. >> Um actually, I actually would like to say something. Um I don't want I want to make sure that I acknowledge your your comment that we need clarification

057of why and what, but I don't think it's our responsibility to know h how or by whom. I don't think that that's fair to ask the APEC to know who in tech is capable of doing those data sets or what their cost is. Um I appreciate that they need we might need to find funding. Um >> but just I don't think that that would be a fair comment for them to have to figure out. >> So I think um about that so it's when um I think it was member Loal asked about like who is responsible from who who does this data collection piece. So typically and a part of our recommendation three is the coordinator would usually be the person who collects and presents that data to our AP pack and so kind of

058goes hand inand with not having that and then us not getting the data. It's this cyclical um struggle that has been happening. Um so it is something that is the responsibility of of the district and that um American Indian education funds should not be funding um the acquisition of that data. that is a responsibility that the district has to provide the APAC to be able to make um >> sound sound data-driven decisions when we're presenting plans to the state when we're presenting plans to FondeLac um when the district is collabor that's part of that um meaningful collaboration piece is the district um having the using the district resources to provide us with those and that's usually the conduit has in historically been the coordinator if if that's something that you know within the district a

059decision is made that that's done internally differently but that's historically it's been the coordinator who has gathered and presented that data. Um I guess just like kind of my closing is I just would appreciate the conversation that we've had here today. Um we were very intentional about presenting at cow so that we could have some discussion versus at a regular schoolboard meeting where it's just kind of here's our things and have a great day. Um, I think it's been um a really productive conversation and um we appreciate the uh Amadisa's Miss Carver Herrera's commitment that she's made to um coming to our meetings and being really collaborative and meaningful and having schoolboard members. We've seen some schoolboard members coming to our meetings as well and I um would like to see that continue as that

060I think helps bring back for you all to have some other understanding of what the conversations are looking like what's happening because it is very Indian education is very complex um and there's a lot of different statutes and requirements and and things like that and so I um appreciate and would encourage the continued um school board member presence at our meetings. I think it's just it helps have more understanding, reduce some of those barriers and have higher levels of collaboration. Thank you all for your time. >> Thank you. And as I shared uh board and community, uh the district has 60 days to respond to the vote of non-concurrence and the recommendations that have been presented here. And we look forward to working with Apac to uh seek greater clarification and determine some metrics so

061that we can accomplish uh what has been asked of us here. So thank you. Next we have a presentation uh being presented by director Lara who is the director of secondary schools. We have Cindy Miller who is our media specialist and we have Greg uh Kger and our director Kger is on um he's remote with us and he is here so he is available as well um to take questions and um may have things to say as well. So this presentation is related to AI implementation. So we know there's a lot of questions um that have surfaced related to the district's roll out of Gemini uh for our secondary students and to our staff. Uh we want to make sure that we provide some additional information related to the roll out um for not only

062the board but also for the community. Uh, and I'll turn it over to Director Lara who will walk us through a presentation and make sure please uh introduce everyone. >> Greetings board members. Um, I'm Jen Larva, director of second year education and I've brought with me I am Cindy Miller. I am library media specialist at Congden and the computer science lead for the district. >> Greg, do you want to introduce yourself? >> Board members. I'm Greg, director of technology joining conference with St. Cloud this evening. I appreciate you allowing me to participate remotely. >> All right, we're going to just get jump right in. Um, your time is valuable and so is ours. So, we'll just keep moving forward. Um, so just wanting to share with you some beliefs that we have about um artificial

063intelligence. That's what AI stands for. Um, I'm going to really kind of let Cindy talk a lot. She is our um our lead for computer science and has point two of her position dedicated to rolling out computer science across the district. She came to Greg, myself and Julie Staver summertime sometime >> August um to start saying we need to really have a planful approach for how we're going to start embedding um the learning around um AI. We know that students are um using it outside of school already. And so like how do we have a responsible use of AI within our school setting? And so I'm going to turn it over to her and we'll kind of keep moving forward. If you need me to pop in, I'll keep popping in. >> Okay. Thank you.

064Uh so these are three beliefs that we have and our decision-m uh revolves around these three things. So the first is uh students uh and staff um what we want to do is reduce inequities and expand opportunities for our students uh around the use of AI. And uh secondly uh maintaining a human- centered approach AI being a tool uh not replacing our educators and giving the teachers autonomy in how AI is used in within their classroom. Um and we'll talk about that a little bit more in a second. Uh then the third is just being recognizing the environmental impact and uh maintaining digital safety. um and keeping our data secure and that kind of thing. Uh so uh these four things um are our objectives. Uh empowering educators to utilize AI as a highle classroom

065assistant. Uh that would be teaching with AI like how a teacher can use AI uh to um differentiate learning and making um education more equitable for our students across all of our schools. Um preparing secondary students with skills to navigate in the age of AI and prepping them for what comes next after their high school years. and establishing a walled garden for safe acceptable AI learning. So we'll talk about that we we there's a reason that we chose uh Gemini Google Gemini um for our purposes of using AI with students and then acknowledging current student access and use of AI tools. Uh we have data that shows that students use AI like crazy during the school year on their personal devices and it drops off as soon as school's over. So um and and we'll

066be collecting more data uh coming up here soon. Uh these are four uh reasons that uh we need to do this. Um Do I need to read all those? >> Yeah. >> Um um specifically being be having our students be prepared uh to work with AI outside of the school. Um as soon as they're done with our services and where they go after that. um and acknowledging that AI is not perfect and that our students need to maintain critical thinking skills and um build those critical thinking skills and use AI as an assistant not as a rep as um replacement for any of their education. And I think one of the things you know as we said earlier is that students are already using AI. We already have teachers that are feeling the impacts of

067AI um use at school. And so we we need to find a way to build that AI literacy as you'll see on a lot of our slides around how to use AI ethically, how to use it um in and when to use it like when is it appropriate to use AI. So I think in the next slide we will um talk about what's AI literacy. >> This is a definition of what AI is. And so, um, AI literacy means knowing how to use AI tools effectively and ethically. It's not just a tech skill. It's a human superpower that balances understanding how the technology works with knowing how it impacts our world. So, this is our our strategic long-term vision. Um, what we have we've been meeting since the beginning of September. And uh the task

068force is the three of us and uh Julie Stabber who is the secondary curriculum >> coordinator and um so we made plans to use common language across all of our departments and uh that's coming up on our PD day in March and we'll show you what that means. Um, so then that's really just being really clear to students when you could use AI and when you cannot. Uh, alignment with state and university technology leaders. Uh, I'm on several different committees that have to do with how the state is implementing um or suggesting that we implement AI in our district. And uh we're we're on top of um how things are going in the state um and in the country with AI uh robust governance. We have um worked on a regulation and had a regulation

069passed in December um that you'll remember probably. Uh we've taken a look at academic integrity integrity policies and put some digital guard rails in place. uh one of the most important things is to make sure that we protect our students data. Uh so those are the four things that make our long-term vision. So the last one being um protecting our student data and our district data um relates to that walled garden concept. And I don't know Greg if you want to explain what a walled garden is to our board members. When we speak about AI, uh the walt garden means that the prompts that we provide to um certain AI tools, uh where they're part of a suite of products we already own and have privacy agreements for. Uh those those prompts won't be put

070out there into the AI models for the rest of the world uh to to to potentially see or have uh data built upon that's provided to others. Um so that that world garden uh keeps district data within the district uh it keeps individuals uh data with the individual who is prompting and seeking a response from AI uh and protects the privacy of uh data that is input into an AI tool. >> All right. Thank you Greg. So this is >> what happened there. >> We hiccuped. Um so this is a timeline uh starting with uh in the fall uh actually last spring I started doing some training uh went to conferences over the summer learned a lot. Came here to the district and said this is uh what I've learned and um we just keep

071building from there. So opening day I got to talk to the 9 through 12 staff. loved that. And um we formed a group that's called the AI champions. And that group helps me because I'm not in an in a high school regularly. Uh I'm in an elementary school. So I needed their feedback to know what's actually happening and uh so they have been uh valuable help for me. uh foundational AIPD was offered to all staff and just how Gemini is used and uh that and we're continuing that in December we passed the policy or or the sorry the regulation and then um there's been communication to staff and uh teachers and staff and there's more PD coming and um that number six uh where it says listen to stakeholders I think that should be bold

072or bigger or something like that because where we're at right now is we need to just hear from the people um and learn from I know that there was public comment at a schoolboard meeting not too long ago and it's important for us to learn exactly how people are feeling about it and um every little step that we take and um in learning about AI and that's at every level uh can help us to support each other and um and just grow in our learning. Um and so listening to stakeholders is really important. So the next slide is about what's uh coming up next. our students uh at the end of the first semester and the beginning of the second semester, students in 9 through 12 had uh three or four lessons that had to

073do with uh how AI what AI is and and AI literacy and getting to know how AI impacts and and just had some discussions with uh teaching staff. Um >> I'm going to talk a little bit about that. um we targeted certain courses that we had students in. So our skills for success class, we did the end of first semester and the beginning of second semester because we know that all nth graders are attending are in that class. We did computer science for 10th grade. We did college and career life readiness in 11th grade and then I can't remember >> American government as um for our seniors. So we we targeted certain classes and we brought those teachers in to have conversation with them to get their stakeholder input on to what what would be

074reasonable for um sharing in their classes knowing that you know they have they have their own standards um and lessons that they're trying to teach but also how can we incorporate this into it and so that was um something that you and Julie had done brought them all in um and we settled on these three lessons that we're going to push out knowing that we're going to have to continue to push out more things as we go. But that was like the very very beginning introduction. >> Um then there there's a um information for parents and community that uh will be coming out soon uh that just tells our community and our parents how uh we're approaching AI use and uh just kind of where we're at in our learning. And then at the end

075of this month uh toward the end of this month our students will have Gemini access uh after that everyone has had their introduction they will have Gemini access and then just after that on March 2nd teachers will um come to learn about the common language that we have um we've talked to different departments about common language and that's on the next slide I think and um and we will be implementing um opportunities for students to use AI in their classrooms. So, I don't think we actually have the tool in our presentation. Okay. So, if you want to just kind of give the five buckets. Sure. >> Um do you have it? >> I can find it for you. >> Not logged in. >> You're not logged in. I can find it for you. Um, as

076far as common language goes, what what I was looking for, what we had kind of planned is um a poster that has um um different kinds of assignments. So, uh a writing assignment, a project, an assignment that is a project, something that is building understanding, planning and organization, and creativity. And um under that it's different ways that you could use AI to um complete that project let's say. So you might have uh brainstorming, planning, doing research, creating a product. Uh um you could use AI to uh get feedback to develop a speech or discussion um or to create slides. And the teacher um when they're presenting this assignment to students will say okay you can use this let's as a group use this for brainstorming use AI for brainstorming for this project you can use

077it for planning your project you may not um you can use it for research for your project but you may not use it for creation because I'm grading on I'm grading you on your creation of whatever the product is and so you cannot use AI for that but all that stuff leading up to it use it as an assistant to build that knowledge. Then um you create your assignment um you um cannot use it for feedback. You cannot use it to write your speech or um discussion. You cannot use it for slide creation. Um, so, um, on the chart it actually has checkboxes and the teacher can say yes, yes, yes, no, no, no, and no because that's what they're grading. Um, and that, um, that would not be some way to use AI. So

078um in the category of creativity, I talked to um art teachers and music teachers about ho how do you see AI being used and the same kinds of things would um be in that category and um um the teacher has full autonomy to say yes, no, no, or no, no, and no. There is no AI on this assignment. And if you and at the bottom of the poster on the bottom of this document, I'm going to read it exactly what it says. It says, "Students are responsible for ensuring that all work reflects their own thinking, learning, and creativity. If unsure, students should ask for clarification before using any AI tool. Students may not use artificial intelligence tools unless the teacher has given explicit permission and AI generated content is properly cited when applicable." And this

079part is bold. Misuse of AI is a form of academic dishonesty and may result in consequences. You can't really see it too well, but I'm just going to like so you can see. We're going to make big posters of this for every single classroom that has this image on the top. And I'm not sure that this will happen, but that statement at the bottom, no, I I'm going to say that this should happen. the statement on the bottom that I read to you um should be in um their in their Canvas assignment. It should be part of their syllabus. It should be part of their assignments. That's common language, very clear for students. Um and that's what I'd like to see. Let's see what our next one is. Okay, so considering um stakeholder input. uh

080these are the things that these are the steps that we're going to take so that we can continuously improve our product our our plan our the way that we do things. Um and uh like I mentioned before I'm not in a high school so I need to hear from the people. Uh one of the things that we have planned is um feedback uh feedback survey using thought exchange. That's what we were doing in the back says, "I don't get to see Cindy very often." We were actually creating our survey together tonight. And students students can give us information about what AI they've used and what they haven't. Uh or if they haven't, what um environmental impact issues do you want to bring to the forefront? Uh what other issues do you have? Um and how

081do you what do you need to be able to do this successfully? uh and prepare you for what comes next. >> Thank you. >> So, and you'll also notice we did say that Google Gemini was used to enhance the appearance of all of these slides. So, we did use Gemini in the creation of our AI presentation. And this is how you site your source. >> Yes, we're citing our source right now. Any questions? >> Yes. Um, member Saddowski, >> I have a few um, thoughts, I guess, comments. Um, first of all, I just wanted to thank you, Cindy, for going to I know you just do a fabulous job of going to a lot of trainings and over the last four years, you've really educated the board on a lot of different things. So, I

082really appreciate that. Um, I know we've been in in hard budget times and so, but what I'm seeing right now is just like you're a media specialist and um how how important that is and could be with with all of this too. Um, as an extra added support for our teachers. Um, so just thank you for your work and for being here. Um, so I wanted to say that because I know this is a very um, you know, it's here, our students are using it already. Um, I also know that students have concerns um, which they've shared at the board table about the environmental impacts. Uh, I just did a little Google search because I I have to admit I was a little skeptical. I was like, well, Gemini must be more environmentally friendly. So,

083I did just a little Google search and it says it it is by about 30%. Let's see here. I thought that was interesting. Gemini is more efficient per query. Often cited as consuming 30% less energy than chat GPT. I just found that to be interesting. I still know that there's a lot of significant environmental impacts. Um, and it's here. Um I I I know this train has probably kind of left the station, but when I'm looking at at this timeline, um some of it just is a little bit problematic to me. Like we're we're launching it with students on February 23rd, but then we're talking on March 2nd about common language. It just with staff, it just I don't it's been here. So chat GPT has or you know AI has been here and we

084know some students are using it and we know some students aren't using it. I don't personally understand the hurry to open it up to students on February 23rd if we're not developing a common language with staff and teachers prior to that. So I'm just trying to kind of wrap my head around that. Maybe you can >> can I clarify one thing >> and then I >> they've seen the common language at the August. So they already had gotten trained on the common language way back in August. The teachers did what what they're going to be talking about on March 2nd is more about like how could we implement this in front of our classrooms like how could like what more about that implementation part of it. Um we have no expectations set on teachers regarding

085their use of AI at all. Um, so they need to kind of talk through some of those things in their departments. >> Yeah, I I'd continue to push back on it a little bit though because teachers, if they're going to be talking about like how do we educate the students about this shared language, I think that it still would make sense to do that before launching it. Um, just from a from my perspective anyway. And then when we look at considering stakeholder input, I really appreciated that. Um, I think Cindy, you mentioned uh the public comment that we had last month. Um, I really uh appreciated that public comment. Um, someone handed a whole packet of really good articles from The Atlantic and other sources that I've started to read. I I admit I haven't

086read all of them, but I've read a couple of them. Um and so just thinking about how you know how will this support all of our students um holistically I guess. So I just when I look at considering stakeholder input I feel like our community may maybe um maybe they heard about it but maybe they haven't had a chance to weigh in as much either. So maybe just giving a little more opportunity for that because there's a lot of really um educated people in our community who maybe have a some information for us. Thank you. >> Thank you. I'll call on I'm not sure who's next. So okay, I'll go to member Michael. >> Thank you so much for being here tonight. Um I'm curious um based on the public comment that we have received,

087has there been any um updates or adaptations to the current plan based on what we've heard thus far? No, but there is a plan to meet with the two professors from UMD uh and um both of whom I know um from the past. Uh so there there is a plan to meet with them and get their input and learn from them. Uh they are certainly stakeholders within our community that we can learn from. >> Excellent. Um I'm glad to hear that. And then also just curious, and perhaps this is getting a bit too much in the weeds, but if we are going to have um explicit instructions of when AI can be used and when it shouldn't be used, do we have ways to determine um if AI has been used in the um areas

088of the assignment that it was marked that it should not be used in? How are teachers able to check and see if that's the case? >> Uh two ways. Number one, uh student relationship. uh relationship with the students uh teacher relationship with the students and knowing who they are and what they are capable of doing. That's one thing. And number two um um and number two um on that professional development day on March 2nd uh we will be talking with each department about the part of their presentation has to do with uh adjusting your um adjusting your assignment to um more discussion, less work outside of school. um which changes the pedigogy of of how things are taught. Uh but in order to um AI proof our uh assessments, I think that's an important way

089for us to to do that. And so they'll be trained on teachers will be trained on just making some changes about how their assessments actually happen. >> Last question. Um just a little bit off of member Saddowski um her concern of the roll out and the timing of the steps and stages. Is there a reason why February 23rd is the hard launch? Um and that's prior to the next PD day is like do we have to do it on that day for a certain reason? >> That is our plan but I'll um speak to the team who has been intimate in terms of the timeline. So does someone want to share the why? Um >> in September when we looked at the calendar and just planned out how things were going to go uh we

090wanted it to be a we wanted teachers to have opportunity to do the training that they did on December in December also on January 2nd. Uh give um the first semester and second semester targeted teachers an opportunity to do that teaching and get feedback from them. Then release it to students um or or open it up for students. uh give a little bit of um opportunity for students to see what it does. I'm I don't know that um students have used any AI outside of school. Um and uh and so we picked February 23rd um right after winter break. We picked that date in September. And I appreciate the com uh the question mark related to the timeline because again you know I know the team has been working on this um a little bit

091since the summer and coming back um just ongoing just uh the evolution of it to this point knowing that um the goal has always been one let's make sure that if there's unreadiness that we you know consider that before we fully move forward and also with any implementation at some point you know we start and then we have to adjust along the the team felt they were ready to move forward with rolling out the students. One of the things I asked is how we made sure that one teachers are fully aware of um of of the roll out and has received professional development. The answer is yes. Have parents received initial communication related to the possibility that this is going to roll out? The answer is yes. Well, how can we make sure parents get

092additional information? And the answer is yes. Yes, there's time, you know, there are letters and there is communication that's going to go out to families um even prior uh to the roll out again on the 23rd. And then of course related to our students, how are students made aware and what are we doing to make sure students are prepared? And the team has done a good job of determining when students will receive some instruction and direction on the proper usage um of AI. And with all that being, you know, um, considered prior to the roll out, uh, we feel comfortable moving forward unless there's some true unreadiness, uh, like is being articulated now. Um, so we're going to take all the feedback and and, um, consider it. Um, but right now, that's the timeline. >>

093Greg's hand went up. But before that, I before I call on who's um coming in, I I want to call on our student representative who's been patient, and then I'll call on uh who's ever here. >> Okay. Hi. Hi. So, being a high school student, I have obviously seen the impacts of AI through my friends and I've heard about some impacts from my teachers as well. I know just last year in my computer science class, we had a whole lesson that lasted about two weeks just about AI. we learned about to not use it because of its un it's because of its impacts. I know that of course it can be a tool for some certain things, but at the same time it does cause a lot of miscommunication between students and teachers. And teachers

094aren't necessarily seeing when students are using AI. And I know some people that have definitely turned things in using AI and teachers don't catch it and they can still get a higher grade from compared to other students that are using their own work and their own thinking for certain assignments. I think it's kind of hard when you have those classes like computer science last year talking about how we should not use AI and then go right into it this year talking about oh yeah we're going to implement implement this into our Chromebooks and this is Google Gemini. I just think that it's a really quick it's a really quick thing to happen after we just had those talks last year and I know that AI is going to be around for a long time. I

095know that's something that people are working on. I don't think it's going to go away for a very long time. So, I don't know if there's any way we can maybe think about the possible possible other solutions that we can do. It just seems super fast to do this on February 23rd, I think, was the date. Just to implement that when we've already had that those conversations so recent about how AI is not treated very well. And I know I've had certain conversations with my teachers about that as well. And I know you mentioned something about how um we'd have to really tell people when you can and when you cannot use AI, but I know what it's like being in high school. And I know there are some people that are going to just

096use AI no matter what anyone says. Teachers will tell you not to use AI and they still will. And that's unfortunate, but it's the truth. And I just don't think that if we implement Google Gemini, it'll help. I don't think that it'll really stop students from using chat GBT at the same rate. And people I know people are using AI outside of school. I know that they're using it in school. They're using it on their phones. They're using it on the computer because we already do have AI mode on Google. And I just think it's it's a hard conversation to talk about when it's a hard thing to implement right now when we already have all of these certain conversations we've had with so many teachers and the fact that there are students still using

097AI. I just think that this might encourage others to use it even more than they already have been. That's all. Thank you. >> Thank you. Thank you. I have Superintendent Maggus and then I'll come over to our other student representative. >> Thank you. No, I think I think there there are a lot of good points to be made and I just wanted to reiterate and I'm sorry because it's been uh difficult with uh driving to be able to enter into other comments on the other topics, but I just wanted to say I have uh done a couple of polls of uh both the metro districts and some of the regional districts and and most many I would I would say the the majority of districts that that were pulled are using AI with their students

098and that they are uh having access and and I I agree we want to be very thoughtful about it but we also want to think about it as an issue of um if some if some people are using it and we don't know it or some people are not using it. I think at least having a common playing field where it can be coached and we can we can guide people about appropriate use and and inappropriate use is better than having people just pulling it up on their phones and cutting and pasting chatp into documents anyway. So that's that's that's part of just what I wanted to say, but I I realize it's a complex issue and I'm weighing it from afar. >> Um, hi. Uh, I just wanted to kind of agree with what

099um, Maline said. Uh, I think my biggest thing or my biggest comment about it, I think it would just produce more of um, a chance of academic dishonesty. Um, because I already know even like what she said like even if there's um, teachers saying that you can't use it, there's still going to be people that do use it anyways. And I think even now there's teachers that say that we can't use it and we still use it. Um I think it would just be a hard thing to kind of put um walls on and restrictions. Um and even now like teachers say like they can they're able to catch you with it and stuff but like most of the time they aren't. Um I think even with the teachings I mean it's kind of hard

100to say but it might not um like it might really not change it much and like it just I think it would open doors for a lot uh more of like that dishonesty part. And um but I think I also kind of agree with uh what Maggus was saying because I think it would also even the playing field a little bit, but I like I said, it would still be kind of hard to differentiate um when it should be used and and if it is being used. So yeah, that's probably >> Thank you. I appreciate that. And that's why I had um ask uh Miss Brown to put back on the screen the why it's important because again it just we've been really thoughtful and thinking through why we are doing this and why we're

101rolling it out. And so just wanted to remind uh everyone of those wise and it it's it's exactly what you were sharing in terms of you know we we know that AI is being used right now by a lot of people um self included. Uh it's it's it's in every industry that's out there is looking for ways to leverage AI to its fullest. So we really believe it's important to make sure that we are preparing our students to leverage AI in uh the proper ways and to educate them on the misuse and what happens when you misuse AI. And so we really are, you know, as an educational institution, we believe we have to make sure we prepare students properly and and let them know um all of those challenges. But we we are listening.

102We are going to take all the feedback that we are receiving today and um take it under consideration um as we move forward. Member Laughler Kemp and then member Sowski. >> Great. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for uh having the students uh speak. If you would have called on me first, I would have said have the students speak before us board members. So, uh thank you for that. Um I uh really um I guess I I agree with a lot that has been said particularly by member Saddowski and member Michael Cell. Um I'm concerned and again I know a lot of work has been uh gone into this timeline the policy that we uh passed a few months ago in the policy uh committee and had a lot of discussion around as well.

103Um, but I guess if I were to raise up some of the the concerns that have been expressed already, it would be the timeline and particularly the the March 2nd PD day and the student launch. I I'm still trying to grapple with that. Uh, on what makes sense and then also um I just wanted to share we did have a lot of public comment and particularly again the the professors that were here from UMD and the the packet. I've been going through that information as well and learning a lot uh from it and I think they're very credible sources uh that he uh presented and and gave to us. So, I really appreciated that. Um, and then, um, I I guess, um, I would want all of the staff at the high school level, especially

104to to be at a high level of comfort with this. Uh, so there's consistency in how um, the language that's being used and how uh, they're using it and and all of that. and and um so so I just have I guess grave concern concerns on that. And then lastly, more from a policy perspective, do we need to and this uh is assistant superintendent um in our student handbook. Do we need to update the handbook for the March through June that this the rest of this year around our policy on this and on academic dishonest dishonesty and what you know is there a policy piece that goes with the handbook that we need to make sure is updated um as well. So, >> so the academic dishonesty pieces already just we just have academic dishonesty

105in our handbook, but um we will be adding like the common language pieces and all of those to the next year's um handbook, right? And then I just again as policy chair am wondering if it needs to be uh uh uh added because we're rolling this out February 23rd. We still have a couple months left of the school year. uh and just from a a policy perspective in a if I were a parent, I'd want it in a handbook. If I knew my student was being held accountable for something and so I guess to me that would seem to be something we need to put some thought into. >> Agreed. We will >> updating the handbook, not just waiting till next year. If I could uh respond to that question just just for a moment.

106I I do know that uh from meetings that I've had recently that there's also a new MSBA policy that's just being uh completed that should be coming out in the next uh the next couple weeks. In fact, I can check on it when I when I meet with folks here tomorrow in the cities. But uh I I do know that they have a revised and updated policy. not our policy that we have is fine for now, but I think it's also good for us to see what what the new policy has to say. >> Yes, I I agree, superintendent, and I knew that was coming out. Uh and and I am glad that we were for we were forward thinking with the policy and and the work that you did uh Cindy and making sure

107uh it was brought to the policy committee before this roll out. But I I still want to make sure from the parent handbook perspective that we uh have it incorporated for this year and not wait till next year. And for parents who are sitting at this table, maybe you could add your opinion on that. Parent school board members. chair, >> I'm going to offer a little bit different of a perspective and um I actually think when you sit down and meet with the UMD professors, they probably have a little bit to learn from you all because per usual, higher education is not doing what they need to do to embrace AI and our students are using it constantly. And I think one piece that maybe I would just want to lift up is I don't

108remember which one of you said it, but this is going to have to cause a change in assignments that teachers put forward. Um I think that AI is just another tool in education being viewed the same way as it was when Google showed up, when encyclopedia showed up, and when the printing press showed up. So granted, it's not the same thing, but it's another tool to be used. Students and education continually improve and change and look different, and this is just another way that education is going to look very different. I also want to lift up the common language because I think where higher education and where I've seen my colleagues fall down is they're not specific enough when they're giving assignments to students to say, "This is what's going to be acceptable. This is

109what's not going to be acceptable." And there is ways to figure out if students use AI. We do it all the time. It's just like the AI tool is developed. There's tools to develop to figure out AI because of the little things that are left in the assignment. So I I'm comfortable. I don't have a problem with the timeline. I know that teachers have been working on this. Teachers, per usual, are going to have very different opinions as to whether or not they want to use this and as to whether or not they want to check their assignments for AI. and that's going to be at the discretion of the teacher. So, I appreciate the fact um that you're putting a uni a universal approach and a universal design around how AI is going to

110be used in the duth public schools and I'm going to give you the appreciation of many many many college professors once these kids figure out how to use it correctly and how to use it to bolster and lift up their academics versus just use it as a crutch. And I think it is easy, not easy, it will take some creative pedigogy for teachers to figure out how to go around because students are constantly trying to figure out how to get in a back door and it doesn't matter if it's AI and it doesn't matter if it's So I just want to say that I'm appreciative of this and I'm comfortable with what you've put forward. Also knowing that you're going to constantly going to be looking back at the continuous improvement. So thank you for

111this presentation. Member Saddowski. >> Yeah, I would completely agree that this is one of those tools that has come along um and that in the past if you look at historically like how the internet was looked at and and all the other examples you gave. Um so I just wanted to clarify. I mean I'm not opposed to this eventually or like when you decide it happens it happens. But I still have an issue a little bit with the timeline. And I had a follow-up question. Um, I guess I would follow up to your comment, member Laughafler Kemp, like, yeah, as a parent, I I would like to see at least an addendum to a policy handbook or something. Just some really good communication around what that looked like. So, just wearing my parent hat. Um

112and then um also just you know maybe communication around like how so I know how can my kid use and I guess that's what the handbook would do the student handbook but I would want to know how can my student use AI and how can't they um although my student doesn't like to use AI anyway because of the environmental impacts. Um, I was also wondering with the staff development because I'm hearing from our student schoolboard reps that identification and member Ether, you mentioned it too. There are ways to identify if someone has used AI. I'll admit that I'm not very skilled in that and I'm hearing from our student schoolboard reps that maybe teachers need some education in that too. So, I'm wondering what kind of staff development they've gotten around that just as a

113followup. Uh so we started first day opening day um just talking about AI. Um then in December um and and throughout the fall uh semester teachers had access to uh Gemini training that would uh teach them just like an intro to um how to write a good prompt and how to use AI for um productivity. Um and many most of our teaching staff participated even our elementary teachers uh in that Gemini training. Once they had completed the Gemini training, they had access to Gemini tools on their computers and then um I may or may not have sent thousands of emails to people and said, "Hey, try this." Um and um and and not just our teaching staff, but our social workers, our counselors, our um pair professionals. Uh uh and and it's only getting um

114we're only developing more. So we had our professional development day January 2nd um asynchronous that there were offerings there that were about AI and and the full impact of how AI might change education altogether. Um and um and then we had we didn't have a day in February yet. No, on March 2nd is our next day and uh every department uh in every area that a uh Annie Schilling puts together for us, everyone has a chunk of AI. Everyone 6 through 12 and um in every other department has an opportunity, no h will have a discussion about AI within their department. So all the science teachers 6 through 12 will be together and I will point them to this is this is how science teachers can use AI to differentiate instruction to assess uh provide

115feedback all kinds of way how to change the way that you're assigning um and collecting your data from your students. Um so um and each of those groups will have that um that training on that day. So, so I'm hearing you say not only how we're teaching um supporting our teachers with the usage of AI and how it can be incorporated successfully in the classroom, but I also heard the ask maybe is how are we giving teachers uh strategies on how to identify um when AI is being used or strategies to notice if students are plagiarizing using AI. Is that >> that's correct? That's what you're asking. >> Yes. But I do appreciate just knowing all of that too because I think that's good to recognize that just like many of us at this table.

116Many of our teachers probably have different skill sets in using AI like crafting the prompts and just different things like that. So it's it sounds like it's a really good start to educating our teachers. But yeah, I do have that follow-up question. I just feel like there's a lot of I mean to make it as successful as possible as much prep. So yeah, I'm just wondering like how do how are teachers being trained to identify, you know, when a student is using AI, >> right? >> Yeah. >> Also, we're doing training with uh business services and everyone who works in this building and facilities and uh technology department and transportation. Uh we're bringing those people in because there are ways that they can use AI to improve uh the whatever it is that they do.

117uh that'll be an interesting group. And then also um principles and how principles can use AI to um plan their evaluations or their schedules or their all these different things that uh that they can use those tools for that are specific for school leaders. Um so I think that we've got our fingers into a lot of different things. Um, and hopefully, like I said, every little bit that we learn, we can use to support and grow. >> Can you speak to the public transparency? You mentioned it on here, but I don't think I heard it uh discussed in full uh here in terms of the public transparency with the one pager and uh FAQ that's going to be developed. >> Um, so messaging we had put together um and shared with families earlier on in

118the year. Um, and another is waiting to go until after our presentation here tonight. We were hoping to have sent it out last month, but we we held off so that we could have some conversations with you as well. Um, and we've talked about putting together an FAQ that we could share with teachers and families um, just regarding stuff. And I know you have a lot of presentations that you're currently working on to get places um in front of different groups. Um a lot of it is based off some of the same stuff that you're seeing tonight. We um you were basing those off of that, but um making sure that we've got that all posted, shared as much as possible. >> Yeah, I was just I was just going to say thank you both

119for being here on a Thursday evening so late. and Greg, too. >> Oh, appreciate. >> Thank you, Greg. >> And Greg. >> And I appreciate the the leadership from Greg and Jen. Uh I I certainly couldn't do all of these things on my own. I don't know how this works from my point of view. Uh so I'm happy to give my training um uh support. Um but without them, it it wouldn't be going anywhere. So thank you. >> Yep. Thank you. And I and I assure you uh board and community that uh the team and I will be uh going back and taking uh into account uh things that have been shared here and things for us to consider. And um just want to say thank you to the team. Oh, wrote. Um, >> can

120I just add one thing? I I just wanted to mention uh uh all of us board members did attend our schoolboard association training uh conference a couple weeks ago and there were a number of workshops that were um h had uh >> uh implications around uh AI and and information. And so, uh, you know, I know that the questions we're asking are questions school boards across the state were asking and and wanting to, you know, uh, work to be more educated on as we were, um, moving forward, uh, and again, as other school boards obvious, uh, obviously are also moving forward. So, I just I guess share that uh, as part of our training. >> The last slide has some resources for school board, too. >> Superintendent Magnus. Yes. And I I apologize uh just

121because I'm trying to ascertain like the will of the board on this at this point and just sort of like the governance cons concerns the board like is um you know I'm hearing a variety of thoughts some concerns is there a uh desire from the board as like I'm trying to ascertain the will of the board at this point because sometimes I think when that's unclear um is is there clarity that the the board okay with the administration moving forward to consider implementation or is there will of the board that we we pause and then what governance questions do you want addressed? So I mean just basically seeking some more clarification there. >> Well I I would just add that we have two board members missing. you know, member Loalt had to leave and member

122Banks is excused this evening. Um, so I just wanted to point that out. Um, so just for me, I would hope that uh that you would take some time just to consider the comments that were made um and take that into your professional opinion and the holistic 360 view that you all have as professionals implementing it. So that's and and the comments from our student school board reps. So that's just speaking for me. >> Thank you, member Williams. >> Um yeah, I have to run in a moment too. So I appreciate your acknowledgement that we're not all here to have this conversation and I'm sure it might continue as I run out. But um multiple people I guess have brought up the timeline concern and yeah that February 23rd date is just so soon and

123I I agree the roll out versus the PD day seems I don't know it seems a little cart before the horse to me but um yeah that's what I've got. member Mikeel. >> Um, when I come into this work, I do it the goal of trying to help everyone succeed in the best ways possible. And so, if having a professional development prior to a roll out allows our staff to have a little bit extra skill set, a little bit extra comfort, that's something that I feel like should happen prior to the roll out with students. But at the same time, I recognize that I'm a nurse um that doesn't do this work every day and I don't have advanced degrees in media specialty and computer science and an education of our students. So, um with

124this input, I am trusting that our administration and our district leaders will make the choice that they feel is best for the resources that we have and for our students. >> Thank you. Um, yeah. I would just say probably like the biggest thing I think with most of us from what I've heard, um, is just probably the timeline. And I think in order for this thing to be super successful, I think our teachers should be as prepared as possible. Um, obviously they've had stuff um, meetings before that, before the enroll or enrollment. Um, but I think just an extra day right before the enrollment would probably make the most sense, I think. Um, but again what um, Mixel said, I think I trust you guys' judgment on this. You guys create, you guys did a

125good thing with this and you guys definitely put a lot of time and effort into it. Um, but I think just rethinking the Roman date would probably be like a good idea. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Member Laughler. >> Yeah, I I guess uh, if you're getting a pulse of the board, I agree with what's been said already. One is we're missing two members now three. Uh uh and then um thirdly um uh or secondly I I guess you know I I I do trust um your uh expertise and judgment and uh your heads uh have been around this a lot longer than ours has in thinking it through. Um but it does feel like um you know the timeline piece is something um if you were to kind of rethink would be the

126one I would kind of raise but again not all board members are here. Thank you and I and I do appreciate that feedback and again um we will take everything that's said uh into consideration as we uh move forward uh with everything. I just want to point out that we had initially planned to roll it out uh about a month ago and we had had feedback and we adjusted and so um I want to say again that that exemplifies that we will take things seriously and and consider what is being communicated and make some decisions around. So we appreciate the feedback and um we will be in communication. >> Thank you. Next up, we have our final pre presentation for today. Um, Director Crane and Assistant Director Thirsten, they will be providing an update related

127to special education. And one of the reasons as they're coming up uh that we really wanted to uh have this conversation just to provide a status update is the fact that there's a lot of questions um and concerns that have been raised over the last few months related to immediate needs of students with special needs um you know not only the amount of uh support that many of the students need and the amount of programming that our students need and then also the budgetary impact. And so we just thought it would be beneficial for us to start uh sharing some initial information with the board and the community on the things that we are doing to meet the needs of our students and special needs to provide that status update. And so director Crane is

128here. >> Should let officer go. >> Thank you. >> Thanks Mr. Bonds for setting that up so well. Um, my partner here, Laura, tells me that sometimes in the afternoon I get punky. And I want to start with a joke that none of our presentation was created with AI, but we did have a wonderful team of experts, including Laura, our business manager, our supervisor team that you'll see their names in just a second. But it is true. Um this presentation was created to just provide some information, provide some details, provide some facts, uh provide some information of how it correlates to the impact on our budget as well. So all those things in mind. So we know that our presentation will likely trigger other questions um many questions and likely you'll want us to come

129back to talk about some more details that we're going to surface today. We're more than willing to come back. So, let's go to the second slide and I'll I I brought an artifact with you. I am a 32 plus I'm into my 32nd year with Duth Public Schools. 16 years as a special education director. Five of those were as an assistant director. And when I started in 93, this was an example of the resource manual that all special education teachers got. And um you won't see these around the district very much anymore. This is called our tissus manual and oursis manual right now is electronic. Uh you can anyone can find that on our district website and this up on the first slide comes out of the manual. Um rules and regulations. This is a

130code of federal regulation. That's what CFR stands for. uh has changed over the years, but this one back in my manual right now, some of the quotes up there, the purpose of any public school is to ensure that students with disabilities have a free appropriate public education. That statute hasn't changed since I first received this manual. It is designed uh meant to provide specialized instruction that we can adapt the instructional needs to the appropriate needs of the eligible child uh to the disability. we can ad adapt the content, the methodology, the environment and the delivery of instruction and that's just kind of a grounding. Uh I wanted to start with some information about we have a set of rules and regulations and you can see by see by how thick this manual is of how

131it is important to understand all these rules and responsibility. I would declare and I don't know if Laura you have the same opinion that it takes a person took me five years to really wrap my head around I was learning every year I'm still learning today in my job about uh how we can support and support all the legislative changes as well as support students in our classroom. It constant the landscape constantly changes. So, I just wanted to if anyone I know if Henry was here, he would say he wanted to borrow this from me, I'm sure, and I will gladly get this to member banks, but uh this is just a fun little example of the importance of special education. Next slide. Shannon, I want to also say, >> can I ask so do

132you know what what year? Sorry, this is kind of diving deep here and I was looking that this the purpose and that was that when idea uh was first uh passed or was it >> that one's this regulation has been around a long time and um member Saddowski just joined our paxi meeting. Maybe we could just lift up an important thing that we're changing in our paxi process and member Saddowski was here. We did this last week. Uh Laura, do you want to take this one because it's under your purview that this happened actually. I don't recall the exact date. It was on the quiz that we took though. >> No, you don't need to explain that, but just explain the training that we're >> Oh, I'm sorry. I thought you wanted me to quote

133the date of the law. No. Like, wow. >> No. Um, so PAXI is our parent advisory committee for special education. And, um, our our charter says that we'll have one meeting a year. And I guess in the past the over time we've kind of gotten away from that. and we were offering four meetings a year. And out of that, the the parent committee came to us and said, "We'd like to change the format and we'd like to offer more parent education so that parents can be more informed and be advocates for their children." And so we um they guided us to some curriculum um to purchase and it comes in modules. I think there are 12 modules. And the first module of course lays the legal foundation for special education services. And so we are

134offering that. And then next month we our topic is early uh intervention services and the history behind that when that developed evolved and and what it means to intervene at an early age. And gradually it will lead the parents through the training to better understand the process, how an IEP is developed, how an evaluation is done, their rights as a parent, their responsibilities as a parent, and then um kind of the school district's responsibilities as well. So, we're looking forward to that. Um um the information was heavy. It was like a college course last week and >> I guess I didn't remember the right date of IDA. Well, this this one's dated 97, this one. But member Sowski, any comments about that training that you attended? >> Well, you actually beat me to it because

135I was just going to lift both of you up, too, that the parents requested that and you um accommodated and um yeah, it was very a lot of information, very robust. Um there was a packet that we would fill out as as we learned the information and it kept me on my toes. The hour went by really quick because I was intent on filling in every blank. But um the parents seem to really uh appreciate that and get a lot out of it as well. >> So another charge that we have is to try to um maintain our presentation to a shorter time frame. I've never in my 16 years been able to maintain a short time frame because of the rich questions that blossom throughout the presentation. But we have an expectation to be

136on task and and stay on on point here. So, uh, budgetary guidance from MDE. I we sent this to you, uh, over a week ago, so we don't necessarily need to read every single slide, but, uh, special education appropriations are based upon the perception that we have excess costs for special education, and we do. In theory, we often talk about 55 to 60% of state special education funding covers it, and the rest of it comes from the GenEd resources within the district. And that's for all school districts. Um, so we you will see throughout the presentation uh the impacts on because we've had to hire more staff because we have more students qualified for IEP services how that impacts our special education budget. So Shannon, next slide. >> Member Limp, your line is on. Just

137wanted to make sure. >> Okay. >> I want to start with our special uh services support team. You have them listed here. We thought it was important to just kind of recognize our team of people and all of these people helped put this presentation together today. Um, you might think that that's a large team compared to like-siz district. We're very small compared to likes district and we know of we do a cost comparison uh yearly to analyze what other people are doing. And we also know that some districts of our like size have double the amount of team members. I think we have an appropriate number. So I'm not complaining in any way, shape or form. Just wanted to lift it up that our special services support team is not excessive. Laura, any comments there?

138>> No, I'd like to just highlight that um you'll see later that we have to cover um 20some different disability areas. And so it requires a team that has different areas of expertise in order to cover all those disability areas. So if you see Katherine Hatfield for instance, she supports setting three, but you'll go back up and you'll see Julie Venus supports um assistive technology. So and surrogacy. So those are some areas where they have a special expertise that is essential to what we do in our in our work. Likewise, Becky Crane, her specialty is early childhood education. So each person on here has a specific role. they don't they can uh blend over and support each other but really we depend on them to to work in their area of specialty and to support

139our students and staff in their area of ex expertise >> and just to put some numbers by Katherine for example setting three programs are DCD ASD programming and we have 36 programs that she helps support so some of those programs have six kids in there but some of them have as many as 12 students in there so that's a lot of IEPs that she's going to a lot of staff Some oftentimes in our setting three programs, it's our newest employees because some of those jobs are hard to fill. So, she's doing a lot of leg work for a lot of people around the whole district. Next slide, Shannon. Okay, I had to I didn't open up the slides while I was listening to all the other presentations tonight, but we have a lot of reporting

140that we have to do to the state of Minnesota. And this is just one thing that highlights um the one that I've underlined there a data indicator that we do get a memo back from the state of Minnesota re related to disproportionate rates of suspension. The other indicators we are not getting a uh indicator back from uh state of Minnesota that we have a uh over disproportionate area in those categories uh which has to do with sometimes even our early childhood students. But it's important to highlight that this is one of our department projects to really focus on suspension rates, lowering suspension rates. And yes, we have received a memo related to please improve your disproportionate rates of suspension, especially for students of color. Janet, by all means, we're going to take questions after, so

141feel free to write your questions down. Um, this is just a slide that we built to kind of say what's happening around the district. and Laura remind each other here now to explain the acronyms as when we get to ADS and things like that. So maybe you want to talk about some of those uh elementary projects that you see up top. >> ASIS is a grant in which the district participates. It funds um six teachers um to support students in intervention services. And it's really a it's odd that it's within special services because it's intended to be a pre-intervention um for students being referred for special education services. But our department supports the grant and um right now in fact in the middle of writing the progress report for it. And this these uh individuals

142are serving students at our stu at our schools that don't have as many resources as other schools. So Congden, Homecraftoft, Lakewood, and Leester receive um additional support through the access grant for intervention services for students. >> The second bullet point talks about suspension projects and the CIS stands for coordinated early intervening services. We pay for six staff members and two at Denfeld, two at Lincoln and two at Myers Wilkins are have programs under their purview that solely are designed to keep kids from being suspended. So when they have a difficult challenging behavior situation, they can tap into the CIS program and they're not being sent home. They're being educated. And that's often times what MDE tells us is we really like really really like to see kids stay in school. safest place for them to

143be. Get education around their uh problems that happen in the school setting, but don't use suspension as a major tool to keep kids out of school. And that's what those CIS dollars are used for. The reason for those schools is it's our highest rate of student disproportional students being suspended. And um across the district, I can just lift up and celebrate that our suspension rates have radically improved. And some of the practices that were used a few years ago, like automatically going to the student handbook and what does it say? It says 5day suspension. Our administrators are making far different choices in today's world. And I don't really see a 5-day suspension very much anymore in the school district. It's oftentimes a one-day suspension. Let's get the kid back in as quickly as we can.

144set set a new plan for the kid and get rocking and rolling so the kid can get back to class. And I hope my student reps actually comment on maybe you're seeing some of that too. Maybe not. Uh special services support that we provide from our leadership team. We we do mentorship. We do a tremendous amount of due process trainings. Even though some of those are low attended, some of our training opportunities happen at 4:30 in the afternoon. Sometimes we get around 15 people there. We still host those meeting even if even if we have small attendance. um evaluations. Tell me what Oh, we do staff evaluations. A tremendous amount. Our whole team is involved with staff evaluations and we're seeing a lot of good things by being more invested. We had a expansion to

145our supervision team, our supervisors and they're becoming invested in evaluating teachers as well. And uh we're seeing some increased uh response of compliance with on-time paperwork uh making a difference for kids that they understand how to write their goals and objectives better and we're seeing some outcome differences in the kids too because of that project. Lastly, staff development. Um science and reading. Uh Laura and her team do a lot with organizing organizing our staff development, but we're doing things targeted to train teachers on the science of reading and also our non-certified staff are getting that same uh component. Letters has been a part of it, but we're expanding to new opportunities for staff maybe through some new products. Go ahead, Laura. >> Right. As part of the original read act, u it was mandated that

146pair of professionals also receive literacy training. that was quickly um the state decided that they didn't have the right product or the right training um determined or identified to support our non-certified staff and so they put it off for a couple of years and and I guess about July this year they came out with the training actually it was June or July and it is a state developed training and there are three or four from our department plus Gretchen Car who is our literacy lead for the district who went to the training and then we this year have had to turn around that training with all of our non-certified staff to ensure compliance with the statute. So, that's been a big lift this year and and um it'll be continue to be a a lift

147through the rest of this year. >> I'm so pleased with the the decision to have our district calendar have a lot more PD opportunities. That puts a lot of work on our team, but we like that work. We want people to be trained. Uh our non-certified group is an example where they used to basically get one day of PD trainings and now they get at seven. So that's awesome. Shannon, next slide. All right, here we go with some data now. And this is probably going to generate some questions. But if we can just get through the next three slides, I think it is then we'll start targeting some conversations about what your questions are around the data. So as I said, I've been a director for 16 years. I remember a day FY14 where our

148total numbers of special education students and it hovered for several years around 1,400. So it was even lower than FY20. Uh and that was a pretty common number to see total IEPs in the district around 1,400 students. And you'll see how much it's grown over the years. Well, part of that had to do with our pandemic. It had kids that needed more help after the pandemic. A lot of kids stayed home. They didn't have appropriate role models. they didn't have appropriate speech examples uh during the pandemic. So, our numbers have grown. Every district's numbers have grown. Um we're doing a lot back with that MTSS and all of our things that we're trying to really help educators learn how to teach kids better. And some of those are tier one and two supports that hopefully

149we can see this turn around in the near future and not continue to grow. Brief comments on that, Laura? Anything else to add? Let's go to some more slides and come back if you have questions about why we've grown. Uh this is our staffing which is obviously a correlation to when the kid numbers go up, our staff numbers go up. And you can see how much we've grown with staff which correlates to our special education budget has increased because if we're having nearly uh almost 100 new more staff members, that's a lot of thousands of dollars of special education spending that doesn't all get reimbursed by that formula that I talked about before. or we only get about 55 to 60% back. All right, and we're coming to the end here, I think. Uh, what

150has impacted our budget? Our Duth schools has a robust, powerful system that draws families into our area. They move to this district. We actually have a lot of students that live near our district that say, uh, we want to come to the schools because we think you have more than my home school district does. So we have a lot of open enrollment students that come to Doo schools and want their services from Doo schools and some of those students that have come back to the district most recently come from some of our schools that are in our boundary areas and I won't name the schools but if you can think about some of the schools that are in our boundary areas that aren't necessarily duth public schools uh we have about 21 22 school buildings

151here but a few of them are in our backyard and most recently some of their more complex students all came to Doo schools. Part of it had to do with we hired a bunch of their teachers and support staff. So they wanted to come to Doo school knowing that they could follow their teacher. So we had very very complex kids enrolled in the last few years that needed very intense supports as well. So that's more expensive um staffing. You want to take over some of these Gloria? Well, I just want to add that the health and family services that the city of Duth pro provides uh is also a huge draw for families with students with complex needs. And so because the city of Duth can support the needs of these families, they move here

152for those social and medical supports and enroll in our schools. Likewise, there are a lot of group homes um that are here because of the needed supports. And so we Duth ISD um receives all of those students and they're they are the ones as Jason said with the more challenging needs. >> So the staffing crisis refers to in our special services department we have 29 unique lure areas to support students with IEPs and some of those are hard to find positions. Uh, one of our employees right now is lives in the state of New York. Uh, our one of our deaf heart hearing teachers gives us remote service, but it's because we couldn't find somebody in person. Would we prefer to have an in-person provider? Absolutely. But we posted it for over four months each

153summer for the last couple years, and we have a wonderful online service provider that is helping us out with that staffing shortage. U, we have other examples of that as well. Uh, just tough to fill positions. Nurses are always tough to fill. Nurses are in the special education uh purview. Um some of our setting three teachers are hard to fill positions. So when we get them filled is when all of the uh concerns get handled, so to speak. When we're short staff, then then we have high concerns and a lot of complaints around the whole district. Um special education funding costs have risen. um some of the legislative changes that keep kids in school till 22, we have more kids staying for longer periods of time. So that some of those changes impact the special

154services budget. We have a lot of things that are mandated early identification and it's it becomes easier to qualify a kid for early childhood services. However, that impacts our budget when we have more and more kids qualifying. We have more and more kids that need service. We need more staff uh and more professional development opportunities. Well, that gets expensive because we have instead of pair professionals um having just one uh professional development day, now they have seven. That becomes a cost, which is a great cost, but I just want to lift it up that it is expensive. Shannon, next slide. I think we're done right here. Yeah. Okay. So, I I went a little quickly and not meaning to rush the tonight's presentation. I ate at 11:30 this morning. My stomach's rumbling, but I will

155take questions. I can stay all night. >> I'm sure you have questions. What did you What's on your mind, >> Mayor Maxel? >> Oh, shoot. I was hoping someone trying to like think of what I'm I'm wanting to ask right now. Um, we've been identified uh by MDE, as you said, for having disproportionate rates of suspension of children with disabilities and having disproportionate identification of racial and ethnic groups needing special education services. Um, like times two basically. I assume that there's work being done to get us out of those categories. Is that correct? >> Yes. And thank you for asking this question because it reminds me something that I wanted to lift up from the some of the earlier presentations. I heard questions about some data reviews and uh even the APAC committee wanted to

156hear some uh data. The special services department collects a lot of data. Three of our big projects that we really look at quarterly. We used to do it semesterly, but now we do it quarterly. We look at the number of physical holds that have happened across our student population in special education and we analyze that very carefully to make sure are the people trained, do they need more training, what's going on with the kid, do we need an IEP meeting? So that's why we analyze the physical holds um for all of these things that I'm going to lift up right now. We analyze race, ethnicity, student disability, grade level, male, female. We analyze all those data points as it relates to these projects. So the first one was physical holds. Second, students that are referred

157for special education initial referrals. We take a close look at that at every one of our school sites to make sure that we're not over referring, for example, students of color. And we're not in that category. So, we're not disproportionate of over referring students of color, which is great news. And our referrals are down a little bit from previous years. So, that's a good and most of that's kindergarten through 12th grade, but we do look at the extremities, too. early childhood and all the way to 22. We don't get many kids referred for evaluations after 18 because we find all those kids before they get done with high school. Third category we look at is suspension rates and we take a close dive at all of our school settings to see how our suspension rates

158are impacting race, ethnicity, all those different categories as well. And I'll lift up that yes, we do have some targeted schools that we're continuing to work with and the schools respond. I'll try to be as appropriate as I can on camera being recorded with uh the news has left. Anyway, um uh the the sites say at times those are our most challenging students continuing to display some very aggressive uh inappropriate behaviors in the school setting and they're choosing not to suspend them for 5 days, choosing to only suspend them for one or two days and returning them to school, but they have the most incidences of inappropriate uh actions in the school at some of those school sites that have the disproportionate rates. tried to say that as cor politically correctly as possible without outing

159any any schools. I was trying not to target any school categories there. And also part of that question was um with those identifications can you just clarify again um how we are responding which I know the answer is some of it has to professional development training and I that that was part of the question. So as we receive the um identifications from the state um how are we responding? So, we're providing training, too. We a couple different opportunities. Two two separate occasions. Laura and I recorded a legal video that went out to the whole district staff, uh, teachers, administrators, and pair professionals. Uh, Anthony recruited, uh, a legal team to come in and do a presentation with our admin admin, uh, on a professional development day for about an hour or more. And we are

160with that data review going back to the administrator group to say here's your data. They'll take a look at your data. We can talk about each particular kid as well. And we want to problem solve with it with them to say can I can I be at your next IEP meeting for this kid? What can we do to change the kid's schedule? Create a better positive behavior support plan. How can we be involved? So that's the things that we do. Lots of training around it though. um further or follow-up questions then. So I recognize that we have almost 900 more students that have been identified um in our special education programs and and since before 2020 um and so therefore we have much more staff which is you know leading our um budgetary like issues

161within that department. Um obviously all of those children need and deserve services. I'm not really hearing a lot about how um you know kids don't need or shouldn't be in special ed like they they're they're qualifying for these services. We're obligated to provide them for that. And so I'm I'm trying newly on the HR business um services committee trying to wrap my head around um you know, how do we do this long term? How do we sustain this with our budgets long term? Especially when we hear from the the state level like this blue ribbon commission looking at special education funding in our state which would make me assume that they're wanting us you know for make further cuts like more globally. You know how are you as district leaders feeling about that pressure when

162we know we have students that are needing services and we're in this like budget crunch. like what can we be doing to to help amplify the the voices of your staff and our parents and our students to make sure that we're meeting the needs of our kids. >> So I you you'll see the total go to the one with the total number of special education employees. Shannon, that's the next one. Yeah, right there. 460 employees in the special education and that's related to FTE. That's probably not total number of people that's related to FTE. So there's over over 500 people that are employed in the special services department. Well educated department and I think everybody in our department will say kids need to qualify for services and when they qualify for services we provide an

163opportunity for families to understand that we would like to serve your child and provide interventions. The goal is to graduate off those service plans and we do have a tremendous amount of kids. Speech is an easy example that many kids quickly receive an intervention in speech. They make it makes a difference for them and then the speech path will dismiss the student. That's our largest category of students moving in and out of special education. Um post pandemic that's the largest number of students that increased as well. But we're do we're seeing a lot of kids that get off of their IEP relatively quickly once they have the service. So, I think our department, whether you talk to any one of those 500 employees, will advocate for we're providing the right service for the right kid.

164And we would like our district, which we are, to hopefully improve tier one and tier 2 supports so that not everybody needs to qualify for an IEP. So, I'm I'm saying that as eloquently as I can to say it's it's a district-wide effort >> for the community. Can you just explain what is tier one? Just >> you take that one. >> So, IDA requires that we serve students in their least restrictive environment and so we want all of our students to participate with their peers in general education to the maximum extent possible. But once students show a gap and um are struggling, then the school identifies them and Brenda Sparts is is well verssed in this. They they take them to their child study teams and they determine that that child maybe needs a little

165extra support which we call tier one service. And so then they get some interventions and through the through the review process. So the the data study process that the schools go through on their cycle of of data reviews, then they determine this child is doing well in tier one, doesn't need tier one, or is still struggling and qualifies or want they want to elevate the service to a tier 2 service. And so this the child will stay in the tier 2 service for a period of time and then finally the team the child study team or the data review process will say, you know what, it's time this child needs more support. let's go ahead and start the evaluation. So, we do try to keep students and the district tries and like Jason said, it's

166a district effort to keep students in their least restrictive environment to the maximum extent possible. And and I like that because kids mature at different rates. And so some of our youngest kids that show the biggest gaps once they get acclimated to school and once they get some support, we see them close that gap. And so I I don't want um us I want to caution against uh us automatically going to special education because we see a lot of kids catch up. Um but once we see that the kids aren't going to catch up then they do go through an evaluation process and that determines if they're going to qualify and then then we provide what's called the tier three supports also known as special education services. I wanted to go back a little bit

167um to part of your question. And I think you asked, if I understood your question, was what are we doing to kind of delay the the the route to special education? And Jason brought up core instruction. I I don't I think we'd be remiss if we didn't bring up the impact of letters training. Um that was a huge a huge uh lift the state brought in. It wasn't popular. Um it was difficult in our district even to get the buy in. But with that level of training, it has the possibility to really impact uh the classroom and that core one instruction for kids. Um and then we've done a better job, I think, in in the time I've been here to identify some targeted resources that we're seeing um better impacts for kids and really

168really um seeing some results from that. So, I would like to say that we could see an immediate turnaround in this, but data shows it's going to be with the letters training, it's going to be at least 10 years before we start to see that turnaround. Now, that doesn't answer your question about the budget and the anxiety we have around the budget. Um, I Jason told you how long he's been around and and I've been around maybe as long. Um the budget is always a concern and so we just we do our best and I'm I'm not going to give you a good answer for your concern or your question. Um but we have to support core core instruction and that's all of us. And we do that through our training. We do it through

169meet attendance at the meetings when we're saying is this child really ready for an evaluation or can we continue to provide some supports. Um, so I can't um say enough about the addition of our supervisors to our team because before our supervisors, it was probably three or four trying to be in every classroom or trying to talk to our new teachers and do that training. uh with the staff that we have now, we are really able to get in there and work with teachers and and slow down the the referral to special ed, but also to talk about what's appropriate once they qualify. They shouldn't qualify for every service in the book. And we've we've seen that in the past as well. So, um I I think our addition of our supervisors has been a

170tremendous impact in that. All that to say, I didn't answer your question. >> I appreciate all the information and I'm sure the public listening um hopefully there's a bunch of them um do too. >> Thank you. And I appreciate uh that as well. And I'm only going to chime in and that it is all about high quality classroom instruction first for all students, even those students who may end up becoming students with special needs. But we have to focus on, you know, high quality classroom instruction. That's why we've made those investments again in professional development. That's why since being here the last six years, it's been now three years since we've had five additional days throughout the school year to provide professional development for our teachers. But we're focusing on improving high quality, you know,

171improving classroom instruction. Um, you know, make sure staff and families are aware of what is being asked of our students. Trying to make sure we focus on um building um positive learning environments in the classroom. Those are the kind of trainings and opportunities that our staff are receiving in hopes that we are building again um high quality learning environments for all students by getting upstream before students either need um special education or special education is what is um sought after because they feel like that's the only thing that can be done. So, I think we are um poised um in the district for slowing it down and making sure that only those who really need it get it and hopefully with high quality instruction we can have more of our students not needing um that

172support. I'm going to go to member Laura Kim who has been really patient. >> No, no, that's that's okay. Um thank you uh Laura and Jason. I always uh I appreciate your presentations and and I appreciate the work that you do across the district. So I start with that. Um I have a couple questions now. Um uh uh and then I did find out the answer. IDEA reauthorized 1990, but it was first the education for all handicapped children's act 1975. I remember lobbying in 1995 out in DC for one of the reauthorizations. So, I just knew there was some long history. So, anyways, thank you for that. I'd be interested in in the trainings that you talked about. Um, if you just let all of the board know and there might be a topic or

173a time that maybe we're not the appointed person because it doesn't fit in regularly with our schedule, but uh maybe attending some. So, if if you have a schedule, that would be great. Um, a couple questions from your presentation um that I had also was on the slide that uh was the support and leadership provided by special services. Uh, and you talked about the uh ads ADSIS grant and that it Yep. and it supports six teachers. Uh, and four of them you mentioned or the four schools you mentioned are all schools in my school district or my district one. Uh, Congden, Homecraftoft, Lakewood, and uh, Lester Park. So, can you just briefly expand on kind of why why why they got this extra support and what how six teachers are split between just those four

174schools or is it >> We didn't always have access. It came in probably about 12 years ago where we took a concerned effort at bringing this grant project to because it's matching funding >> and a few schools on the eastern corridor did not have help for supports for kids before special educ because that's really what it's targeted for is can we provide this kid some coaching some interventions before we need to go to special education. That's the purpose of the project. These schools didn't have anything. the western uh corridor had different pots of money that they could provide some great reading and math intervention but the eastern schools didn't have it so that's really why make sense >> yeah yeah that makes sense and definitely uh so so is it six teachers six additional you

175mentioned six teachers so are those six between those four schools are they fully special ed teachers is there something else that they're getting yeah >> right so they're not specialed teachers. They are interventionists. >> Okay. >> And there's two subjects they cover. It's math and reading. So, six teachers um the if I recall correctly, I believe Homecraftoft and Lakewood share a math teacher and then they all have at least one reading teacher. The rest have a a uh math teacher, but Homecraftoft and let me get it right. Homera and Lakewood share a math teacher. Okay. And when do we get this grant? Like when did this go into effect that we have this additional interventionist support for these schools? >> It's a two-year application process. And I think we've been doing it for over 12

176years. I can find the exact date of when we first applied, but >> that's that's general. >> That's that's what's in my wheelhouse of memory because I was a part of authoring some of the first applications for that. >> Okay. I I kne I knew we had some extra. I just uh I guess it clicked right now when you were presenting it on uh how many what the what the focus was. So um and then um I I appreciated you mentioning that the professional development days have made a difference uh for your staff and I know it was a big investment that we made as a district and uh we uh we felt it was really important as part of um our strategic planning and all all things like that. So, so really good to

177hear from you uh your support on that. Um I had another question on the factors impacting the budget and um do we have student teachers that that work in the special education department? And my reason for asking that is I'm just wondering do we get because of the shortages by having student teachers sometimes it's a great recruitment tool for people wanting to work in the duth public schools and and so I just you know I know we have student teachers all over uh in regular class uh in other classrooms um I'm just curious >> oh that's a great question and we also have a partnership with the University of Minnesota it's called the nextgen teach project where we're partnering with them. They have all the funding. We don't actually use DUTH dollars to support the

178program at all because they've applied for some huge grants with the state of Minnesota and that is a grow your own using pair professionals as the first target employee >> that want to go back to school to get a teaching degree. And we have uh three candidates right now that have applied and are a part of the program. And I just got an email today that says they've got four uh candidates for to join the next year's cohort. Um you can also get a master's degree in that program, too. And the staff member gets all of their coursework paid for. And the journey uh staff that is their mentor gets $4,000. When I had a student teacher back in the day, I had always had a student teacher every year and I used to get

17950 bucks at the end of a student teaching experience. for them to get $4,000 is awesome. So, it's a great project and yes, do we have student teachers that are outside of that cohort? Absolutely. A lift up East High School does a nice job of uh attracting student teacher candidates, but then they keep them and they hire them and we see several examples of really highquality staff members that have come as a student teacher and end up working for Duth Public Schools. The trick is you have to find them a partner, male or female, whatever, but keep them local so that they don't move back to the cities. as an example. I told you I get punky in the afternoon. >> Okay. Okay. Great. Thank you. And and I appreciate you holding up the grow

180your own. I know we had an update on that a few months ago uh with the paras and it's it's it's great to hear that we have four more candidates now coming through. Is there an intentional conversation that's held with the pair of professionals either on professional development day about that opportunity? So the last PD day for pair professionals was the January teacher work day when teachers got a chance to do their grades and progress reports and everything else. It was mid January. Paris had a training day on that day. So I brought my uh lead person, her name is DA from state of Minnesota. She came up and she presented with me to the pair professional group. So everybody heard the presentation. We had a table. We had a booth. She brought glam type

181stuff, you know, prizes, whatever, swag, whatever it's called. and she handed all that stuff out too. So all the pairs that were interested in the program, her table was packed with people wanting to talk to her. So we did that at the last PD day. >> Excellent. Excellent. >> It's not Also, if I could just add, it's not just um the teachers. We get uh requests or I get requests, you get requests from uh speech pathologists, psychologists, um other areas where they where an internship is required who want to come here and do their internship. So we also um are intentional about setting that up because that helps us as well in retaining staff and and attracting new staff. >> Okay, great. Thank you. Uh thank you so much. I think that's all of my

182questions and um I uh also appreciated you holding up the letters training and the importance of that in this discussion. Uh and so um again another investment uh uh from the state as well. So so thank you on that. And uh I I do happen to have hung out with some of those East special ed teachers uh recently and uh they are a fun bunch. Yeah. Thank you. I don't see any additional lights. Any closing comments? We'll come back. We We'd love to come and talk to the school board and if there's something that's on your mind even after today's presentation, either another presentation, reach out open door policy to talk to Laura I at any time. Thanks for having us tonight. >> Thank you for chair. That concludes our presentation. Um, Superintendent Maggus, were

183you trying to share something? >> Nope. For chair, that concludes our meeting for today. Thank you. >> Thank you so much. Are >> we off camera? >> Wait. Yes.