001Good afternoon and welcome to the November 18th listening session for the Duth Public Schools. We'll begin with roll call being called by our clerk. >> Member Banks here. >> Chair Derek Eer >> present. Member Laughler Kemp >> here. >> Member Loel >> here. >> I am Member Mel. I am here. Member Sidowski >> here. >> Member Williams is excused. Superintendent Maggus >> here. >> Assistant Superintendent Bonds >> present. >> Deputy clerk Zunich >> present. >> Board secretary Pquette >> here. >> And student representative uh Dean. >> Roll calls complete. Thank you so much. Now we'll move on to have a member loal read our 11 tools of civility. So our 11 tools of civility recognizes that the doula school board um uses these tools of civilities to provide increased opportunities for civil discourse in order
002to find positive resolutions to the issues that face our community. So the the 11 tools are pay attention, listen, be inclusive, don't gossip, show respect, be agreeable, apologize, give constructive criticism, take responsibility, be honest and care for others, and show our evidence and share our reasonings. So those are our 11 tools of civility. We also have our mission, vision, and core values. But Superintendent Magus always gives us those again in our um superintendent update. So that's that's what we are about. Thank you. >> Thank you, Member Loeld. Now we will have our clerk read our listening session information. If you have handouts for the board, please give them to our school board secretary Pakquette. Persons addressing the board will have three minutes total. When speaking, the use of negative a personally identifiable language is not
003permitted. Persons addressing the board may not merge their time in order to allow more than one person to speak for more than three minutes. The clerk of the board will start, that's me, will start the stoplight timer, which is here. Um, at the beginning of each person's time, green means go, yellow means wrap up, red means stop. When the red light comes on, the chair will gavel to signal you to end. [snorts] And in the interest of respect of every listening session speaker, please hold any commentary during the speaker time until they're finished. Thank you. >> Thank you. and we would like to invite up to um speak with us today, Mr. Kevin Anderson. Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Testing. Oh, there we go. Hello. Wrong. Good evening. Uh my name is Kevin
004Anderson and I am the media specialist at uh both Denfeld High School and uh East High School. Uh I am the only person that is licensed, trained and qualified as a media specialist that is responsible for all the library and media center needs uh for all our high school students here in the Duluth public schools. just me by myself split between two sites for the approximately 2,500 uh high school students in the Duth public schools. If that sounds to you like an intimidating and nearly impossible task, that is good because it is. And that means you're getting a grasp on the situation. Last year, we had full-time media specialists in our middle and high schools. This year we have part-time media specialists in our middle and high schools. The setup we moved to uh this
005year has had many negative impacts on our students and teachers. Most of them I cannot measure and provide any statistics on. I came here today to share the one that I do have statistics for and that is the number of books that students have been able to check out. I do not have year-long numbers, of course, because we are not through the year yet. I do, however, have the numbers for the first quarter, and they're not good. When comparing the first quarter of 2024 to the first quarter of 2025, overall, our library book checkouts are down 20.54%. for that time frame. That does not include textbook checkouts, just library books. The only major change from one year to the next was cutting the media specialist position from full-time to part-time. The numbers get worse if
006we dig into them a bit. The English classes are still coming down for the required readings. Books like Lord of the Flies, The Great Gatsby, and book checkouts for book reports, that kind of stuff. Where the drop is coming from is students ability to check out books that they enjoy reading and want to read on their own. This change will negatively impact our district and state goals of increasing reading rates for our students. That's why I came here today to ask you to fully fund reading in the DUTH public schools by restoring the library media specialist position to full-time in our middle schools and high schools. Remember, our district's motto is every student every day. Not as many students as I can help every other day. Thank you. >> Thank you, Mr. Anderson. Next, I'd
007like to welcome Miss Amber Green Sky, please. Welcome, Amber. Thank you for joining us. >> Oh, that's okay. I'll start over. Duth Public Schools is eligible for American Indian Education Aid for this school year in the amount of $413,000 to support more than 700 American Indian students enrolled districtwide. The application to receive this aid was due on June 1st, 2025. To date, the application posted on the district website remains unfinished and the budget posted on the district website only accounts for approximately 358,000 of the aid we are eligible for. Additionally, the required supplementary budget remains blank. This represents more than $54,000 that is not allocated. Once again, salary and benefits for one of the listed American Indian Education employees do not take into consideration that this position was not filled for approximately two months and
008will likely result in unspent aid at the end of the fiscal year that cannot be carried over. Once again, we have lost another highly qualified American Indian Education coordinator. In the spirit of advancing equity, I find this to be unacceptable. APAC members spoke at the end of last school year passionately express expressing the real concern that programming for our American Indian students is not occurring at the level it should be. Apac is advisory and we have made ourselves available meeting 10 times since the June 1st deadline expired to make sure that the application for American Indian education aid can be voted on in a timely manner. Unfortunately, APAC cannot vote to approve an incomplete application and certify that all goals, narratives, and budgets were agreed upon by all parties. As school board members, I humbly
009implore you to review the application and budget that's posted on the district website and ask the hard questions. Would you vote to approve an incomplete application and budget? Is this educational neglect for our American Indian students? As soon as a completed application and the associated budgets are presented to APAC at an open public meeting with a quorum present, we can call for a vote to approve. I do not know what more an advisory committee can do to move this process forward. Thank you for listening. Thank you, Amber. That concludes our listening session today. Um, thank you all for coming to speak with us today and we'll