001Good afternoon and welcome to the monthly committee of the whole meeting for the month of September for the Duth Public School Board. Um happy what is it? Day three for our 1st through 12th graders and happy first day of kindergarten to all of our littles. So, yay the start of school and here we are. So, I'm calling this meeting to order. Um and we I will turn it over to the clerk to do roll call. Member Banks >> here. >> Chair Ger >> here. >> Member Laughler Kemp >> here. >> Member Loal >> here. >> I am member Melim here. Member Sidowski >> here. >> And member Williams is excused but on her way. Uh superintendent Maggus >> present. >> Assistant Superintendent Bonds >> present. >> Executive assistant Brown >> here. >> And roll call
002is complete. Thank you to our clerk. And moving on um for our agenda, we will be moving on to number two, the summary of the 2024 2025 superintendent evaluation this afternoon. On behalf of the school DUTH school board, I want to share highlights from our evaluation of Superintendent John Maggus and extend our deep appreciation to him and to the staff of the Duth public schools for the work that they do for our kids every day. First, a word about the evaluation process. In fall 2024, the board and the superintendent agreed upon goals aligned to standards from the MSBA goals and standardbased superintendent evaluation framework. In April 2025, the superintendent presented evidence and rationale for progress. At a formative review meeting, the board provided feedback to the superintendent at that time. In August of 2025, the
003board conducted the formative the summitative evaluation and the superintendent provided updated rationale and evidence for the progress on the agreed upon goals to the board. The process is ran this way to ensure constructive oversight, clarity around goals, and an opportunity for continuous improvement for the superintendent. The school board affirms its confidence in the superintendent's performance. This year, we have observed steady leadership, thoughtful decision-making, and a consistent focus on advancing our student success. The first standard that we agreed upon was governance team element information for decision-making. The superintendent has improved the quality of information provided to the board. Small group meetings with board members and senior leaders have been especially valuable in giving the board the background and context we need to make thoughtful decisions. We also want to the board collectively wanted to acknowledge the
004time and preparation that both the superintendent and the staff put into these meetings. These conversations along with the use of a progress monitoring calendar have kept the strategic plan visible to the community to the district and to the board and meaningful in and made it meaningful in our work for our students. The second standard we agreed upon was school district finances asset protection. The superintendent guided the district through a $7.6 million in budget reductions and re reallocation over the past two fiscal years. This process was anchored by clear guiding change documents, more than 50 stakeholder meetings, and a strong commitment to openness and accountability. The addition of forecasting models and a public-f facing budget website has made our finances more accessible. Importantly, this work honored the commitments that the superintendent, the board, and the district
005made to our duth community for the 2023 referendum, linked our budget to our strategic priorities, and strengthened advocacy at the state level. The last standard, teaching and learning school improvement. This is where the progress is most visible and important to the district district. The superintendent has built structures that use data for continuous improvement and supportive accountability. These district efforts are showing results. Graduation rates are up across the district. Especially noted increases in graduation rates for our African-American students and our students eligible for free and reduced lunch. The board also wants to emphasize that the superintendent's success is deeply tied to his ability to uplift and empower his team and the district staff. By building a strong leadership cabinet and supporting staff at every level, he ensures the district's colle collective efforts move in the same
006direction to better support and educate our duth public school students. The board al also recognizes that the superintendent during this time consistently acknowledges and uplifts his team and staff, making clear that his own success and more importantly the success of our student is dependent upon their dedication and expertise. By fostering collaboration and celebrating the contributions of those around him, he reinforces a culture where shared responsibility leads to meaningful progress for our kids. On behalf of the board, we want to recognize and thank Superintendent Maggus for his leadership. And we also want to recognize and thank the staff of the Duth Public Schools. The progress we are seeing today is because of your unwavering commitment to our students. Thank you. Do we have any discussion or additional anything we want to add? Superintendent Magus. >> Yes.
007I just want to say thanks to the board for uh the time they spent on the evaluation process and I know we've we've worked hard on that over the past uh several years to to line as closely as possible with the uh the Minnesota School Board Association um way of doing things. And um I appreciated the feedback and I'm always looking to improve. I I know that there's there's always more work to be done. But again, as you reiterated, uh I I couldn't be here without the support of you as a school board, but also our team. Our team has been very very important to us and deeply grateful and also uh appreciate every everything that that has been done there. Uh and also just for sake of the public so that you understand, I'm
008I'm going to be here for about the first uh 20 minutes of the meeting and then I'm I have I'm going to be listening and participating remotely. I was here at 6:00 this morning and doing a nice uh positive kick start of the school year interview with uh WDIO and then I have a 7 a.m. meeting down in in uh St. Paul. So that's that's why I'll be I'll be listening in. I'll be able to answer any questions remotely thanks to uh Executive Assistant Brown and um Assistant Superintendent Bonds. But thank you and thanks for your understanding and thanks for your support. [Music] Member Loeld. >> So, just appreciate the opportunity to just share um support for the evaluation process and for superintendent's um guiding and the information, the data he gave us that would
009allow us to do this kind of evaluation. But I also want to shout out to Chair Eer having chaired the school board for five years and doing um the evaluations. It is a um not an easy lead for a board chair to do. There's a lot of work that goes into preparation for the superintendent evaluation both on the front end before we meet and also um in collecting information and then sharing it tonight. And I just want to um thank Chair Eer for her work. It was really a great um evaluation opportunity for us. you led it with great questions that brought out our conversations, able to share them genuinely about our ideas and our thoughts for Superintendent Mega. So, I just want to thank you. >> Thank you, Member Loel. I appreciate it. Seeing
010no other questions or comments, we can move on to supporting every student a state accountability review. And we will call to the table our wonderful directors. >> Thank you. As uh you come u please introduce yourself uh for the community and and our visitors. And Jana, if you want to grab the other mic, that'd be great as well. So you can have your own as well. So, I will turn it over right away to our directors who will provide uh an update related to the state accountability um review which includes not only the release of our academic performance data for with related to MCA scores as well as um how our district schools and district overall uh ranks. And so, I'll turn it over to our directors. >> Uh well, good evening. My name is
011Brenda Sparts and I am the director of elementary schools. >> And I'm Jen Larva. I'm the director of secondary education. So yeah. And so tonight we're just going to share um some of our results from last spring's MCAs um as compared to ourselves and then as compared to the state on average and then we'll go over the Northstar accountability which uh just came out for new identifications which only happens once every three years. So we'll cover that tonight too. Um, as always, our mission, our vision, our core values. Um, I think we've shared this with you guys before, but those core values, we lean on them. And the things that we're going to be talking about tonight, the learning, the level of excellence, addressing equity, the collaborative spirit that goes behind all of this, and
012then kids feeling like they belong, and staff feeling like they belong. All of that contributes to what we're going to be talking about. So those core values um I really appreciate I know Jen does and and we talk about them when we have our meetings and such cuz they're meaningful. Uh so like I said we are going to talk about state and then I have some local assessments in here. I included um kindergarten first and second because sometimes you don't hear how they're doing because they're not in MCAs. And so I did look at that information and and put some in here for you that I'll explain too. And then of course that Northstar accountability. So first we'll talk about MCAs. So the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments, I think you're all familiar with that. That's the
013high stakes testing once a year snapshot. really the MCAs it's meant to measure the rigor of how we address the standards the academic standards in reading math and science. So that's how it's meant to be used. It's a systems check. We do talk about individual students. We do talk about individual schools but it's like how well are we reaching the rigor expected um for each individual individual child. And so that's what it measures is that standards implementation. Um so right now we are in MCA3s. This might be something that they would like need the information for. Um we've had different versions of MCAs as they've rolled out with new standards. And so we currently are on MCA 3. Science I believe is in MCA4s already. So you're not going to see any science results right
014now because they have not yet released them. Um but this is our last year of MCA3s in our reading and so starting next year we will have a whole different set of um it will be like you can't compare we won't be able to compare any results next year to these MCA results. So I wanted to make sure that you are aware of that on the front end too. >> That happened I think it's 2013 too when we went from the twos to the threes. So everyone every 10 years or so um we make that transition. >> Can you just say why is it is it because new standards are coming out? >> Yeah. This year uh we are implementing the 2020 is it 2020 2022 um ELA standards and so um when we come
015to spring 2026 it'll be measuring the new standards 2025 measures the last round of standards. So every 10 12 years or so there's this transition and so next year when we're talking about MCA reading it's going to be hard to compare us to us >> us to the state will probably be more what we're talking about. So >> Lera Camp, >> thank you. Um I always look forward to this. Uh two questions is can you just remind particularly for the public when the testing occurred um uh that that you're going to be talking about and then also um um there was another question when the testing occurred. >> Well, most of the MCA testing happens in April of every year. There's usually about a six to eight week window and it it changes just a
016little bit every year. Um but most of it happens in April of every spring. >> Okay. And then my my thought came back. Um you may be going over uh that families have the option to opt out too of this testing. Right. >> I'm not I did not include this in this presentation, but they do. >> Okay. Okay. just that might be helpful information >> and I think that's incredibly important to note particularly when I look at some of our high school scores because uh quite often our high school um students unfortunately do not necessarily see as much value with the assessment quite frankly and don't participate very often which brings our scores down considerably as well >> and that's across the state there's just not a val a value to high school students in
01710th and 11th grade to take it some do anyways and do quite Well, and some just choose not to do it at all. So, >> member Saddowski, >> just to follow up on that, do we know what percentage about, you know, on average each year that maybe a the high school students of those that don't take it? >> I know the exact number. I just don't have it in front of me right now. >> That's okay. Just let >> But it was it is it is an issue. and the high school um both high schools >> had kids that were there and didn't take it, refused to take it. Their parents counted them out. They started it and didn't finish it. I mean, but that's the reality of the high school testing and that's always
018the case and it's a problem everywhere. There's just no buy in. There's not a lot of buyin from high school students for that test. >> Do we see a similar trend with middle school with second middle school? I I think that you'll see um parents excusing at all levels. It's not just at the high school level. Um so when we get our data reports, we can actually go and see which tied to students which students aren't taking the assessment. Um either based on their own refusal or parents signing them out. Um but it it is pretty much kind of across the board. >> Great. Thank you for clarifying that. I I just think it's something I hear and um I just want to make sure the public knows that that is apparent option. >> Yeah.
019Thank you, >> Member Lo. >> I don't want to spend too much time on that, but I don't know if it I I think all of us know, but again, for our public or for our families is when you opt out affects our data reporting. It affects our percentage reporting. And there's movement on to change that to somehow allow those that opt out not to count against school districts. It just doesn't seem to have gained much support uh over across the aisle, which for me is seems like a no-brainer, but we'll keep working on that as we advocate for the needs of our district, especially Yeah. And I would be remiss not to uh share with the community. Uh we really encourage families to uh support the school district by supporting their students and encouraging
020their students to actually take the test because it it does provide uh data that is meaningful um for the district. It gives us a benchmark in terms of how we're doing. So it is important that students um participate as many students participate as possible. Um, so I I I would encourage families to help us during those times and obviously we respect and honor parents wishes who decide to opt out as well. Okay, so I started with reading here and um grade to grade all the grades that are tested and again the one on the left compares our 2024% of students that met or exceeded the standards according to the test and then 2025. Um and so this is really of course like third grade those are um different kids because those third graders are now
021fourth graders. So this is kind of apples to oranges each year yet this is just how well do we address the standards at those grade levels each of those years. And so that's an usto us comparison. You can see that third, sixth and eth um realized growth and the others did not realize growth. Um, and as a district overall, we're like just a little under um 1.1 percentage. We lost a little ground there. I think the right hand side is pretty important to look at because DUTH compared to Minnesota on average, every single district, every student, um, we outperform the state on average, which is says something for our system. Um, so I just I didn't even realize it was every single grade until I did this graphic and I was like, "Oh, that's pretty
022cool." And so I really wanted to make sure that you knew that every single grade tested is above the state on average and some of them are, you know, quite a bit above fifth grade, sixth grade, seventh grade, eighth grade, you know. So there's there's um I think that's something to celebrate. Um can we talk a little bit about maybe that um some of these results, you know, are from our our system that we've had in the past, but we've been really working really hard on literacy and working really hard starting at kindergarten, first grade, second grade. We've implemented a lot of things. Um Brenda's doing a fantastic job of leading a lot of efforts as far as the read act goes. Um, and so when we aren't seeing things in some of these upper
023grades, it it's we anticipate that we're going to start seeing some significant gains and changes just because of the focus that we've had on literacy. Um, the next slide, Shannon, this is also reading again on the left is Duth to Duth 2024 with 2025. These are student groups. So we have the American Indian, Asian, Hispanic, black, two or more, and white. Um, you can see that four of those groups we realized gains in them within reading, which is really great. Um, I do want to point out that these are state race identifications, which is different than federal. Minnesota State uses a defi a different definition which um is neither here nor there but just when you look at them just to know that there's different de definitions for state and federal we use the state
024because MDE does um and then on the right hand side that's on average again compared to the state 2025 DUTH 2025 Minnesota and on average we do in some of them significant ificantly better than the state on average. Um, so again, I think that's reason to celebrate. Some of them we, you know, have we have challenges. I mean, black a African-American minus 10%, we know that that's an issue. Um, but that is just something that's a challenge that we have to address. The next slide have >> a question for >> the this slide is comparison groups. What they call comparison groups. So if you take all the kids that tested and you kind of pull them apart into those who qualify for special ed and those who don't qualify for special ed and then you
025look at how they did, that's the gap. This is what they call the academic gap. And so, um, that's what the the purple on both of these is special education versus kids not identified or qualified for special education. Um, so you can see that we did have we're kind of flat on special ed and then not special ed, we did see significant gains there. Um, and then free and reduced versus not free and reduced. So, taking all those kids, pulling them apart into those qualified for free and reduce versus not. Um again the not group had significant gains kind of flat for the free and reduced and then English learners. We don't often talk about our EL groups here in Duth but we that is a growing population. I think we had like 76 maybe
026Anthony I think 76 kids last year. So it's it's gotten to be a bigger part of our population here. Um so I included that here. Um, you can see how we did compared to ourselves and then the state. We actually do significantly better than the state on average with our e population. >> Members, thank you. I just have a couple questions. Can you uh tell us how many, for example, Asian students total in the category and uh how many black African-Americans are in that group? I could if I I I know exactly how many. I just don't have it in front of me. >> Okay. >> I I don't know it off the top of my head, but I can get that to you. >> So, my second question would be, what are additional things
027you're doing uh to address the uh concerns with regard to the black African-American category and uh the two or more races category? Well, I think like Jen said, we are doing a lot at the primary levels especially. We've had literacy as a focus for the last two years at I mean since I've been here, we've really um done a lot as far as changes in our curriculum, changes in the way we um address literacy in the classroom. Um we've changed our elementary schedule is a part of those changes. Um um so and how we service kids as far as interventions and special education. We we've just changed so many things it'd be hard to pinpoint which one's contributing to the good things you're seeing. Um but that's for all kids. And so what are we
028doing specifically for those populations? We are trying to infuse more um more things in the classroom that look like the kids that are sitting there so that they see themselves. I think that's really important. Um Daleman, our our new elementary MTSS um coordinator, he does an excellent job. He really spent a lot of time infusing those classroom libraries with many and you guys have heard that about how we did that. Um this year we went through every single grade level in the elementary. Um we did a whole first unit for the school year which is the first six weeks and we had the teachers look at all of the texts that they're using. Um we changed a lot of the text from the that curriculum we're using. um and if they identified um culturally more
029culturally um competent texts, we bought them for them. And so several grays decided to do that. So we purchased books for the classroom that they're going to focus on instead of the text that we have from whenever 2017 or something. So we're doing that, too. So I don't I think kids seeing themselves, kids feeling like they're belonging. We have a focus on um this is a little off topic but not really. Um we are talking about morning circles this year in the classroom which is super important for developing community tighter stronger communities and classrooms. Um we had a training on that in a August and now we just have an expectation that's happening in every single elementary classroom. So just which one contributes to better outcomes. There's just so many things going on. >> And
030I I do want to also add um that morning circles piece that she's talking about. We're really centering our work this year with staff on knowing and valuing our students in our Charlotte Danielson teacher evaluation rubric. It's 1B and we're talking about 1B all the time, which is why they dove into that. But we're really focusing on an equity imperative um as part of our um teacher evaluation process and it starts with that knowing and valuing which has that cultural responsiveness, that cultural piece in there. So that has been um a topic that I think is going to be infused throughout the whole year in our staff development plan. In addition, those will be things that we will be bringing to the board as part of our Kyle meetings are additional presentations related to all
031of those strategic efforts to improve reading or to provide um to meet the social emotional needs of students to build a safer and more welcoming learning environment. So, um don't forget we've talked about things such as you you hear a lot about our MTSS system, our men um Minnesota MTSS system. It's all part of that. It's how we really engage families. It's how we provide interventions and supports for students and identify those students who are struggling to ensure that those students are receiving math and reading interventions. That's part of our MTSS system. Our MTSS system also has um as was shared is is focus on students feeling connected um belonging and welcome in schools. Those morning meetings or morning circles are similar to what we're doing right now. Students have opportunities every day to feel
032connected and part of the school community in their classroom where they have an opportunity as part of the morning meeting or morning circle or community circle whatever they decide to call it. You know, students have a chance to be recognized. They they talk about um who they are as individuals and you know what names they like to be called and they talk about their family dynamics and and things of that nature. So the morning meetings have a lot of activities that get um students to get to know each other. the teachers get to know the students, right? Because if you know students and they know uh each other, it builds community. So, it's a we we are putting in place a lot of initiatives and efforts that will build that community within the classroom, which
033we believe if students feel safe connected, that will lead to improved outcomes. if we're identifying students right away and screening to make sure those who need reading and math instruction receive it and we provide them those opportunities are those check and connect and other things those who need mentors or mentoring um we we try to ensure that they have an adult that they can count on and go to and be supported with. So all the different efforts that we brought forward to the board as uh things we're working on in addition these are things we have been working strategically improve over the years or have implemented as of u new efforts and reinforced them over the years. Um, and so that's a long way of saying there's a there's a a variety of things that
034we are working on as a district to improve outcomes and some of them are new and some of them are uh improving systems and thinking about equity. And it's going to take time also to really um continue to show increased gains with our students, especially those who um we have not uh meet the needs of our African-American students and our um native students. So, I'll stop there and go to I believe it's member Williams first. >> Follow up if I may. >> I'm sorry. Go >> just to follow up real quick. So, is it possible to get those numbers for please? I just needed >> I wrote a note down for myself. >> Yeah. Thank you. >> Yeah. >> Could you send them to the whole board, too? >> Yep. Thank you, >> Member Williams.
035And then member Lamp. >> Thank you. Um, I had my light on and then I turned it off because I wasn't sure if member Banks and I would kind of ask the same question. Um, I guess I would be remiss if I didn't um acknowledge the elephant in the room that we've all talked about. Um, I I can appreciate um the increase from um 24 to 25 in our black students. Um but it it is disappointing to see that compared see us compared to the state us as in duth compared to the state and then to see the decrease in the two or more races. So um I just have to say it out loud and I know that we're working towards it. Um I want to ask back to the um morning meeting circle
036time. I I missed it if you said is that just at the elementary level? I'm assuming >> it is just at the elementary level. We had embedded that in our schedule two years ago, >> but we had never focused on it. Okay. >> And so we did have training for um all the schools and then we did it with the staff during >> was that just last week? That was just last week. Um and so we we had never pulled it off the schedule and focused on it and so we just we decided it was time to do that. I I appreciate I think that is going to be really helpful. I'm glad that that's happening. Um and I do appreciate hearing um yeah it is important for our kids to see themselves. So I
037appreciate that there is this focus now and that will be more of a regular part and I'm hoping that we will see better numbers next year. >> I do want to sure you also at the middle school we have advisory. remember when we did the new schedule, we put in some advisory time, which is kind of a similar kind of concept when we're trying to really push across that knowing and valuing your students at that time. >> I love that. Thank you. I I do want to acknowledge like overall this is great and also it's it's hard to see. So, thank you for the work you're doing. >> Member Laramp. >> Sure. Um I I um was going to ask the same question Henry was about getting the numbers. So yeah, send it out to
038all of us. I guess I would just add um I appreciated hearing about the new books and that and uh so that came out of our budget. Um that was a planned expense with our budget, right? that actually was Esser. >> Oh, that was >> that we were able to get that and Anthony actually spearheaded that project and um really that that put a lot of books in our classrooms really diverse high quality culturally competent texts in our classrooms which is really great and the teachers are using them. >> Okay. Excellent. And then that my my other follow-up comment and this was kind of talked about too is I really appreciate um the focus uh on the morning meetings and advisory and um I you know I I think um it it may be interesting
039any of you to talk to elementary teachers. I think many elementary teachers have used a version of morning meeting over the years uh in different ways and um uh uh but you know with a a kind of stronger focus consistent across the district uh I I really think that's important too and um but um as you talk to teachers uh I think you'll hear a lot of different ways that they have already implemented um morning circles and kind of the creativity that they use with it as well. So, thank you. >> So, the next slide I had to put in here for you guys. Um, this slide right here, it's reading. Um, this has to do with what we call cohorts of students. What we looked at in all the prior slides, that's kind of
040apples to oranges students because from 24 to 25, they're different kids in third grade. There are different kids in eighth grade. So you're measuring more that implementation of standards um rather than thinking about how kids are growing. This slide here talks about cohorts. So this is really showing growth across the years with the same kids. So, if you're going to go, let's take take Stow for example, the very first in the yellow box for 25 third graders, 2025, that's this last year's third graders. So, they didn't take it before that, so there's no comparison. Um, the second row there, that's 2024 third graders, but now they were 2025 spring fourth graders. So when they were third graders 26.3% when they were fourth graders on average for for Stow 32.4. So Stow was able to grow
041those third graders by 6.1 percentage points. Um so many more kids uh met met or exceeded the standards according to MCA and reading. Um look at their fifth graders who were the prior fourth graders. So that cohort of kids grew 15.3 percentage points. Um all the red boxes on here represent double-digit growth of cohorts of students. So the sta same kids that were third graders now fourth graders or fourth graders now fifth graders. And how did we grow them in our system? Most of 90% of the cohorts because there's there's 20 different cohorts here. they grew. So, I just I was when I examined the data this way, I was like, "Okay, that's awesome." Um, so that makes me feel good about our system and what we're doing because um sometimes if you just look
042at apples to oranges, you're not seeing the growth really from kid to kid. Um that's what this is about is really comparing apples to apples, the same cohorts of children. And then as a system, that very last one on the bottom, that's all the elementary schools averaged out. So we had 4.9% um third grade, they were now fourth grade last spring, they grew. And then fourth graders now fifth grade last spring, 12.1 percentage points. That That's pretty good. So I just wanted to make sure that you saw that. >> Superintendent Maggus has a question. Um give me one second. So yes. So actually more of a comment. I'm just um I I want to re reiterate that I'm very impressed with the work that's being done as well and having seen uh letters in place
043in previous districts. It it does sometimes take about a year until you start seeing the the growth, but you will see very very impressive growth uh in addition to what you're seeing already. And to the previous comments, I just want to acknowledge we also very very much recognize that there's a lot of work to be done, especially in closing gaps with our historically underserved students and we want to make sure that we're doing our absolute best in that area. So, I just wanted to reiterate that as well. >> Thank you, Chair Derek Eer. I think for me this is probably the most impactful data and probably the most important data that we look in a district because what you want to see is growth from third to fourth and fourth to fifth. So that is
044just suggesting that the implementations and the practices that we have in place are more kids are doing better the longer they stay with us. So that that's really what that means and and I do and I do not want to brush aside we have um glaring gaps and I think that we are transparent and honest about where we have to do the work especially when it's important for our kids. But this um because when you look individually at different elementary schools, what you're seeing is growth across all of our elementary schools regardless of um student populations or or socioeconomic place. So, thank you for this chart. This is a good way to look at it. >> Yeah. And before I turn it back to them, I also want to thank the the board um and
045leadership for recognizing the importance of focusing on our marginalized students. And as a district, everyone knows that we have not shied away from our work in equity. Um while there's uh a push back in the nation, you know, Duth is standing strong at this point in time with his commitment to equity. And so we really are trying to figure out how do we meet the needs of our most marginalized students, our American Indian students and our African-American students and uh our students who are uh economically disadvantaged uh whether they're white or or whatever they may be. Um so I I appreciate that and we made significant investments in our schedules whether it's our high school schedules um our middle school schedule and our elementary schedules. Um you know we made significant investments to try to
046change things. And the last thing, we made significant investment in professional development. So, as you know, we have now five professional additional five professional development days throughout the school year. That really allows us as a district to provide time to train and coach all of our teachers and all of our staff on practices and efforts to improve safety, to improve academic outcomes, to focus on equity. So, I really appreciate the board's um commitment to really supporting us as we implement those new strategies or systems um and schedules. So, thank you. I'll turn it back over to you. >> Okay, now we're going to go into math. Um math just quite frankly, we haven't seen the growth that we've seen in reading, but it has not been our focus. uh we will have I think in
047two years we will have to be visiting math because the new standards in math will be coming out and will have to be implemented. So about two years from now you're going to hear a lot about math. Right now we're literacy literacy literacy. Um but in the near future it is going to be about math. Um but as you can see we do have some shiny stars here. Um, so when we're comparing 24 to 25, DUTH to Duth, you can see third, sixth, and seventh grade actually realized growth in math, which is awesome. Um, as a system, we were down about 1.8 percentage points. Um, compared to the state, we have four grade levels who do better on average than the state does. We had three that did not meet that threshold. So, um, math,
048there's there's a lot to be proud of in math. It's just you can see, you can feel the effect of the reading and that focus on literacy that we've had as a district as a priority. You can these are the results. So, and as a state, the focus and priority is on literacy. And the state has even said that if kids can read, they will do better on the math assessment. So that's why we're really honing in on reading first and then we will be addressing the new math standards in two years. It will be interesting. As a side note, science usually follows reading results because if you can read really well, you can probably answer the science questions. Um, so I'm I'm interested to see the new science test. We'll probably get those results
049in October. They said September, but now they're saying October. So when we get those, we'll we'll share them with you. we just don't have them yet. Um the next um this follows kind of the same as the reading. So we have um um the student groups state identifications in our student groups. Um we don't do as well with the student groups on average as the the state gets and compared to ourselves we went down this year in multiple categories. So, um, math just like I said, just overarchingly not as strong. We did have growth in the black African-American category. Um, that student group. Um, admittedly, our outcomes were not great. So, I'm super happy that we had growth there. It's not enough. Um, we still have a long way to go. You can see as
050compared to the state, we're behind in some of our categories and um this is just an area of growth for us. >> Member Williams. >> Um okay, I am asking you this as the experts in the room. Um, just listening to the way that you kind of worded how we're concentrating and and putting our focus, is it possible to push both literacy and math? And then with that question, when we do start focusing on math in two years, does that mean reading is going to go down? Like how do we do both? Very good question. It is really hard to do both at the same time if you're we had a lot we needed to make a lot of changes in literacy. Teachers only have so much capacity um on our professional development days on
051changing curriculum on implementation on there was a lot there that had to be updated. Um, so it is really super hard to do both and I think that's why this the state doesn't change standards at the same time. Um, however, we do realize we need to start uh focusing some on math when we have our professional development days coming up in November, December, I think February and March. I can speak for the elementary because they're different than the secondary, but we're going to start infusing conversation on math and the changes in the new standards and having them look at information. So, we're going to start doing that as a matter of fact in November. >> And member Williams, I appreciate that uh comment because we want to make sure that it is clear that we
052as a district, we are focused on uh other content areas as well. We may have moved in significant resources to focus on uh ELA and reading standards and materials and resources but we have not um focused on other areas whether it's science or social studies because the goal is also um last year we focused on what we call teacher clarity. make sure teachers focus on the standards even within those content areas that they are really clear in their communication on what students are expected to know and be able to do and and so there was a a concerted effort and continues to be a concerted effort on making sure that regardless if it's uh teachers who don't teach ELA um or reading specifically but that they are focused on providing high quality instruction so that
053hasn't um moved away but we have um put significant more resources in literacy. So, we're hoping that over time that we will uh continue to see some improvement even in those areas as well. Member Saddowski and then member Mike, >> can you remind me when the last time we got a new math curriculum was? And then maybe you could talk a little bit about uh I've gotten to see a couple of your presentations over the last few years about what goes into when you're purchasing a new curriculum. I maybe we don't need to go down that road, but are we going to be getting a new math curriculum as the standards change or are we going to get a supplement? I'm just curious what that >> So, it's been a significant amount of time since
054math has been a new adoption. Um, we know so social so we have English right now, ELA. We are going to have social studies which is implementation years next year and we're not looking at a huge um resource expense in the social studies area. Um, but math is going to be another area where we're going to need to resource. We're going to need to pretty much do all across the board K through 12. Um, we have some some um materials that are significantly older in some areas. Um, we've had a lot of supplementation just to um use the materials that we currently have. Um, so I I would just expect that we are going to be doing it. Um, so next year would be a pilot year for math. So when we take a look
055at our our um pacing of things, they're looking at the um standards this year as part of their math committees and then we'll be choosing some material uh to be piloting next year both at the elementary and at the secondary level. And then the next year would be when we would implementate implement those standards. >> Great. Thank you. And I really appreciate all your work on that. I just I know there's it's a multi-year process with many um people's input and I always appreciate hearing about the piloting and getting different teachers perspectives. Thank you. >> Thank you member Mel and then member Laughleramp. >> Yeah, thank you so much um for being here and for sharing all this data. It's always recognizing that standardized testing does not encapsulate all of our students and their abilities
056and all the work that our teachers do and staff do to to raise them up, but unfortunately it's what our state provides us to measure us. Um, I want to echo some of the statements that member Williams said just in how we're framing that we're focusing on literacy and then therefore potentially that could be interpreted as we're not focusing on math. I hope that's not the case because our community expects us to be able to multitask. I expect us to be able to multitask. Um, and my the concern I, you know, feel as I, as I hear that is that when we're focusing on literacy, we see that our math scores historically just, you know, as of last spring were higher in the lower grades, but then eventually started to drop down recognizing that there's
057some testing issues as kids get older kind of a thing. But when I think about my understanding of math um ed or instruction is that it becomes much more compartmentalized and only math teachers are teaching math as kids get older. So I would think that if we were focusing on literacy, we're thinking about those ed um elementary school ages where those teachers are having to balance everything in a day. And yeah, I would almost expect to see lower scores in the elementary if that was the case because those teachers are focusing. But as we're seeing it opposite, we're seeing it the lower scores and the older when there's dedicated staff that only do math. So I was wondering if there was any explanation for that or is there something that we as really have to
058double down and work on harder. >> I don't have a clear explanation for that to be honest with you. Um but I do want you to know that our content leads are moving work forward. So we do have committees that are working. They're talking about standards. They're looking at their success criteria. So there is work that's being moved forward even though we don't have the new standards um in front of them being actively taught at this time. And part of that reason why we haven't like just jumped to the new standards again when we talk about the um the the sun setting of MCA3s for reading this year and we're going to be starting four. our kids for the next year or two this year and the next year after that are still being tested
059on the standards that are MCA3s for math and then they will enter into the four. So we we're in this like weird place where we're trying to balance like we have to make sure ensure that we're doing the standards this way for this for this assessment period and then we'll be moving on to the new standards in the next one. But when it comes to instructional approaches, those are things that um we've seen some movement and some growth in. We do have um um we have Ed Lewis who is um at um the high school working really diligently on some of the different things. And if you are have a high school student, you'll see that there's lots of whiteboards all over the place and they're doing things differently instructionally. They're trying to to be
060more engaging with their math and having the students engaging with it. Um we have Becky Starks who is our content lead at the middle school math. we ended up separating those two pieces because they're just different just different balls of wax really. So, um we do have um focus and attention there. I can't say why um we're not being as successful at this point in time, but I think we really just are trying to shore up our tier one, which is those um learning intentions, the success criteria, all those different pieces that we talk about when we talk about clarity for learning. >> Thank you, >> member Laughler. >> Yep. Great discussion. Um, more of a point of information. Um, I I believe in April or May or earlier this year, Dale uh, our new
061MTSS person had brought a color-coded chart on our um, standards and when we were going to adopt them. Am I right? Yeah. And he laid out kind of a three-year plan on it. It might be helpful just to pop it out to us again. Um but I I he he and his team I know did a lot of work on that and I found that um that uh presentation just very helpful to to think about kind of when things were going to be adopted and why and that and so was it April May who remembers I yeah lots happened since then but anyways if you could pop that out again that would be greater uh uh I think with this discussion >> I wrote it on my Thank you. >> And I think this goes
062back to an earlier question. Maybe it was I forget who asked it, but oh, working on different standards at once. Right now, we have to learn about the new social studies standards in addition to what we're doing for ELA because those have to be implemented next fall. And so, we're going to fit social studies in between here. Um, so we'll do a lot of learning around social studies standards in the spring. So it's just it's a lot going on right now with um the state and their implementation timeline. CO kind of messed us up a little bit. It delayed ELA. Um I think it delayed science by a year or two. So it kind of backed everything up against each other. So, >> chair Derek Gater problem >> and I just um two things. The
063first thing is I think the um intentionality that we've focused around literacy is going to be helpful in bringing uh all of our all of our duth public school students up in all of these tested subjects because literacy and reading is a basis of starting that educational journey. So, I think that that's going to have pay off. there's that cross-pollination between reading and math, reading and science, reading and social studies. So, I do think um just by that intentionality, we're going to we're going to bring scores off. And then I just have to say it because this is something that I I just I have to say it. I I I generally take issue with a test. If you are a teacher like I was and you continually give a test and 45% of your
064students pass that test at what point do you look at the fidelity and the efficacy of the test? So I just I have to because when I was going through my teaching at the College of St. Scholastica and I was up for my tenure. And if only 45% of my students continually passed a test, I would look both at instructional design and how are we assessing these kids? And I guess I would love to hear from the Minnesota Department of Education and probably the federal department of education is how are they proving to us the fidelity of the test that they're asking us to take. So, okay, I'm done now. That's my soap box. Thank you. >> And I really appreciate that. And what what she's referencing is the state overall on average in reading
06549% 49.6 and then math 45. We used to as a state ride somewhere around 52ish. That's we've dropped as a state. So I appreciate your comment for sure. Um so moving on I had uh promised you a little glimpse into our local assessment which is our fast bridge uh for kindergarten first and second because we don't often talk about those assessments so I threw them in here. Um kindergarten is interesting. We have done so much in our kindergarten classrooms over the last few years uh with infusion of play um changes in our elementary schedule um making sure ensuring that we have 120 minute literacy block which is a big deal um and then that direct um instruction through UFly Hagerty for phonmic awareness. So there's been a lot of work. Um you'll see in the
066yellow box here that our outcomes in spring have 35.5 and 2122 and now 44.7 last spring um 46 the spring before. So we've gone up as far as the amount of kids meeting benchmarks according to FastBridge. The yellow is a composite score. There's a lot of different subtests that go into that composite score to make that up. The pink box on the bottom, it's Jen and I are both letters graduates. We graduated last spring. Thank you very much. um along with lots of our teachers. But one thing we learned is in kindergarten the letter sounds per minute is like the main subtest that you should be looking that will p predict how well kids will read successful reading skills and how so I included that here because you can see that we've made significant gains
067in kids leaving kindergarten over the last four years. I just project that that's going to go up. We are infusing a lot of letters strategies this year because we have so many graduates now. So, we're we intentionally put those into our elementary um literacy blocks this year. So, I'm just I'm just predicting that we're going to see a lot of growth in that area, which I'll show you next next September. Um, and then math, you can see uh the pink arrow there. In kindergarten and in elementary, as was just pointed out, we get like we're significantly higher in math for kindergarten. Lot math in kindergarten is a lot of play. They don't even know they're learning, right? Um, a lot of manipulatives and things that they do. So, um, we just see higher um, percentage
068of kids meeting benchwork in math in kindergarten. And then first grade >> member Michael. >> Oh, I'm so sorry. >> No problem. Just real quick, do the benchmarks um move a bit between fall and spring because I'm looking at the yellow box. >> Yeah. >> Um and we have 51% in the fall or we'll say this last most recent year 59.8% in the fall but only 44.7%. And so is the testing different, more rigorous, and that's why there seems to appear drop. >> The test does get much more rigorous as kindergarten goes on because kids are gaining skills and they're expected to gain the skills. Um, as a matter of fact, the fall >> subtests that go into the composite are different than the spring subtests that go into the composite. One of the tests
069that's similar across the the school year for kindergarten is the letter sounds per minute. Um, so the tests change because their skill sets change so much over kindergarten. So yeah. >> And would the expectation be that the the percentage stays at least the same or is it expected that we would see the spring percentage be slightly lower than what it was in the fall? Well, >> so here in lies um a challenge. >> Um we should experience growth because we should be growing those kindergarten skills. The test changes but their skills should be growing at the same clip. So for me in my mind's eye it was super interesting when I came to Duth and historically I could look back probably 10 years or so or whenever they started fast and we've never realized growth
070in kindergarten hardly on average over our schools. Just take that on for a moment. And so that's why two years ago um we really were like what's going on in kindergarten? Um and it's systemic. So it was no, it wasn't a school, it wasn't a teacher. It's was our approach to what we were doing or using. And so that changed to Hagerty last year, the UFly, um that um direct structured instruction, the read act, the science of reading, all of these things have been over the last two years. Um and actually this third year, which is this year, I think teachers are much stronger now. We have all the letters graduates. So, I'm hoping that we realize at least black growth. You're not giving yourself enough credit. There was a kindergarten task force because of
071this whole issue. She um got people together and they've redone basically how they instructing in kindergarten just because of that. Yep. We we did that too. So, there's a lot. So, I appreciate your observation and that's why I'm just putting it out there because that has been historically our experience here in Duth and it doesn't have to be. It shouldn't be and it's our problem as a system. Like I said, it's not a school because it's every school. It's not a teacher because it's across all of our schools. And so, um, really taking a look at what we do as a system is is that's what we should have done and that's what we've been doing. >> Thank you, >> Mhm. >> Shannon. Okay. So, first grade in the yellow, that's reading. So, you'll notice
072because we haven't as a system, again, I'm I'm just going to keep saying that because I don't want kindergarten teachers, I never want them to feel bad. And I say it that way every single time because this isn't their fault. This is on us, Duth Public Schools as a system. And so you can see um in the fall we get first graders that don't really they're not really meeting benchmarks in the fall at a high level but our first grade teachers grow them significantly across our schools. And so I think that's just really um a you know that's something to celebrate is how much growth we experience in first grade. Again, we've changed so much in first grade that I'm expecting to even see more there. Um, and in math, you'll see again many more
073of our first graders meet benchmark across across our system. So, 66.4% on average meet the benchmark in spring. Um, so we get better outcomes in math than we do reading with our littles. >> And member Mike, this speaks to your question about kindergarten. you should see stronger or more uh stronger data or increase um performance in the spring. If you go back to that uh kindergarten uh data that would be great uh Shannon uh for um for me um so that's why you know as as Brenda has shared or director spot sorry about that has shared um we have spent a lot of energy on improving instruction and focused on ELA instruction in kindergarten. I bring that up because sometimes I know there's uh that doesn't mean we're moving away from um meeting the social
074emotional needs of kids and making sure that things are playbased and kids have opportunities to you know have recess and experience you know fun as a kindergartener and and as a learner and we're trying to make sure that that there is time focus opportunity to focus on phmic awareness and just all of those um instruction strategies that need to happen in kindergarten, we're making sure that those things are provided and there's a focus. And another thing that Brenda didn't share is I think it was last year, maybe in uh the previous year, but I know for sure last year, we also provided additional resources to our kindergarten classroom teachers in the form of PAR support to not only make sure did you want to talk about that additional PAR support we provided in some of
075our kindergarten classrooms to make sure that teachers had time to support the needs of kindergarteners. Uh and I'll stop there. You want to just share just quickly? Well, yeah, we >> added into kindergarten to meet some of the needs there. >> We did that at Myers Wilkins and Laura MacArthur. We added instructional paras that um worked directly with the kindergarten actually they say with the kindergarteners all day long. Um and both of those schools saw good gains in kindergarten uh because of that. Um so Myers has had that for two years. This is the third year. And Laura MacArthur, this is their second year with that type of support. And as you're aware, both of those schools are some of our schools with some of the most um students with the most challenges. And so
076that's why we, you know, made the that significant investment in those classrooms to improve outcomes for those students because if we start them off early off on the right foot, obviously we hope that they will continue to grow year after year and um continue to to meet the the goals that we have for them and that the state has for them. Oh, sorry. Member Williams. >> Okay. Um, yeah. I am curious about if we provide anything to our families um to help them retain skills over the summer because looking at there are more kids I there are more first graders not meeting the benchmark in the fall than there are kindergarteners. And I I guess I find that interesting because that's after they've had a chance to be in the classroom and be with teachers.
077So like do we provide um just anything because I know that happens across the board that kids lose skills over the summer. So, I'm just wondering if there's anything that we do to kind of help families, and obviously we can't do anything to make families do it, but do we provide things to engage um especially our youngest little learners over the summer? Well, uh kids are offered summer school or um you know, our our targeted services, if you will. That's the money that funds that. And so in spring, um, kids that have not experienced the growth we wanted them to, we invite them to come and join our summer school. Now, not all of all of them can, but we we actually this last year we got a lot more than we had the last
078couple years um that were willing to come to summer school. So that is one thing we offer. >> Yeah. >> In addition, there's additional summer programming um that is also provided, especially some of our uh again need schools. We have our um duth community schools collaborative provides uh summer programming. Uh our various departments also provides uh summer programming. Our American Indian education department provides summer programming for students who are native. And so there's a lot of programming that we provide that to also shure up that summer um summer loss as it's called. Um and we continue to look for other efforts as well. And one of the things that we are will be implementing this year is um what we're calling we're trying to we figure out a phrase for it but familymies or family
079sessions where we are going to provide uh opportunities for families to join uh sessions where they can learn how to support their students to improve their attendance. So they may provide we may we may provide um sessions where student uh families can learn about um easy uh strategies to help promote reading in the home. Right? So we're going to we're thinking about like what do those sessions look like and and try to make sure we scaffold them for the different levels. So those are things that we are um working towards implementing uh this coming school year. I um yeah, that was I guess one of my follow-ups was not one of my followup um is if we provide um I guess tangible things that they can take home and use at home instead of having
080kids necessarily come to us or come to programming like if there's anything like that. Well, something that they take home, but they have access to we purchase, which is kind of expensive, but it's a proven uh research-based um strategy. It's all online. Families do have access to that throughout the school year. Um so, that's one thing. Yeah. >> Is there anything for students who might not have access to online resources? We we don't send anything home. Thank you. >> Yeah. Um so the next slide is about second grade. Um you can see that in the fall in the yellow box kids come in higher, right? Because they end first grade higher, they come into second grade higher, but second grade grows them again. So um this goes along with the MCAs we saw earlier where
081we saw the cohorts of kids from third to fourth to fourth to fifth grow. They do from kindergarten to first grade grow from first grade to second grade they grow and then as we saw third fourth so throughout elementary we're seeing that kids come into kindergarten and they keep growing as far as through fifth grade. So I think that's a positive message that we can take away from this too. Um but so second grade on average over four years 8.1% um they grow from fall to spring and also again math is a little stronger. So in the elementary schools as we pointed out earlier we just are a little stronger in math with our outcome. So even though it hasn't been like a priority focus because the state on you know we have literacy as
082our primary focus we are still very active in math we still get great results in our elementary especially with the littles and so I just wanted to make sure you saw that. Now the next part here is about Northstar accountability. We do well Minnesota started this oh nine years ago or something and this was in um regards to the state plan to satisfy um the new law December 2020 2015 that went into effect. It was to fulfill the requirements of ESSA and that's how we got Northstar accountability. Um what do we call the last one? I forget. Yeah, something like that. I forget there's been a few. Um so this is an identification that happens every three years. Um this is a current year one cycle. So 2526 will be year one of this cycle
083and then we'll have two more years. So the next identification will be August 2028 if if we still have the same system. You never know. Um, and what this does, it identifies schools and then last time districts, although I haven't heard anything about that this time. Um, for more support due to outcomes. Well, there actually was a shift if you recall. Um, we've we we work with Gina Cole, who is our um our um MTSS lead for the Northeast Service Co-op um for our Northeast division. Um and the the shift has been the support is now at the district level and not going directly to the sites because they felt like they were siloing things a little bit when when with the work that was being happened. Um so I don't think they're identifying districts
084but the districts now are getting more support what she said. Um I just want I just put a side note here. Um, if you go into the Minnesota report card, because you can go on to MDE, go to the Minnesota Report Card, pull up DUTH public schools or any individual um, school and there's so much information at your fingertips there. Um, so there's a lot there. When you're looking at all the MCAs I just showed you, that is a different formula calculation than the calculations within Northstar accountability. Northstar accountability is an average over three years. So if you see like they're talking about um outcomes or they're using percentages of proficiency, they're not going to match the every spring. So if if you see that just I just wanted you to know that the formulations
085are different. They consider kids in those groups. There's many different criteria they have. Um and quite quite frankly it's complicated. Um so I didn't put it in here but um so it's just different calculations than what we were are used to seeing spring to spring. Um so what it northstar accountability does for the identification process it puts all the schools through stages looks at them. So the first stage they look at is just raw information. How well did schools did on do on the math? How well did they do on reading? And then progress towards EL proficiency. So they look at that. If a school is struggling there, they put them through the filter to stage two and they say, "Okay, stage two, how did they grow kids? Did a kid who did not meet
086last year, now they're partially proficient, they get points for that. Did a kid that was partially proficient, are they now proficient? There's more points for that." So, it's really it's like they go through every single child and put them through this grid. If the school made great progress, even though their scores weren't that high, they don't get identified. But if they didn't make great progress, then they go to stage three and they look at consistent attendance and the average over three years. Did kids come to school? If that's lower than expected, that's when you get identified is when you go through these stages. Um stage two for high schools um also includes the graduation rate but elementaryaries and middle school um that's the process I just explained to you um and then we used to
087call that the funneling you know schools got funneled through these stages to get identified and they get identified for these different types of support the comprehensive support and improvement and then the targeted support. There was this new one this year that wasn't there before called the nonexit um which is interesting. So I put that on here. Um and then I pointed it out in the data that I'm including here for you too. >> Member Lul >> I just want to go back to the comment you said opening this this not this uh page 20 is uh that they're different and you wanted to point that out. We've all gotten emails from community members who go to the MDE site and look at this report card and then they see this presentation and they see different
088percentages and it's almost like they are um challenging us like they so what do we who do we believe and and the district isn't being transparent and we're shifting things. So, this isn't the time or place, but boy, if if we could have a a short presentation about how to respond or or answer or um that doesn't sound defensive or doesn't sound like we're we don't I I I don't know. We've all gotten that and challenges by uh community members that are watching um and and then see this kind of discrepancy and they then they don't trust that we're revealing all that we need to reveal. Just a comment. Oh yeah, and that's why I wanted to point that out because actually in the beginning of all this Northstar accountability, I used to get confused.
089I'm like, wait, my numbers aren't matching what they're saying. But then going through learning um it's just completely different calculations. So um so if you want to go to the next slide. So here this is the um 2025. So this is year one identification and I just we had six schools in the elementary and then um one of the programs in the high school the last time. This year we do have the same six schools and we have a different high school program identified. So I'll just go through here. Um, and some of this, you'll see the non-exit on here, that new category that came out this year because like Meyers with their black students and their special education students, they were identified in 2018 for not performing up to the thresholds expected. They were
090identified in 2022 for in the same categories. They were identified now in 2025. So they're just a non-exit. They just it's a continuation of the support they kept having and then they go at a higher level. So that's why they're comprehensive with a nonexit there is because of that continued um not meeting the expected thresholds. And then we do have several uh some new categories for Myers Wilkins there with targeted support, meaning these categories didn't meet multi-year average because remember this is a three-year average. So we're reaching back three years ago, two years ago, and last year averaging that out. And that's what this is calling out here. And then Congden Congden um has been identified for special education over the last three. This is now the third time. So they've gone to comprehension comprehensive
091instead of targeted. Again, that's the non-exit. They just didn't meet the threshold expected. So they don't get to exit support. >> Member Sadowski. >> Oh yeah. Um, I'm glad you brought up the special education question or just comment just now. I was looking back at some of the data that you covered earlier. Um, and I was looking at the special education 2025 reading MCAs and then the math categories. And similar to member Banks's question um, about our African-American group, what are we doing specifically um, to kind of get some of those scores up in our special education department? Um, >> yeah, that's remember this is three years. So even like the year before that 2023, 2024, and 2025. So um >> Right. Sorry, I was going back to the MCAs. >> Yep. And so it's
092even one more year that's included in in this identification. Got >> But um >> and then I just we talked about special education because you're going to see special education identified here as we go through these schools several times. >> Yep. But special education students are gened kids first, right? So what and how are we addressing the needs of special education kids in their classroom, being more inclusive, having them feel a sense of belonging, um differentiation, having special ed teachers move into the class to support special ed students instead of pulling them out. Those are all super important factors which we're working on. Um we're actually changing the model in the elementary schools in several of our schools that special ed teachers would be going in to the classrooms to service and work with kids
093rather than pulling them out. Um which is pretty impactful model. And so there there are a lot of things we're doing. >> Great. in addition and I know uh director Crane is back uh there if you want to come up Jason and share some information related to some of the programming changes that that's happening uh in the area of special education. So I'll start um because we have made over the years significant uh investments in uh the area for students with special needs. Um you'll know you know just like I know and and Jason is going to share some of that. Director Crane is going to share some of that. the number of students with special needs continues to increase and so the district as a result has had to make significant investments to support
094those kids and we've added additional um uh programs in the district to meet the various needs for those students um which means there's additional staff additional supports there's additional support even in the department um for uh doc um director crane um to meet those needs to work with teachers on um adopting and adjusting IEPs and make sure they're well written to identify the needs that those students have. Um, I'll stop there because I'll let Jason share some of those things, but I because I know that some of those things I wanted to highlight some of the things that we have done to improve um programming for our students with special needs because it it is concerning and the you know this year more than ever the identification is more uh glaring and so I I'll
095let Jason share uh Jace Director Crane share some other things. >> Thanks for inviting me up. Um, do you know you've been going for an hour and 10 minutes and special ed could be another hour of great conversation points. But, um, first let me just start by saying we have done a lot in recent years. We've added just a number of things. Staff development has increased radically, especially for the pair professional groups. Uh, we went from one day about seven hours of training to nearly 40 hours of training for access for pair professionals and not only supporting reading initiatives but also math and other topics. for providing some very comprehensive training. Um, I just want to highlight one thing before I lose your attention. Special ed and the Luth public schools make some choices and
096we make some great choices. But one of the complicated systems things that the L schools has made several uh directors before I ever took charge of of the special ed department. We have a very inclusive model. Some of our very most atrisisk students are in our public school settings and they show up on our test scores. So, it doesn't surprise me at times that our non-verbal students are showing up in in those categories there for those school sites. Um, and they do affect MCA results and things like that. Other schools have them in separate school buildings where they show up in different ways and they have much higher scores because maybe some of their most atrisisk kids are not in their public school settings. So, I'm very appreciative that we have inclusive schools, but it
097doesn't surprise me that it affects our test scores. So, that's one of the first things to keep in mind. And that affects the Northstar accountability ratings because of our choices that we make in our school district. And I support it. Our families long ago have asked for all children to be included, to be inclusive, to uh go to their school classes with their age baits. And we've actually ramped up an an initiative to keep kids included in general ed classrooms, general education classroom settings because it is the most optimal way for kids to learn and grow. I'll stop. But if you got more questions for me, >> I just want to say I appreciate you pointing that out because that does kind of help us understand the data in a different way. So, thank you.
098>> Thank you, Director Crane. So, the next slide just goes on. Um Oh, I'm so sorry. Did somebody else have a question? >> It was a question for for Mr. Crane, but I I think I'll I'd like you to move on. Yeah. is about when we identify kids. But yeah, um so this just continues through um the other identified schools in this round. We have Laura MacArthur. What this doesn't show is that Laura MacArthur was identified for as last round overall and being in the bottom 5% of Title One schools. Guess what? They're not now. So, um that was awesome. Um, so but they do have some multi-year average last two cycles identifications and that's why they've gone comprehensive in some of those categories is because they've had two identifications in those. And then Stow,
099the same thing I was explaining earlier. They're just not exited yet. Um, Piedmont, same thing. Actually, Piedmont did quite well last year. They're quite they're a school to celebrate. I thought for sure they wouldn't be identified, but there they are. Um, they didn't quite meet the exit criteria, but we're working hard over there. And then, um, LOL, same thing, a non-exit for special education. >> Um, and then, >> and I want to talk about the secondary if that's okay. Um, so you'll see on here that we have identified the ALC independent study. Um, and it is a comprehensive um, level um, for their graduation rates. Um, independent study has been using a program called Peak, which is just an online program. It's not as engaging as I would love to see. Um, thankfully, and Peaks
100costs keep going up. We have um revamped how we're going to be providing independent study for this upcoming school year. Um, and tons of work and energy and effort have gone into making Canvas course blueprints is what they're calling them. So they are courses that um a student will be engaging in um and then being able to finish it in independent study. So they might be in ALC school within a school and maybe not attaining what they need to and they can do that later in this program. Um we're calling it fix it and finish it. But um we're having a different approach to how students are going to be instructed through these modules that we're creating in Canvas. Um it has been an investment this summer. So, I wanted to thank Mr. Bonds for
101allowing um us to do this work, but in time, it's going to save a lot of money because we're not going to be um tied to continually increasing costs like 400% increases over a course of a year of for a product that is subpar where our teachers can do better. So, I'm hoping to see that this is going to really help with some of this as well. Um but that is the only school that you'll see on here for the secondary that's identified currently. I do want to celebrate the fact that we have two schools or two programs that had exited. So our um academic excellent online program um it had been identified for math MCAs and that was because we had poor poor attendance um taking the assessments. Um so they did some things
102to try to encourage kids to participate more in taking those tests. if you can think about coming in and taking a test when you're an online student. Um right there there's a challenge um but they've done a few things with some incentives and so they're off now. And then um a really big celebration is that the ALC seatbased program had been in in for graduation rates. they're off. And so that is just showing you that some of the belonging and connecting work that they're doing down at the ALC and the CPACE program is paying off some dividends and they have been increasing those graduation rates over time and so they are no longer identified. So I wanted to make sure that you were aware of those two those two successes that we've had. This is
103just in case you have any questions, but we've been asking questions and you've been asking really great questions. So, I really appreciate that. They're hard questions. Yep. >> And so, I I just really appreciate that. >> And before we take them, I have some closing comments and I know Superintendent said he also has some uh closing comments as well. Um but I wanted to um again I always be remiss not to share that you know we recognize as a district as the assistant soup who oversees teaching learning equity along with uh the entire team you know we we take this very seriously we we really um are encouraged by some of the data that we see u whether it's our MCA data as well as our district level data but we also know that we
104have significant um areas of improvement for some of our students uh some of our schools that identify I more than uh anyone. And just like you all, I I want us to eventually be off of any of these lists, our schools and our district. And so, we're working really hard to, you know, put some things in place. And over the last 5 years, I want to remind everyone that don't forget that we worked really hard, this board did and the community worked really hard to put a strategic plan in place that really has a focus um that uh to improve outcomes for all kids, you know, in those three identified areas that we always bring up uh here. So, we've spent a lot of energy and effort over the last, you know, five, six years
105here, you you know, to make sure that we are strategically aligning all of our efforts and resources. And sometimes you hear about those things like when we make hard decisions on where to place some of those resources and those nickels. Sometimes we say, "Okay, we we really want to focus on literacy so we're going to put significant resources over here or we want to focus on um meeting the social emotional needs of kids and we're going to put some resources over here." But that also means when we have, you know, a certain amount of resources that some things don't get the same level of attention or the same number of resources or the amount of resources. So, but we use data to really drive our decisions. I want to make sure that everyone is aware
106of when things are happening. We are using data to make a decision on if we're going to move programming from LOL to Mars Wilkins, if we're going to invest in some of our most needed schools and put paras in those schools that um you know have some of the most significant needs. Not to say the other schools don't need it as well, but we make strategic decisions uh based off of data. we put a in place because of letters and because of the state also but more importantly not just because of the state because our data says we have to focus on literacy so there's a focus on ELA standards and and improving outcomes for kids that's why we invested and made the you know the push to have professional development days added to our
107calendar that's why we made the push to put our new schedules in place you know throughout our entire system we've added additional resources and kept them even after most of our SR dollars went away as a district we field made and kept some of those significant investments to add additional staff for reading, math for our mentors. So, we've invested in our CTE area and also to focus on college and careers. So, we made significant investment uh investments in the organization. So, uh, we don't take these things lightly and we really are focused as a as a as a district to improve outcomes. And that's where sometimes you're going to hear a lot about there's a lot of change going on. Well, there is because we as a district recognize that we have to change up
108and down the system from our youngest learners to our oldest learners. We have to make those changes with our resources and how we instruct and how we support. But you're going to hear about it sometimes because people feel the pressure and we as a organization feel the pressure. There's a lot of pressure on this district uh in this building here to improve those outcomes working with our principles and working with our staff. So So I just want to make sure that you know that we are committed and we're going to continue to um try to meet the needs and and improve outcomes for all our kids, especially our most marginalized kids. Uh, superintendent, I know you said you want to share something. >> Sure. And actually, you you shared quite a bit about what I
109was going to share as well, but I guess what I would say is uh that the we're not completely satisfied with these results, but we are seeing lots of progress. If you look at this and you look at our significant increases in our graduation rates, uh they're not happening by coincidence. They're happening through hard work. And I'd say it it happens from the boardroom to the classroom. When we when we worked on our boardroom to classroom strategic roadmap, we focused on on what it was that were our top priorities. We focused on uh how we're going to focus our rec resources there. And then the systems and structures that we put in place at the district level and at the school level. You've heard about our CIT teams. You've heard about the hard work of
110our teams. You've heard about the hard work of our uh professional learning communities uh and and the hard work of our students and it's it's really beginning to pay off. And not only we are being recognized for the state as still having needs to improve, but we're also being recognized by the state as having uh one of the model systems of multi-tered systems of support. And I'd say that's thanks to the hard work of this team and also the hard work of our teachers and and leaders in the school. But also, I think the school board needs to um commend itself too because there have been many things that you've approved, whether it's been changes in structure or schedule, whether it's been new positions or whether it's been uh new curricula. Uh all of this
111has been stepping stones towards this uh continued progress. But there's there's more work to be done. We're not going to rest until every student is is extremely successful. But I think this shows a lot of promise and it shows a lot of um a lot of hard work. I also would say just so you know, I've been listening intently throughout the meeting. Um but it's a pretty rainy drive down here and so if I've been a little quiet, it's not because I'm not out not paying attention or not listening, but very very thrilled with the hard work of our teams and the board. >> Any additional questions? Seeing none, I want to say thank you to our directors and team. Trying to get to my sheet here. Next up, we have under supporting students, we
112have our new, which you have met, our new director of Head Start, um, Barbara Ecberg. Come on up. She's going to uh quickly share um some information related to our onetime supplemental Head Start uh nutrition grant. >> Briefly, share. >> I met some of you down at the park. So, it was really nice to meet you there and also to meet you here in this setting. I'm Barbara Eber and I am on day 18 as the new Head Start director and early learning coordinator. So, I am learning a lot about uh Duluth schools and the programs that I'm leading tonight. I want to talk a little bit about a request that we would like to make from the National Head Start Office. It's a one-time Head Start supplemental nutrition grant. Go ahead, Shannon. Thank you.
113Um, the requested one-time funds for nutrition and health through the Office of Head Start is going to focus on one of four areas that Head Start has outlined. We have selected area number three, nutrition and educational resources for children in the preschool setting. Go ahead, Shannon. The requested funds will be used to promote taste and non-taste exposures for for the children in 13 classrooms. Um they will have the opportunity to taste new novel familiar fruits and vegetables paired with a literacy experience and some classroom community activities. And so, um, you heard about literacy previously, and so we're going to do the same kind of thing, but for really little people. We'll be matching those experiences with some literacy experience as well. Go ahead. Taste and non-taste, fruits, and vegetable experiences will take place two times
114per month. We're going to use the month of November to train staff at our staff training around that. And so we'll be offering those experiences December 2025 through May 2026. Go ahead. The classroom teaching staff will be guided uh both by the nutrition coordinator on Head Start's staff and the education coordinator uh in the implementation of these experiences. And as we've talked about and you've um I've heard from others tonight, um teaching little people is an art. And so we will have some suggested activities that staff can use with the literacy um the books that they'll be uh using as well. But also we want to make sure that teachers also use the art of teaching and know their children and know how to best um communicate these experiences to them. Go ahead. Parents will
115be included in this experience through take-home ideas. We're hoping to have our Child Plus platform up and running for every family. They're downloading now and we're helping them through that process um so that we can send um uploads to them, we can send recipes to them, we can send book suggestions to them through that platform. folks that that can't use the platform, don't have access to the platform, will make sure that they have some kind of paper uh piece or an email piece that they can access. Um the whole idea is to increase fruit and vegetable consumption in preschoolers. So when we have little people before they can say no when they're in elementary school, we want to make sure that we offer lots of opportunities to do that. The final activity will be a
116take-home book. Um, we've selected a couple, but we want to leave it wide open as I'm working with the policy council to see if they too have ideas um around what they would like their parents to have. Um, to work through the taste and no taste experiences. No one's asked me about no taste, but I'm hoping someone will. Um, parents will be prompted to explore taste, texture, colors, descriptive vocabulary um, in ways that would be appropriate in their home, in their family culture around fruit and vegetable consumption. Is there another slide? There's uh, it's not a huge grant. It's not a big budget. There's $2,000 for fruits and vegetables. And I based this off the July 2025 USDA food price outlook and then a budget of $3,000 for children's books, making sure that each classroom
117gets two copies of a book so that you can share with your friend at the book corner and also a copy for every family that's enrolled. and I based my number on last year's enrollment uh at the end of the program so that they can have a book that they can use with their children. We are ininding which is a um a big deal for Head Start. We're ininding the services of the teaching staff, nutrition coordinator, education coordinator, child plus communication platform. And so our total ask will be $5,000. I think that's the Shannon questions. >> Neighbor Williams. >> Um, I was going to ask about No Taste. Um, I am curious about the specific book if there are specific books picked out. And then, um, sorry, I'm asking all my questions at once. And
118then allergy considerations, >> right? And so that's why we're working with our nutrition person. they will know which children in specific classrooms have allergies and then we will base our purchase around that. So, we'll be very mindful of that and that's updated daily. I'm hearing the staff work through that with parents and as new allergies are identified as they often are in prek um parents will be able to update us on that. Um you asked about the books. So, we sort of chose um a menu of books, if you will. And what we want to do is make sure that our policy council and our teachers get to weigh in on this before we start purchasing materials because there may be sites that have other books that they would prefer. So, uh we want to
119make sure that we're hearing what folks want before we order books. But as I wrote the grant, I selected some and and got the prices for those and that's what I included in this. >> Was our third question? >> I do have one more question now. Um where do you plan to purchase the produce? >> So we we will probably have um a um purchase order and that will likely be done. what we've done in the past is that super one um and so that has been that is our plan. >> Okay. Thank you >> member Saddowski and then member Larle Camp. >> Well, and I think you were going to ask about the no >> no taste. >> Oh, yay. >> And I was curious about that, but I have another question too. >>
120Okay. So, the no taste really is um based on some research I did for this grant. and no taste are things like um I I smell it. I lick it. I eat it. That's how little kids learn how to eat different fruits and vegetables. No taste can be around. I'm identifying the color. I'm drawing a picture. I'm using those fun fruits and vegetables in the dramatic play area. We have stuff in the sensory table. So those are no taste kinds of things before they actually choose or not to taste. >> Great. Thank you. Um this just sounds really fun and I think it's so important to um make sure our little littlest learners have the opportunity to explore and I love the the no taste part too. The color it just incorporates a lot of
121different things. Um I think that the kids will really like this. Um, and I was also just really glad to hear that you were going to engage the Head Start Policy Council on that. I have sat I'm currently sit on that. So, it's really nice to meet you. I didn't get to meet you at the other event, but um I'll look forward to seeing you at the meetings. Yes. >> And they just have a lot of it's a really wonderful um engaged parent group. So, I know they'll have a lot of different thoughts that'll be really valuable. Um, and just welcome again to the district and thanks for being here. Thank you, >> member Ller Kemp. >> Yep. Thank you. Um, yep. Welcome again. Uh, I, um, I was going to, uh, mention a similar
122thing about, uh, just really important that you're engaging the parents and, uh, helping to pick those books and, uh, and they may vary across the the sites and that. So, I I I love that idea. Um, do you also So, so this is um, we have to approve it. Um, do you see any problem getting this money from the federal level right now? >> I don't. Um, I I um have reached out through the Head Start platform. >> Okay. >> And um the first round of funding of consideration begins um Monday. And so they have reached back out and asked a couple more questions. I've provided some more information and so I feel very positive about this. >> Okay. And and is this modeled after like some other um Head Start programs that have done
123something similar? >> Not to my knowledge. It's all based on my research. >> Okay. Okay. >> And in and in discussion with parents and staff. >> Okay. And just curious so that if we can reinforce this in any way um given the challenges that we're facing from the federal level on a lot of Head Start related items. So thank you. additional questions. >> See no additional questions. I want to say thank you and uh welcome again and good luck with uh the initiative. Even at my age, I I'm still not one who can eat fresh raw broccoli cuz I don't like the texture. >> Well, invite him when you have broccoli. >> Even if you dip it in ranch, I'm not still not a fan of it. Come on up. Uh we have our safe
124router school coordinator Andy Hy is here and she has a guest she can introduce and I'll turn it over uh quickly to um our coordinator coordinator Hy. >> All right. Thank you. Uh for those of you who don't know, I am the Duth Public Schools safe routes to school coordinator and as of last school year, we were awarded a planning assistance grant from MIDOT in the safe routes to school state program and we are partnering with ARDC, >> which is where Gavin comes in. >> Yeah. >> Is that better? Better. >> Yeah. Thank you, Andy Hy. Greetings, everyone. My name is Gavin Buukovvich, a planner with the Arrowhead Regional Development Commission. And like Andy said, we are the uh planning and Oh, and this is our director, Behan Tesy, as well. Beth Anne. So, uh,
125can we move on the slide, please? >> Just to the introduction slide. >> Introduction slide. Yes, there we go. Yep. ARDC has been selected as the plan development organization to assist in creating a full district safe road to school plan for DUTH public schools. Um, and like Andy said, this is a planning process funded fully under the Minnesota Department of Transportation. >> So, for those of you who are unaware, uh, we're just going to give a brief overview of what Safe Routes to School is, and it's Mind.Safe Routes. It is a program that encourages kindergarten through 8th students to walk, bike, and roll to and from school. The role encompasses skateboarders, rollerbladers, but also those students who are alter um alternately mobile and needing wheelchairs. It provides funding, planning, and educational resources for safety and
126infrastructure projects. And the goal is to improve student physical activity, safety, and well-being, as well as reduce traffic and improve air quality around our schools. The initiative includes both state and federal funding and to support a ver variety of initiatives and that's where we have our lovely six E which is what our program is based around. Uh it improves the safety and reduces traffic and air quality and we use the six E as the base of our approach. Um evaluation is figuring out what issues to address and how to make the projects effective and we do that through education. We teach students and parents traffic safety skills and benefiting walking and biking. So our PE teachers last November were all certified in the walk bike fun curriculum which was one of the curriculums provided to
127fulfill the MDE standards that are now required for pedestrian and bike safety at our elementary and middle school levels. And then we are also doing some fun encouraging events. So, we create fun events and activities to get students and families excited about walking and biking to school. So, that includes bike rodeos and walk, bike, and roll days. So, October 8th is our walk and roll to school day national. And then in February, Minnesota is the only one does that does a winter walk to school day. And then in May, we also have bike enroll to school day. Equity, making sure all students, especially those from underserved communities, benefit from the program. So over the summer at three of our elementary schools, Stow, Laura MacArthur, and Piedmont, all received walk fun camps free for any student.
128We geared it towards ages entering kindergarten up through exiting fifth grade. And we provided bikes so the students did not need to have their own bike or needed to transport a bike to or from the camp. We partnered with bikem that brought up bike fleets and size appropriate bikes for those age groups and with engagement. Listening to the community was the first thing I started students, parents and staff to build a successful program together. My first months were interviewing the principles at the elementary and middle school levels to see and hear what their greatest concerns were. And then I branched out and did PTA meetings. And this year we are starting with some community events where we engaged at the open houses for a lot of the elementary schools as well as Denfeld and Lincoln
129Park. And another one of my initiatives was meeting with local organizations to see where they feel the inequity is. So I partnered with the Duth Community School Collaborative. I met with Zeitgeist as well as Vibrant Streets DUTH so I could hear from the community perspective and not just our school's perspectives. And then engineering, that's the the big E that everyone wants fast changes now, but unfortunately is one of the slower rolling. So that is making physical improvements like better crosswalks and signs to create safer routes. And then on the next slide, it just depicts the benefits of safe routes to school. It can increases connectedness, climate benefits, and cleaner air. But then we also see better academic performance as well. So, better focus and improved behavior and fewer absences and less tardiness, which is one
130of our big initiatives for DUTH public schools. As well as improved traffic safety, safety from crime, school transportation fixes. We have some very small walk zones in Duth where some standards across the state have up to two miles for the high school. We are sitting at.7 miles in Duth right now. and also cost savings. It's expanding our walk zone will reduce our transportation budget and help in other ways as well. So, moving on to the safe routes to school timeline when it comes to the planning process, I will hand it over to Gavin. Great. Thank you so much, Andy. Yeah, so this is um our contracted or I should say ARDC's contracted scope of work. Um this is a very high level overview of our scope of work. If anyone wants a more detailed breakdown,
131it's public information. I can provide that via request. But of course, initial contact with project applicant. Me and Andy have been in communication and having frequent meetings since July and even before July. Um kickoff meetings, we were looking at holding um a steering committee large kickoff meeting probably midocctoberish. Uh just still kind of getting the wheels working on that. um due to the kind of the cadence of these projects, they kind of kick off the same time that the school year starts, which uh it's just a lot of moving parts at once, but that's of course where the planning commission comes in. Uh task three here is the uh data collection. So that'll be the really um heavy lift of ARDC and our regional partners. Uh and I'll get in a more detailed data collection
132assessment coming up here. Um and then of course the data assessment, action plan development, plan development, draft plan, local plan review, final plan review, and then our plan completion. So we'll all have um roughly four steering committee meetings over the 12 to 18month period. And then we'll kind of analyze and assess uh the progress of the plan. How is it looking? Is it reflective of the values of the DUTH schools and the DUTH community and so on so forth. And I I did want to highlight that this is um the scope of work on screen is a 12-month scope of work, which is the typical timeline for these projects. However, due to the um size of this project and the consider considerable lift, uh MDOT has granted ARDC an 18-month contract. >> This is member
133banks. I'm sorry. >> Just just a quick question. Yeah. >> So, are you all consulting or in consultation with the 6th Avenue East corridor that they're doing because I I know all of that's changing and we have Meyers Wilkins that's on the other side of that. >> Uh are you involved in any way with that project? >> I can maybe touch on that. Um so due to the organizational structure of ARDC, there's three divisions. uh regional planning division, the metropolitan interstate council and the aging division. It's the metropolitan interstate council and then the folks at Zeitgeist that are more involved in the 6th Avenue East redesign. However, we share an office with the Mick uh the Metropolitan Interstate Council and they also have staff that are going to be dedicating staff time to this project
134as well. So, it is uh on our radar and a component, you know, it'll be addressed in the final planning document and the planning process. It was a project that was already approved of before my position was even created. So yeah. Um and then I just wanted to touch on we were >> I have another question. Member Sowski. >> Okay. >> Sorry. Just really quick. How will this You had said something about and this this is all great. We we need safe routes to school. I love thinking about different ways kids can get to school and I see all the benefits here. But I'm just curious because a couple years ago, Assistant Superintendent Bonds worked really hard to make sure that our buses were a little bit like they would pick up closer right to
135the kids' homes. How does how does that dovetail with this? Just something you said made me think about assistant superintendent Bonds. >> Yes. So we are uh when we pulled together the our safe routes to school committee, we are including transportation. So busing will be part of the factor when it comes to all of this. Yes. Mhm. >> And then when it comes to this 18-month contract, it was unique because Mandot wanted to fund Duth Public Schools, but with their funding pool, they were not able to approve the 12-month contract because it would have been over half of the funding for all of the projects. And that's why they approved into the next fiscal year, which is very unique. And they were just so excited to see DUTH apply because they need they see the
136need here. Member Mel. >> Uh just very quickly and uh following up on what member banks mentioned just with the different projects around L school. I know that the county and the city in the district have been working on some uh assessment around that area. Is there any impacts on your work uh regarding that? So I am on that team. So we are providing that voice from the school district as well as the principal Eve. We we are on the team. we are getting that input from our perspective as well as we know there are a lot of others um and I actually have a meeting with them on Tuesday so I'll be there and we we understand LOL is a a beast and has a lot of problems and that will be addressed and
137when it comes to this plan you'll see how we can use the plan with city and county infrastructure >> member Saddowski >> yeah just another um project that I don't think it's been approved or anything, but there's several um leaders in our community talking about making First Street a slow street. >> So hopefully you know about that. I just want to make sure you knew about that because that would be really great for some of our ALC students. Um you know, our district service center and that sort of thing. So >> yeah, at ARDC, um me and uh excuse me, ARDC staff have a pretty open line of uh communication with uh city transportation staff. Um believe we can move on to the next slide. All right. Yep. So the really fun part is the
138uh data collection overview here. Um so on the left side here I have kind of the data points that we're going to be working with uh staff at Duth Public Schools to collect uh parent caregiver surveys. You know this is usually done via an online uh portal um whichever that may be. I already have some templates developed up. It's just kind of the boilerplate language. You know what keeps your kids from bike walking or biking to school? Do you have any uh anxieties about giving about letting them walk or bike to school? so on and so forth. Um, student travel tallies that's uh conducted in classroom. It's just um paper document that kind of outlines how teachers can just ask, you know, kids, how did you get to school today? Uh, did you walk? Did
139you bike? Did you ride with your parents in a car? Did you take a bus? And it's pretty simple but effective data collection activity because you know kids just raise their hands and then uh pick up drop off observations. So that'll really analyze uh morning and after school um any sort of conflicts in the pickup drop off zone. You know, are school buses um obstructing view for pedestrians crossing the street? Are parents uh parking in front of uh crosswalks? Um is there unsafe driving behavior? Um general level of congestion, so on so forth. and then uh evaluate eventually that'll be uh evaluated if there has to be any infrastructure or policy changes regarding student pickup and drop off. Um the student population density maps the that's actually a really great planning tool. Um so we're
140in the process of uh getting a formal data collection data request I should say from the uh school here and that'll analyze where um all the student addresses are of course with any you know personal identifiers removed and then look at the community as a whole to kind of figure out where the pockets of school age children are living and then we can kind of analyze figure out which routes they are most likely taking to the school site and And uh when uh later on when we conduct the walk audits, we can kind of focus on these pockets in the neighborhoods and can assess uh sidewalk conditions, crosswalk availability, uh signage, uh any obstructions, so on so forth. Uh school environment and policy assessment. So that's uh something that will be filled out internally through
141I assume school administrative staff. So that just highlights any uh policies that the school have may have that would encourage or discourage children from walking or biking. You know, is there any policy against uh railroad tracks uh bridges uh so on so forth or or like what was uh referenced earlier uh 6th Avenue East which was a hazard zone for students walking from uh central hillside over Myers Wilkins. And then a walk by God events is uh I'll organize a small group of folks uh myself, Andy, um any other team members that are involved and we'll just walk around, take pictures, write down what we see. You know, everyone has different um thoughts, opinions, and perspectives on what um a cohesive bike and pedestrian network could look like. I will also say that we will
142invite the other people from that community. So we when we do this for Stow, we're going to invite people from Stow's community and when we do Homecraftoft Lakewood, we're inviting people from the comm community to join us because they will provide that additional perspective that hey, we walk these sidewalks, we walk these streets every day. This is something that is a concern. And then we're also hitting the streets and noticing, you know what, there's a really scary dog at this corner. I can see where maybe a kindergartener might not want to walk past it, >> right? Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Um, and then, oh, was there a question? Oh, go ahead. Um, some other data collection that uh will be conducted internally at ARDC is uh collecting crash data for the past 10 years. uh
143speed data, average daily traffic counts, um and really any qualitative data obtained through uh community meetings. I know we uh made a pretty good effort to get almost all the school open houses to kind of do some tableabling and just asking parents and caregivers general questions about walking and biking to school and then uh really any other data relevant to the planning process. I know I've done I think this is the fourth fourth similar plan I've worked on in the past mostly for small rural Minnesota communities and really any sort of feedback from parents, caregivers, public works. Uh the police department is also a very good um partner and they have a lot of valuable insight regarding um unsafe driving behavior in certain parts of towns especially proximity to school sites. Um next slide please.
144All right. So, yeah, just kind of the final project uh after the 12 to 18month planning process is uh it's going to be a document that outlines a strategic plan to make Duth neighborhoods safer and more accessible for kids walking and biking to school. Um this will be through uh programming in the school in the communities and then through any uh infrastructure improvements and then this plan can serve as a strategic tool for improving the entire pedestrian and bike network in the city of Duth and then the uh school sites that are a little bit further out into St. Luke County. >> All right. So when we have that plan, that really helps us when applying for grants and having that structured assessment tool. We went through all 13 sites and you know what, we
145saw these needs. This is where we apply for these safe routes to school boost grants. They're for communities with existing safe routes to school plans that are updated. These grants fund non-infrastructure projects such as education, encouragement, and promotional activities to keep walking and biking safe and fun. So for an example, we have a bike fleet in our district that is geared towards secondary students. So those bikes are larger and inaccessible for our elementary students. I would apply for a boost grant to get a bike fleet that is elementary students sized and we would house that and other schools in our district would be able to check that out and use it for their PE programs or if they're doing outdoor education as well. and then state funded safe routes to school infrastructure grants. So the
146plan's going to outline, you know what, we re really recommend a crosswalk here or we really recommend curb bumpouts. We can use this plan as saying, hey, we did the research, we did the studies required. could you please now utilize that information and we can apply for funding for the city and potentially our counties to make changes around our schools and so improve access and safety on walking, biking, and rolling to schools, sidewalks, trails, and improved crossings. >> Great. And then I can uh address the active transportation program here. It's uh another MDOT grant program for projects that increase walking and biking. Not specific to the safe routes of schools, but you know, you can still use it to apply for this funding pool. Um and future funds are expected to cover both the planning,
147infrastructure, and non-infrastructure projects. Um there's also the Greater Minnesota Transportation Alternatives Program. U it's open to all communities in greater Minnesota for projects including bicycle and pedestrian facilities. Um, and also want to note that the Greater Minnesota Transportation Alternives Program requires a 20% local match. And then, um, just discussing some of these funding opportunities in a little bit more depth. Uh, so from my perspective in the past couple years when I've been working on these, the uh, safe routes to schools boost grants are not very competitive. You know, if Mandot can uh, fund all the requests they receive, they will. and then you know they don't have the pool of funding to really meet all those requests then they'll look at it from a from an equity standpoint. Um however the uh say for us
148a school infrastructure grant that's definitely more competitive. I've helped communities write these grant applications before and they really look at you know everything they really want everything almost 100%. And then um really funding for safe routes to schools, any bicycle or pedestrian initiative. It doesn't have to be department of transportation related. I've seen people apply for a department of health funds to kind of um satisfy these planning objectives. And I've also seen uh communities especially in rural Minnesota use uh DNR grants especially for trail systems and what whatnot around the schools. Oh, I think we have questions. >> Yes, we do. Uh, member Williams, then I'll come over to member Lim. >> Um, you can go first. We might have the same question. >> Okay. Um, well, one is uh this is so exciting to
149me. Um, I uh was involved when in another safe routes to school when >> our former congressman Overstar helped pass this bill to get the funding and then it was a similar effort. But I I want to say it was in 2005 six7 somewhere in there for DUTH but that I was involved. But I it's it's very exciting. I I love the way the community input that you um talked about and and I know from former processes have used um uh but with your experience Gavin and Andy um and having it housed in our school district. I just that is so important. That wasn't the case when I was involved with that initiative. Um but um I wanted to uh so so I'm just really excited about this and and I remember some of the
150changes that we were able to make because of that community input uh and your uh resources. Um I was um wondering uh if we have people that we know that we think would be great for you know providing input um because they're bikers, because they are caregivers or parents. How do we get those names to you? And then secondly, some of these events that you talked about, kickoff meetings, can you keep us posted so we can help you turn out people um many of us have many networks and I think networks of people we know that would be interested in this um parents that we know uh that have contacted us or been involved in some different ways. So, can you let us know that? So, really, yay. um how can we help support it
151and yay that we have your level of experience doing this with us. >> I would like to add on to that that one of our more um it wasn't a high level scope of work but ARDC does have to set up kind of like a public communications or public relations about you know keeping DUTH residents informed about the progress on this project. So when that kind of uh becomes more developed, you know, this information about kickoff meetings, meeting notes, meeting agendas, uh planned data collection activities will be um more easily accessible both to the board here and of anyone in the duth area. >> Please feel free to give anyone my contact information. It's Andrea Hy at ISD79. And I want to hear all the perspectives from parents and any community members. We are looking
152for volunteer support when it comes to these walk bike fun events and really the more community push we have behind it the greater the likelihood we have for funding when it comes to those grant applications as well. >> Excellent. We >> Yeah. Um I guess my questions are similar and go along with but they weren't identical. if you could repeat the walk, bike, and roll dates cuz you said some specific dates, but wait cuz I'm not ready to write them down yet. Um, and then as far as the steering committee, is that the three of you or are there are you taking are you taking families and is that what you're asking for when you're asking for names like committee members and parents or >> So, when it comes to the steering committee, we have
153representation from all 13 schools. Okay. Some of them have the principles. Some of them have the PE teachers or when it comes to the crossing guard coordinator, we do think we need to limit it just to a few members from each school because otherwise that gets a little excessive. However, I will encourage you to reach out to your local school to see if you can join your school's committee because these schools definitely need support when it comes to pushing the mentality of walking and rolling versus driving. So, it's going to be a community push that is going to take some effort and having that community voice already will help immensely. >> And then to add on to that, um the overarching steering committee and we imagine that we'll have smaller committee meetings per school site,
154but the overarching steering committee like Andy said, will consist of representatives from the schools and then there will also be a MDOT representation, St. Louis County highways representation, city representation, St. Louis County Public Health. Um I believe Zeitgeist has staff that will be involved as well. And then off the top of my head, I believe that encompasses all the steering committee members as well as the Metropolitan Interstate Council. So, and then we're also inviting uh staff from the DTA to join as well and then city public works staff. >> That's great. >> Yeah. Um, and then you mentioned um the bike fleet, which I've never heard of before, and I think that's awesome. How do students access that? >> Yes. So, currently the bike fleet is only utilized during school time, and that is something
155that I'm hoping to expand, at least the elementary one, we could utilize during some bike camps. And we are hoping to expand some bike camps to the middle school level this summer. and we are partnering with Ski Hut and Continental to hopefully partner and get those bikes, but then also, hey, we're buying bikes from you. Do you want to help with mainten maintenance for those bikes? And I was also looking at applying to a Northland Foundation grant. They are $10,000 minimum and a bike fleet is around 15. And so those are quarterly grants and so hopefully we can get a fleet sooner than the January deadlines for Mindot. So hopefully we could get one sooner for our district. >> That's great. Thank you. >> Yeah. And now I'll go back to can you repeat the
156walk, bike, and roll or walk, bike, and fun dates? >> Yes. So the walk and roll to school day for the fall is technically October 8th and most of our schools will celebrate that except for Laura MacArthur will be doing October 1st because their picture day is October 8th. And >> that was Laura MacArthur is doing a different >> um Laura MacArthur is doing the first. >> Okay. Thank you. Yep. And then I don't have the exact date in February, but February is winter walk to school day. And last year we had three new schools participate in that event. Previously it was just Congden Elementary. We added Laura MacArthur, Stowe, and Piedmont. And Laura MacArthur did a beautiful luminary walk at night around their schools. So we're hoping to do that again this year. >>
157And then sorry, one more followup. Um, you said Minnesota is the only one that does that or Duth? >> Just Minnesota. >> Minnesota is the only of the 50 United States. >> Okay. But like nationally, this is a push that October 8th. Yep. Okay. >> And then there is the bike and roll to school day in May. And that's typically either the first or second Wednesday of of May. And it kind of just depends on weather cooperation for Duth in particular. Thank you so much. >> You're welcome. >> So, I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to uh coordinator Hail uh for all of her efforts and thank you to ARDC for partnering with us. I always uh smile when I think about Andy uh in this role and I've shared this
158with her before. If you you can't tell that she takes this very seriously, she does. and and and I want the community to know that we can, you know, walk a chew gum at the same time and really focusing on some things that have been a need in the district for some time in terms of really thinking about how students get to students and families get uh get to school and and get to home. And so I know that she really takes this very seriously and um I really appreciate everything you're doing to, you know, really improve safe routes to school um and and access to school because it it's really important um for our students. And so just thank you. And um it looks like the superintendent just heard a ding. So I know
159John has something to share or superintendent Maggus has something to share. >> No, I just I just wanted to say thanks for the presentation and of course uh safe walks to school safe to school is incredibly important to us. As you know uh we we work to limit our uh our bus routes too so that we have greater bus routes. We also have our our bus passes this year uh in addition to what's been commented on. And just a uh little heads up as well, the um related to the safe routes at LOL Elementary, uh we just had a report today that there there's no line there's no no more a line for the uh pickup and drop off anymore due to the change in enrollment. So, those are are positive changes, not necessarily completely
160related to this, but I really appreciate Andy's work and the work of the team. Uh, and also the presentation prior, except for when Anthony was uh making disparaging comments about raw broccoli. I do I do like raw broccoli as well. >> Thank you. >> Right. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Next up, we have um our principal and special assignment, Principal Sibo. Come on up. um she will provide a presentation related to the district safety and crisis response and an update relating to it. Um so Dette and the team have been really really working hard again focusing on um all things safety and of course we just had a presentation related to safety and with all of the things that are happening nationally as well as even recently um in Minnesota. I mean this is
161a a great time to have this conversation. So, I'll turn it quickly to Dette because I know she has a thorough presentation that she's going to be really uh succinct on. >> I can get this done in 30 seconds. Um, I chose to go last because I knew this would be a big one with a lot of questions. So, it's okay. Um, what I would suggest is that if you can wait till the end with questions, I might answer some before we get there. So, um, thank you for letting me come today. As you know, uh Lexi Nef left us to go to Saints Glasta, um where she's, I don't know, enjoying the high life. Um uh so that role is still open. Uh will be filled contractually by IEA again. And so this the
162workplace safety pieces of it are still kind of in limbo. Um, but I wanted to talk through what our structure looks like and uh quickly review our response protocol and then uh share briefly the reunification planning that we shared with staff. So this slide shows where we've landed as a district. Uh we had a lot of changes last year as we had some chaos in communication and response and we really needed to get our act together and help support our leadership teams at the district and site levels. So where we've landed is that there is a core planning team that really digs into all of the pieces of crisis response and safety planning. Uh that landed with four of us last year. uh me as a principal on special assignment, communications officer Adele Wellins, mental
163health coordination with Todd McGawan, uh and safety with Lexi who's gone. So, IEA when the contract starts there will be part of that planning process. And so we really help guide a lot of the instructions and tasks that need to get done in and out of the district EOC, emergency operations committee and the site EOCC's which we have grossly neglected for years. We are really trying to give them some structure around what they should be evaluating and doing uh at their sites, communicating that back to the district and around uh mental health recovery crisis team has been in existence for forever in this district. uh it has grown and uh unfortunately by necessity uh but it includes uh Todd McGawan and I co-chair that and then there are team reps from social workers, counselors, school
164psychologists from uh many many schools across the district and they are always ready to respond and offer support at the site level. Um and we can help connect sites with community response as well. the district crisis communication evolved last year and became something that I think was uh just a really great resource and and system for us. And so we have instructed sites to contact one person at the district level, not five of us because five of us then are going to be responding in different ways. So they have been instructed to communicate with their director whenever something is going on, whenever they need to use a response protocol, whenever they're hearing of things going, I could give you stories already. we're on day three. Um, but they will contact Jen or Brenda primarily. If
165they don't get an immediate response to them, then they move to me or someone else on the list. Whoever gets that notification then sends out to our district crisis communication text group. Here's an update. Here's what the sites need. Here's what we're doing. We'll let you know. And so then we support each other in being ready for communications and being ready for uh media releases, whatever that might be. uh that has worked really well and allows us to help support the site in an more efficient way and then support our district response team as well so that we're not all doing the same thing at once and that ended up working really well for us. So that's been great. Uh new in 2526 uh we are going to be a prepare crisis prevention and intervention
166training um site. Todd McGau and I became trainers. That was a long process this summer, but we now can train our site teams uh in prepare. And prepare is from the uh school psychologist association, and it really focuses on the unique needs of schools in preparation, mitigation, prevention for crisis response. Um if you care, it's prevent, reaffirm, evaluate, provide interventions, respond, and examine. We can dig into that on a later date, but um it aligns really well with what all of our community partners are doing, but really focuses on prevention um both in mental health in how our sites are prepared and set up and security there. And so we are really excited to have this as a resource. It is a super structured way for schools to walk through all aspects of crisis response
167and prevention. uh standard response protocol. This is year two of the I love you guys response protocol. It continues to grow nationally. It has been a fantastic asset for us. All of their resources are free. Um we have uh done, I think, a really good job as a district in pushing out what those responses are. So, you'll see um posters. Of course, I don't see one right now, but the new flip charts are colorcoded coordinated. Our staff should all have a response card on their lanyard. So, if you're in a building, we'll get you one of those, too. There's some on the counter right out here, but if you're in a building and someone announces that we're going into secure, not only will they tell you what that is, but you have it on your
168card. So, um the clarity of announcements, no codes anymore. That's been a long time. We are very clear if it's a drill or not a drill. Uh we encourage staff and students to use those announcements and any other information. So, you're still not um narrowed into just following instructions. You're still empowered to make decisions with everything, you know. Uh and then the the one add-on that we are starting training, well, we started last year, but we've really pushed out training is for the reunification method, also from I love you guys. Also just a really incredible uh resource for us. So, as a brief reminder, the standard response protocol, we're going to go through these slides pretty quickly. The shelter response is when we need to shelter in the building usually for severe weather. Up here
169it's tornado. Rarely tornadoes up here, but we all practice this and we are required by state law to practice at least once per year. So during National Weather Awareness Week, we do that in the spring and we will follow directions for those shelter in place um by by building. Hold is probably our most frequent response and it's anytime we want to keep hallways clear. Whether it's there was an incident in a hallway, an altercation between students, a medical emergency, and we need emergency responders to come in. But it's keeping students in classrooms, they can keep teaching, doing what they were doing, keep going in the gym, but we want everyone out of the hallway until the hold is lifted. Uh the only change there is if the bell rings, you still have to stay where
170you are until the hold is lifted. So otherwise things are running as normal in the building. Secure is another increasingly common one. When something is happening in the community near a school building, whether uh law enforcement is getting ready to serve a search warrant, they give us a heads up and then the building might go into secure to keep everyone inside the building. There are various levels of secure. We might say that uh we will let people in and out through the office only with a a guided system. But there are times where we we we are keeping everyone in the building. Uh period. So when a building is insecure, that's what that means. We lock the doors, everyone stays inside, but everything inside the building is really running just as normal. Bells are running,
171classes are running, lunch is running. We're just staying in the building. In a lockdown, uh this is a common term now. Uh lock uh we will say lock down, lock the doors, lights off, out of sight. Uh we want everyone to stay closed, quiet, and safe, ready to respond if necessary. So we practice four lockdown drills and one secure drill every year. Also by state mandate, evacuation, uh when it's safest to be outside the building, we practice five of these a year. This is our fire drill. It's getting everyone out of the building quietly and calmly, safely away from traffic. Uh we want to work on those things. There are cases where we would be evacuating in a crisis situation and that would look and feel a lot different, but we practice it so everyone
172knows where to go, where to meet outside the building, um, and how to watch for and account for all of their students. In an evacuation, oh, back one. In an evacuation that's not a fire drill, we issue some additional reminders. Don't walk home. Remind your students not to walk home. Don't try to get in or leave in a car. you're causing an issue with emergency response and it's just unsafe for everyone. We have to stick together and then at the evacuation site, that's the first time we'll we'll try to account for everyone um as we continue with our response. An evacuation can lead to reunification, and we'll talk through that process and what the difference is when there's a crisis event at a site that requires us to evacuate. um whether it's a chemical spill,
173an airplane cr, there's all a car crashing into a building, you know, you can think of a lot of things all the way up to and including uh everyone's worst case scenario, which would be a violent intruder event at a school. So, something happens at that site that means we have to evacuate sometimes as a large group, sometimes in spurts, sometimes with police escorts, but evacuation happens. We are now at the evacuation site and we can't go back to school to release students. So we have to move to a a different site for a number of reasons. We call that the reunification site. And from there we implement a massive and very important process of intentionally connecting students back with their families. It's important for us to be as organized and prepared for reunification as
174we can be. The goal is to connect students with their families 4 hours from the start of reunification. So when those buses get to the reunification site, it seems like a really long time, that four hours, but that's a lofty goal. There are stories of schools where it has taken more than 24 hours to reconnect students just because of the chaos that could be happening. So it's a 4-hour goal. Uh there's a lot of things that need to happen to support everyone at the reunification site through that process. Uh communication is really important. We want to set expectations. We're giving everyone clear and frequent updates because it makes everyone feel better. The updates might be mundane, but you're going to hear from someone frequently. The family experience is important. We have a new video that's
175linked in here. I won't show it right now, but um it's it's fantastic. I love the video. Uh it's brief. It's succinct. It clearly states again and again, don't go to the school. Don't go to the evacuation site. Wait for us to tell you where reunification is. Get your ID ready. make sure you have other students supported at home. All of those things are really clear in that video. Um, and we really uh appreciate the work that was done for that. It requires a lot of team members. We'll talk through that in a little bit, too, but it's possible you're going to get that call if you're able to come and help with reunification. Here's what to do. Mental health is important in the minutes after, the hours after, and the days and weeks after
176for everyone who is involved in the incident, whether they were at the impacted site or not. And we know that whenever there's a major crisis event like that, community support in and out is very important as well. Uh we can click past this because you should have all gotten this and you should all have the link for it now, but you can click again, Shannon. Thank you. Something new this year, uh as noted in the family video, is that it is really important to keep your emergency contact list updated. and we acknowledge that there are families that don't have anyone who can be their emergency contact. We know that's the case. Uh we will be ready to support them in this event too. But if you can make this a fairly deep list, if you
177are out of town, if you were in the cities for a meeting, if you can't leave your own students in a classroom, you need to have other people who are designated that could pick up your student in the case of emergency. And so we'll have instructions for parents. It is really easy to update those contacts in Infinite Campus. Uh last year I think we only had one or two contacts. It's now five or six deep. Um I think you have six spots to list emergency contacts. We will remind parents every year if not every semester. Go in and check update this list. Maybe you don't talk to this person anymore. You're not dating them or your parents moved out of town and they're not that person. So, we'll remind uh about the importance of updating
178those emergency contacts. This is an example of what the reunification card is that parents will get. They are already copied and ready to go on really bright paper. Uh it's just here for you to get an idea of what that looks like. So, when parents arrive, they get this, they fill it out, we check their ID, and then they go wait for reunification. The next slide is the other half, which really walks them through the process briefly. We are working with our ESL or EL department um who is helping us identify which h which languages we need to have it translated in. So which of our families don't uh English is not their primary language rather than trying to have one for every language. We want to or or only the big ones. We want
179to make sure we're ready for all of our families. The impacted site immediately um is establishing their on-site incident command. None of this is new. Uh, classroom evacuation can be absolute chaos. Everyone's leaving the building like a fire drill. Everyone's leaving the building in spurts. If if there's a violent intruder happening if you lock down and after the incident, police are clearing the building. That classroom evacuation can take a very long time. Then they go to the secure assembly area, uh, which looks different for every site. We need to work with the police department and our sites to update our evacuation sites. They're not all ideal. It should never be another school for example and in a lot of cases that's what it is for us. So we're working through that. Um but they're going
180to the evacuation site and then impacted site gets ready to be transported. So uh the process is happening around them getting ready to transport them to the reunification site. This gives you an example of how important the site is. Um it is no great secret. It's not a surprise but our our ideal site is the deck. They've been working with us really closely. Um, we've had walkthroughs there. We've had meetings with them. We know what it will feel like. We know who to contact. So, ideally, that's our space. And there's there are times where it wouldn't work if the incident is there near there, if the train derailment. I mean, there's times that that wouldn't work for us, but in most cases, our goal is there because it's it serves all of the needs. The
181parent experience is really what you see in red there. Um, they will come in, they'll be greeted, super friendly greeters. If that's you, great. They'll be handed the card. They'll have a big area with tables and pens to fill out the card. Then they'll hand it to an ID checker and they'll go into the parent or guardian waiting area where we will also have staff ready to support them. Leaving that room, they might need to go to reunification. So, when we're ready to connect them with their student, um, it's possible that they'll go out and come back from a notification room. Hey, we've heard your student went home with this person. Can we verify this? Uh worst case scenario, we can account for your student. Let's work through that together. Or your student was injured
182or worse. And here's the process and here's your support team for that. Uh it's also possible that that investigations would be happening on site while this is going on, whether it's with students or parents. So that uh is another thing that they might be coming and going from. But if they go to reunification, they leave from reunification. Having privacy rooms. This is going to be a really intense process for everyone involved. Having a lot of mental health support is important. Sometimes they're going to need a room and they're going to need space and they're going to need some support and we need to be ready for that. Uh, anywhere you see a red arrow here means that we have a team member escorting them. So, our students are not alone or are until they're out
183the door. One of our team members is with them, including while their parents with are with them. we don't leave anyone unattended anywhere because things happen. Um that reunification in and of itself would be a really emotional time and we want to make sure that they have somebody with them until they're ready to check out and leave. Uh the reunification area is where the parent and students would be reconnected again. More privacy rooms are needed. That accountability and exit uh is the last check out. So, we would take their card from the staff member, sign them out, mark the time, uh give some positive words, whatever information we can give them as they leave. Uh it's important that our impacted site arrives out of view of parents. We don't want anyone running to get their
184kids, out of view of the media. Uh the tech, it couldn't be a more ideal. They can literally pull into Amsoil Arena to drop off in their in a bus if we need them to. So, um, but having that area really private and and out of view is important for a lot of reasons. Where the students are, they'll be supported in there with snacks and water and hygiene supplies and first aid and entertainment and whatever we can do for and with them. The impacted site staff is also supported. They're there to help monitor their students, but we know that they're going to have needs in there as well. uh and I will talk later on about the unique needs of some of our uh higher needs uh students and how we will support them and
185their programs and their families on the way. So I think that's all I want to say about that slide. This list is just an overall view of how many different agencies are involved in the planning of our reunification but also in the implementation and understanding that this is a communitywide massive event. Um and so all of these people will have a role on that day and in the before and after. The impacted site includes all student from that site and all staff from that site. So if we evacuate and take everybody, it's everybody. It's food service, it's maintenance, it's everyone who's on site, student, teachers, volunteers who were there, you are all going and we are accounting for everyone who was at the site so that we're ready to support them and make sure we
186know where everyone is. um we want to support them as an impacted person as well. Uh and so we're ready to take over for them and supervising students whatever that might be. Uh but those that's what the impacted site is. The reunification team, the leadership roles will be pre-desated. So the leaders of each group know should ideally know ahead of time a little bit better about what their process and role is. But everyone else who comes to help doesn't need to know anything. It is very clear. We told staff when we trained them, you don't need to remember any of this. We're just telling you this to make you feel better. That we have a process. You'll have an idea in your head of what it would look and feel like, but you don't have
187to remember any of this. The process is so clearly laid out, clean and easy and quick. Um I have a a screen in here in a little bit that shows you exactly what your name tag would look like and it's got the directions right on it. So, uh it really is geared and set up for anyone to be able to come and help. the reunification team. Uh so the call would go out to all of other sites to please send anyone who you can free up. Ideally, we want a lot of mental health. So we want our counselors, social workers, school psyches to be there to come. Um but we'll we we need everyone whether you can free up teachers, paras, clericals, that call will go out and ask and we talk to our staff.
188Uh you'll see that on a slide here about how to handle that if you're uncomfortable with any part of it. But we will need a a large team and we'll need to be ready to sub out if somebody needs a break, if somebody's had a confrontation and needs to leave, or if somebody's just stressed and needs to go home. So, if we ask a staff member to report to help and they're uncomfortable with what we've asked them to do, we want them to speak up. I don't think I could be a parent greeter. I don't think I could be a reunifier, whatever that is. I'm afraid of kindergarteners. Please don't put me in the student room. High schoolers are big and smelly and scary. Please don't make me go in there. But speak up. We
189don't want you to We don't want to cause additional trauma um or undue stress. And so we want you to feel okay with what we've asked you to do. It's possible something's going on in that person's life physically, medically, uh mentally, whatever that that they just know this I can't do this right now. Speak up. Tell them. We might ask you to go cover in another classroom so another staff member can come, but we we don't want to cause harm. If you have a family member, whether it's staff or students, we do not want you there to work. You will need to be there to support your family member. Uh we acknowledge that it's going to be hard for anyone and everyone who helps. No matter how ready you think you are, there is such
190thing as secondary trauma, and you will feel the stress of the day, and we understand that everybody's got a different background coming in there with us. we we won't ask questions. All you have to do is say, "I can't do that today." And that's okay. Uh this is a quick overview of some of the roles. You don't really need to dig into that. We we talked a little bit about some of these with staff that, you know, if you're going to be a greeter, we need you to be someone who can stay pretty positive, who can stay calm when people around you are very elevated and stressed. Uh mental health support, it's not you. If you're not trained and certified to do that, we will provide additional the prepare model provides additional training for crisis
191mental health response for our providers. Um, we have said, and I don't remember if I have it on another slide or not, but the only people in the child room can be ISD 709 employees. We don't want to put someone in there if we haven't background check them. Uh, and so our own mental health support team will will go there first. it'll be much easier for us to place community mental health support out with parents out in the other areas. Um, but in that room, it will only be uh verified ISD79 staff. This is an example of what that tag looks like. So, the front of your tag would say that you're a reunifier. This job, for example, will get a a slip from the the reunification lead. They'd go find the student, come back,
192reconnect them. they would stay with them until they're on the way out the door and they can hand it to the exit director. I will say that ideally the exit director, you can go to the next slide. Um, ideally the exit director is the site principal. That's the only impacted site person that might have a role. U, but it is believed that being able to see that face that everyone should know on the way out the door who can be reassuring. We'll talk to you soon. Here's resources if you need them. But ideally, that person is there just as the greater is the wrong word. They won't have a task to do. They're not going to be taking the cards or doing those things. They'll have help with that. But just being a face as
193as that family leaves the door will be important if that principal is able to do that. Uh so, uh team members would check in, bring your school ID, you'll come to the check-in table. We want everybody there and ready to go before the students arrive. And so, every area should be ready. We've gone to get snacks and water. All of these things are where they need to be. Uh you'll get a safety vest. Everybody loves those. And any materials you need, whether it's those signin sheets, whether it's snacks for students, we will ask that you keep an eye on each other, other volunteers, and and let us know if you need a break. And we acknowledge that it will be important to take care of the reunification team just like it will be important to
194take care of that impacted site site staff afterwards. Special needs students. So, um, we will be doing a, uh, I will be doing a long training in November at our PD day with our setting three teams to really dig into what does it look and feel like to get ready for a crisis event with our highest need students, with the highest medical needs, with sensory needs, with uh, mental health needs, with behavioral needs. How can we safely get them to the reunification site? So, they are uh moved from evacuation to reunification last. And the reason there is that if we get all the other students out, it's a quieter experience. They're more supported. Um it's just a little less chaotic for them. So, they're the last ones getting to the reunification site, but they're the
195first ones out. We need them back with their families and at home as quickly as possible. Uh we will work hard to get any unique equipment needed for them, whether it's feeding tubes, changing supplies, um medications, all of those things. The special services team will be working to help get that there for the incoming students, but we want them out as quickly as possible. Uh at the deck at our primary site, as you saw on the map, uh ideally they have a separate location where wheelchair vans can pull up, but they're going out of a really quiet controlled entrance. um they'll have extra special services people there to support them. We have special bins for those rooms with some sensory equipment, but uh we know that they need to be the first out because they
196are the first uh they're at most most risk of medical uh mental health harm uh because of their unique needs. And so that's the goal there is last in first out of the reunification site. They'll have their own coordinator. they'll be contacted that these are small groups of students who are usually in close contact with case managers and so the case managers can text here's the door we're ready whatever um but we're ready for that as well when it's all done I think this is my last slide but uh and it moves into recovery mode the process is pretty good about that the prepare model is really robust in that and how do we support uh all of the people who were involved in this knowing that even the people who are leading it are
197going to need support as well. How do we support secondary trauma for that reunification team? How do we acknowledge the the response from the community and the community needs? You're seeing a lot of this in a very public way from the events of last week. Uh and they're all navigating this in Minneapolis right now. So, how how do you care for the primary trauma needs for those at the impacted site? Mental health supports ready to go. uh we have a tremendous amount of community mental health support uh including crisis response and so we uh are really appreciative of how great this community is in that way. Frequent updates are important. You see that all over whatever that may be whether it's mundane or not. We don't want to leave every anyone in silence in the
198dark. We will encourage everyone who was impacted or part of the reunification team to stay connected with someone who was in a similar role so you have someone to talk to who knows what you went through and have a person there who had nothing to do with it who can be your venting place um when you need to talk things out and we will help make those connections if needed. Uh the recovery team will intentionally check in on impacted staff. We don't want to risk anyone being home in silence. there will be a time where we can't go back to school, whether it was a train derailment or a plane crash or a violent incident. It's going to take time potentially to remedy that and get everyone back. And so, we don't want anyone to
199feel lost and alone. So, check-ins and frequent updates from the district level will be important. And that is, how did I do 30 seconds? Um, uh, you know what, and I think that these are the things we lose sleep over, but they're the hardest things to carve out time to plan for. We all have to be ready to walk in the door and teach reading. This can go by the wayside because we don't have time for it. And hopefully it's something we never ever have to use, but we'll all sleep better at night knowing that it's ready. We have a pretty extensive reunification kit ready to go here in a room. So, you just go in and grab all the bins. There's tables and tents and all of the cards are printed and ready to
200go. batteries and charging cables and extension cords and duct tape and uh the I love you guys uh program gives you a list of all the things that you really should have in your reunification box kit, we bought it. It's ready. Um we also acknowledge that we're the biggest district in the region and that should something happen in any other school, we stand ready to support in that same way. Uh and so as this gets polished and done, we have offered to share it back out with our area schools that are much smaller and would have a much harder time planning for this, let alone implementing it. So that's one of our next steps. We have also been working really closely with the police department uh and county sheriff's department. They've been advising us on
201a lot of things along the way uh and really talking through what will everyone be doing? How will they be ready to support us? Uh we've talked through the the role of the SRO that they're probably a primary responder at the incident, they can't come to the reunification site. Even though our students and families know them best, they can't come. They have their own role now as a police officer. And so how do they free up the rest of the SRO's who are comfortable working with students and families and how do they support us at that site? So we've talked through a lot of those things and and feel very fortunate that we've had so much support from all of our community partners. So before we take uh questions, I I want to kick us
202off by saying also thank you to Dette. I know we you know concise, very thorough as always and so just want to say thank you for everything you've done to you know really focus on safety. Dette has principal Sibo has uh wears many hats and this is just one of her areas of responsibility and she takes it extremely seriously as you can hear and that's one thing that I've always appreciated uh something she took serious when uh she was a principal at East you know she was the one who was leading this effort um her and um I think uh Tom Tuskin a little bit but then >> there was four principles >> four you know others were leading it but Dette really embraced it and that's where um it stayed with her um and
203as and she came >> to teach this for incoming principles. So it's kind of >> she did and so um so again as uh we wanted you all to know as well as the community know that just like academics we take safe safety very seriously as well. We put a number of new things in place to you know um increase our safety procedures and this is just one of those efforts and and it required time in investment of resources where there's positions um the one that we're going to fill that's uh vacated now with Lexi Nev. So that's a a position that's vacated at this point in time, but we're going to um plan to, you know, you know, consider replacing that um in some fashion. Um so it it's it's really needed. So we
204are really taking again safety really seriously in the district. So I want to say thank you to Dette, Principal Sibo, for all of our efforts. And I'll start off with member uh Williams. >> Um you were correct. you answered all of the questions that I had as it went on, but um my memory is short and I wasn't standing with my pencil. So, um can you remind me the EOC, what does that stand for? Emergency >> emergency operations committee. >> And then >> there's a district level one and there are site level ones. Um, and I guess as someone who is a parent, as someone who has worked in this district, as someone who works um for a different district um with students, I am curious if there is a place or a role for
205schoolboard members to be a part of the committee. And if no is a very wonderful and acceptable answer, but um yeah, just I I see the need for having all hands- on deck. And I was I was questioning about how are you going to be sure that you have enough staff? And you answered that question, too. So, that's great. But just that is more of a curiosity and I probably wouldn't want to be involved if I >> Yeah, >> our district level team is big. Okay. um we want representation from every every staff group um and all of the leaders of those group and so it's 30 or 40 deep. Um we were trying to meet in person because it's all those groups. We have to meet early in the morning because we need transportation
206before they're on a bus. We need facilities. So, >> right, >> it's early and it was usually after board meetings and so our leaders were really tired. it. Um, we're moving it to virtual, which means that it should be very, if you'd like to pop into those meetings, you just need to let me know and I will happily add you to the invite. Um, we hope to have those a lot more structured than they had been. The prepare model will help us because it really walks through a lot of the planning and checklists we should do. Uh, in addition to us trying to be really clear and concise. So, we'll send principles and site teams like they have four tasks to do for the month of October. Check in with your evacuation sites. Make sure
207you have each other's contact information. In September, it'll be go have this newou done. Go meet, walk through, know what it would look like if you had to bring your entire school site there. Where could your injured students go? Where could your sensory need students go? Um, so we're giving them very specific tasks and then we're gently hounding them about it. Uh, and so tomorrow, for example, I'm meeting with four different principles to help walk through questions they have. uh because we really haven't done this in a really structured way. we just assume everyone's comfortable with it and and and we're not all naturally this isn't something we talk about every day and so um the SRO supervisor Mike Jamber from the police department is going to meet me at one of our sites and
208talk through safe ways to get to so uh we are really trying to help site teams and that way because of that a lot of things are going to bubble up and come back to our district level team to problem solve this isn't working how are we going to fix this uh and so that communication chain I think and hope will be a much more robust process. I mentioned at the beginning that just the communication chain in and of itself evolved into this really high functioning thing um with district leadership being ready to support sites and not duplicating the the communication and not duplicating the response. We're not all going to we did not all need to go to Myers Wilkins last year when the car drove through building. We caused chaos when we all
209descended there and we learn a lot every time we go. We have debriefs now. That's a new process. So, we can all come into the room and say, "This was great. This was sticky. We should be ready for this if anything similar happens." Um, you could write a book about the the weird crisis events that schools face. Um, so you can never really fully be prepared for everything, but I think that we're in a really good place and we would absolutely welcome >> uh even if you just want to be an observer on that district level team, just let me know. >> Okay. I I appreciate that. And um yeah, I just I really appreciate how thorough this is. I appreciate um the thoughtfulness of of knowing kind of that we are the Goliath in
210the region and so like our surrounding schools like this is keeping all kiddos safe and so knowing that other schools around can reach out to 709 I think that makes us leaders and I I love that. So um yeah, thank you. This is this is great. Member Laughler Kemp and then member Mike. >> I think member Mikeell was first. Yeah. Yeah. >> Thank you um for the presentation. I know my conversations with principles over the years this was something that they were desperately wanting to have um in an organized way and you've it appears to have gone above and beyond um to provide that to our um site staff so that they um know that there's there's plans. Um so thank you for that. Um I of course am looking at this and you know
211desperately wanting to never have to use this and so therefore and perhaps this is a conversation for another committee at the whole or um or another time but the prevention piece is so important. Um, and so I would love to be hearing, you know, obviously your presentation today is very much focusing on if something happens, but usually when there's a violent event, let's say, there are warning signs and someone knows. Um, and so I don't know if this conversation for today, but like what plans do we have in place for threat assessment teams? What plans do we have in place? I know we have a crisis um prevention or crisis management policy that has a lot of um generic statements in there, but what are we doing when we recognize that there might be a
212potential incident to prevent it from happening so we never have to deal with any of this? >> Briefly, what I would say is that we have a risk assessment um that we have vetted and used many many times. Um we will be re-evaluating that through the lens of the prepare model. The other thing that I would say is that prepare. We've all I'm going to say the word FEMA training training and retraumatize all the administrators in the room, but we all did FEMA training and it it it's relevant, but not what we need is so different. FEMA training is for after the fact. Uh the prepare model has really concrete um tasks that walk you through how to plan for prevention, what to watch for, how to identify what supports to connect students with. Uh
213and so I think and hope that you'll see as we fully implement that model and and push it out in those chunks. Um I'm happy to send up I'm happy to come back mid year, what whatever works. Again, I'm happy to have you jump in on the the district level team um where you'll see some of that trickle through as well, but it will walk a site team through walk around your building, check the doors, what kind of visual access do you have, are there natural barriers that prevent people from getting in. It's looking at all of the safety and structure of the building um to what mental health supports are in place. How do you identify students at risk? What are you watching for? How do we handle that when it happens? What is
214a solid risk assessment and who needs to be involved with that? When and how do you follow up? Um and so, uh we are thrilled to have something that is very concrete. We've been compiling it all ourselves over the years. Uh and the more I learn about this model, the the more I appreciate it. Uh and so I think that we'll you'll see and hear and feel our principles and particularly those site teams who are going to dig into this work be a lot more versed around what kind of preventions are in place, what kind of mitigation is in place, what does our response look like um to when we identify that a student or an adult is in need. >> Thank you. I think it's also really important to pull in our community as
215partners in this um work as well. And I assume this is something that's already on your radar, but making sure that our community knows and our students know that if they, you know, have knowledge of someone making threats or it's a danger to themselves or others to let somebody know and that all of the um adults in our community just that importance of securely storing firearms so that unsupervised kids can't get them, bring them to school and do something. um or an unsupervised anyone else that you wouldn't want having access um to firearms and bringing them into a school or outside of a school I think is also very important because we can all be partners to make our our schools and our community safe. >> Thank you, >> member Larler Kemp and then member
216Banks. >> Thank you. Great comments, board members. Um and uh Dette um again I I know you do excellent work and you're very thorough and this is just another demonstration of of um the work you've done. So So thank you for this great presentation. Um I um I I also really u wholeheartedly agree with what member Michaelelsson Michael said about if there are ways as we're reaching out to the community, we can highlight the um uh safe storage piece and I know our district just sent out something as well and and uh uh plans to continue to do that to build awareness with our community, but if we can do it in a wider approach with the broader our community. I think that's really important. Um I was curious um the uh professional development. Did
217you say that all staff will have that in no at the November? >> The the training in November is really focused on our setting three programs and the needs of those students. So it'll be setting three. I'm very tentatively saying this because we're still planning for that. Um, but it'll be setting three case managers, potentially the pair of professionals connected with that. Deans, principles, and APs might be able to come. You know, we're all running PD too. So, um, but for sure we know that that our our students with the highest level of needs, the biggest teams around them, the biggest equipment, the biggest medical, all of those needs need special planning, and we want to make sure those teams feel solid in that. Uh, we've had plans in place. It's addressed at IEP meetings,
218but we want to make sure they have the tools and resources. As an example, if uh East High School needed to evacuate, getting some of those students up to Ecumen or down to Lakeshore if it's a winter day, that's not going to happen. >> Uh and so there's a plan for where they can go on site that's out of the building safe, warm, water, lights, secure. How do we talk through that at each building level for each program, for each student? Uh because those needs are going to change year to year. So, how can we make sure that we're ready to keep them as calm and safe and as far from trauma as possible? So, we'll we'll do um pieces of trainings as those needs are there. And the other thing that I was going
219to say about u the gun safety is that uh one of the things that I really appreciate about our current uh communication methods is how well you can track when things are read, how much, how long people are spending. And so this year, we now have data that Adele can walk us through to say, "Nobody looked at it when we sent this out before school started." They're not going in there to read gun safety. They're going in there to look for their class list, you know, open house dates. So, we're sending it all out again second week of school in a bigger push that here's our response model. Remember that this is what a hold means. This is what secure means. the all of the information about gun safety and secure storage, uh, all of
220those things will go out separately the second week of school because we know that when we send it in isolation, it's it's read more. It's focused on more when it's not lost in chaos. So, um, that's a lovely thing to be able to do now that we've been using Parent Aare for a while and Yeah. >> Okay. Great. Great. A couple followup uh then, um, additional questions. um uh the community mental health folks that will be pulled in. Um is there like a the list that you would draw from uh of people that we know are uh are the list of community mental health specialists that we we would want there I guess and that are trained on this model. >> Two there's kind of two levels of that. So since co when we really
221realized how I wouldn't say realized but I think the the the level and depth and scope of mental health supports needed has grown significantly or just been recognized much more significantly. And so we've gotten better at maintaining those lists of people who are ready to support when school's not in session. >> Okay. >> Christmas breaks we'll send out those lists. Summer breaks we'll send out those lists and so we stay in contact that way. Uh in addition, there are some agencies and groups that are that have teams ready for immediate crisis level support. They've worked with us already. They'll come out whether it's to support one student or an entire building. Um but when it's a significant level of trauma, they they are ready. So that's an ongoing process of working for that list and
222how best to rally them in a quick and efficient way. Um their level of training for that isn't necessarily something we control. Um but we would recommen you know recommend that we we need people who are trained in crisis response and I would say that mental health providers are uh some will will really specialize and focus on that and do some more intense training but um I think we have a pretty robust team. >> Excellent. >> Member I know you have I know you have another I know member Williams wanted to piggyback off of that question and then we'll come right back to you. >> Okay. And I just got one more. I mean I have more but I just got one more. It was just going off of that specific question. Um um just
223thinking about mental health providers. Um and then how you were talking earlier about communicating out to other schools and being able to help other schools. Have you reached out to other schools to say um hey if we need a mental health provider? Because then we know they're MDA trained. We know that we've done background checks. that kind of thing like if there is a pool or if that's something that you have thought of um or something that would even be useful >> that has existed for as long as I've been in schools um school counselors primarily that's just that's what I was so I know that group the best but I think that school social workers and school psyches have that same level of communication that um yes so so we would know who we
224could call for help they know who they can call for help and that happens pretty frequently Now, um we have learned over the years that it's not incredibly effective to bring in completely outside people. >> Yes. >> Um when it's events in schools because they're not necessarily geared for that and students don't know them or aren't ready to connect with them in the same way. So, yes, that that already exists and I think works really well, but quite often our our sites will say we're good with the staff we have. >> Thank you. That's a great followup. Um, member Williams, last I guess question that has to do with um, you kind of touched on SRO's throughout this and it it it seems like they're they're playing a major role on these different teams and
225can you just kind of summarize that a little bit more, the role of SRO's? U, >> absolutely. I just got like 14 texts. My daughter just landed back in Minnesota after seven weeks in Australia. Oh, >> I'm fine. Um, sorry that just distracted me for a minute. It was just blowing up and I knew that's what it was. Um, so our SRO's advise, uh, they they become a presence and get to know students and build relationships because we want our kids to be comfortable reporting to them for one thing. Um, you'll find that quite often our students when they have heard about a threat or our parents will reach out to that SRO first, sometimes before the site staff. Um, in addition, they they are always an a resource and a support um to our
226school sites when we have things that we can't figure out on our own. So, I mentioned Myers Wilkins tomorrow. What is the safest way to get to that site? Whether there's construction happening, um, whatever that is, what would that look like if we need to evacuate from there? What would the police department be doing to help? they have met with individ individual teachers about how to feel more secure in your space and how how you could barricade or secure that better. Um what's the safest way to get out of a building so I I think they've just been a really good because they build relationships in that way. Um even at our elementary schools and our middle schools, they make an effort to get out there and and be seen and heard and get to
227know those um staff members and students. And so our teams will reach out to them and say, "Hey, I have a question about the gym, the lunchroom. What how could we secure this better? How what would we do in this case? How could we get to our evacuation site? What if this was happening?" Uh, and so they've become a really good resource because they're so embedded in the school system and the school community. >> Thank you. I'll pass on or I'll hold off my other questions. >> Member Banks, I'll try to be finished before 8. I'm just joking. So are everybody looked at me. So are right right are you aware of the report that was recently done on America's safest school >> and what they've done. Are you aware of that? >> Maybe I've
228seen similar. >> I can send it to you if you're interested. I think it's very inspiring and uh says a lot and does a lot. Okay. And then uh secondly, would there ever be uh the possibility of uh ISD 709 say um bulletproofing our windows in our schools and other facilities. I know there's new materials and products out there uh that uh is available now that could certainly uh help with some of the safety kind of concerns in light of what recently happened in our state u makes it come to mind for me. Would that ever be a consideration that could be brought to the board or whomever uh to to make something like that happen? I I think and this will just be purely my conjecture and opinion. Um there is always a balance
229uh when things happen and we are all sad and traumatized and terrified, we want to go to that extreme. We want to lock down our buildings. We want armed guards. We want metal detectors. We want bulletproof windows. We want all of the things. And we're a school. We want to be warm and welcoming and safe. Um, and we have limited funds. And so if, for example, we suddenly got a million dollar school safety grant, A, it's not going to bulletproof all of our windows, even if it was just coverings. That's not enough money. And B, the balance is focusing on prevention and support so that we never get to that point. And so, where are we investing in how and what are we implementing and doing? It's always a bal it's always a balance. there's
230never going to be enough of anything. Um, and there's no such thing as truly locked down and safe. Uh, if somebody wants in, they they're going to get in. How do we prevent that from happening in the first place? And how do we respond in a way that gets everyone safe as quickly as possible? Uh, and keeps everyone from being harmed. And so, we want to be as ready as we can be. We don't want to put so much money into it that that we've now sunk millions into something that will never happen. while we've neglected, you know, we we have broken science chairs, we have things that need to be replaced as well. U and so it's always it's always a a shift and a balance and how what we feel our priorities are
231changes with whatever is going on in the moment. And so right now I think we are all feeling that need to wrap our kids in whatever we can wrap them in. Uh and so yes, those same conversations come up with our site teams. How do we put coverings on the windows so you can't just see into the office? How do you, you know, we we want everyone to feel as safe and ready as they can be with the limited resources we have. Um, and also get everyone feeling as supported and safe as they can be that we've we're doing a lot of things to prevent these things from ever happening. >> And I just wanted to say the safest school in America has not had one incident. So I'll send it to you. >> Yeah.
232Thank you. Thank you, Member Banks. And I I want to second what uh Dette said. She said it uh very eloquently in terms of um you know what you summarize and and I agree with what her position is on safety. These are our best laid plans um that we have in place and hoping that we'll never have to use them. And we're working on prevention efforts and say something or see something say something, you know, to what member Mike Soul was sharing. So, we're working on all those different things. And so, um I second and I'll speak for superintendent uh uh as well. And speaking of superintendent, I see his hand is up. So, um Superintendent Maggus. >> Yes. Thank you. And I would say so much has been covered already and I don't want
233to reiterate things that have already been said. But uh given given that safety is our first priority and everything that has been going on lately in Minnesota and throughout the country, I just want to uh say thank you for the work that's being done by the team. And I want the board and the community to know that this is uh absolutely our first priority is ensuring safety. >> Thank you. All right, seeing no other green light, uh, thank you, Principal Sibo and, um, Sher Derek Eer. That is that is our final presentation for tonight. >> Thank you.