001Good evening and welcome to the May 20th um school board meeting. We're glad that everybody here. This is the listening session. So, welcome everybody. I'm going to turn it over to um clerk micasel for attendance. Member Banks here. Member Derek Eer present. Member Laughler Kemp here. Member Loal present. I'm here. Member Sidowski is excused. Member Williams here. Superintendent Maggus here. Assistant Superintendent Bonds present virtually. Deputy clerk Zunich present. Executive Director of HR and operations severance present. Board secretary Patty Pquette here and student rep. Dean here. Thank you Clerk Masell. We'll move on to our um civility rules with member Laughafler Camp. Thank you. The 11 tools of civility. This school board recognizes 11 tools of civility that will provide increased opportunities for civil discourse in order to find positive resolutions to the issues that face
002our community. And these are a part of the speak your peace civility project uh with uh the support of the duth superior community foundation. These tools include one, pay attention. Two, listen. Three, be inclusive. Four, don't gossip. Five, show respect. Six, be agreeable. Seven, apologize. Eight, give constructive criticism. Nine, take responsibility. 10, be honest and care for others. 11, show your evidence. Share your reasoning. Thank you, member Laughler. Kemp. Now, clerk Micasel, would you please remind us of our guidelines? Thank you. Of course. Uh, listening session information. Uh, if you have handouts for the board, please give them to the school board secretary who will disperse them to us. Persons addressing the board will have three minutes total. When speaking, the use of negatively personally identifiable language is not permitted. Persons addressing the school board
003may not merge their time in order to allow one person to speak more than three minutes. The clerk of the board will start the stoplight timer at the start of each person's time. Green means go, yellow means wrap-up, and red means stopped. When the red light comes on, the chair will gavel to signal you to end. And in the interest of of respect for every listening session speaker, please hold any commentary during the speaker's time until they're finished. Thank you, Clerk Masel. Um, I just have a gentle reminder for those um, who are speaking with us today. There's a microphone up front. There's a little light on it. It's red if it's not on and it's green when it's on. So, you just we're just going to do some intentionality today to make sure that
004the microphone is on. So, when you walk up, please check and maybe give it a little mic check. Um, and then I will remind everybody that Assistant Superintendent Bonds is remote. So if they're um I guess I don't need it for this part of the meeting, so never mind. All right. Thank you. I want to welcome our first speaker today. Um Carol Uker. Is that correct? Eker. Thank you. Pretend there's no you. Okay. As an eater, I can respect that. And it's green. I want to talk to you tonight about my experience with one of our grandsons who lived with us during his middle and high school years. He is autistic and had several non-residential and residential living experiences related to that disability. He came to us following a voluntary foster care placement with schooling
005at Merit Creek Academy. Entering Ordin East was terrifying for him. He hid during the school day. He acted out in class. I might have called that setting his feet and saying, "I can't do this." As part of entering middle school, he needed to select a music option. Feet firmly planted, he said, "Whose idea was this?" Explanations followed. He listened and then declared, "I won't sing. I won't march in a band." He thought he had it covered. We replied, "Well, that leaves orchestra." We listed some of the instruments. After a long pause, he said, "I will play the viola." So it began. He rented a violin strung as a viola because he was small. He received well-ordered instruction delivered with humor and compassion. Before long, he was declaring orchestra to be his favorite class. He felt
006safe and discovered that music calmed him. Well, we discovered that it did. We think he did, too, because when upset, he often took out the viola at home to play for a few minutes. Now, making friends was difficult. Social things are often difficult for autistic children. Among other orchestra students, he felt safe. Making music was something he could do hidden in the group. We were grateful for those two years. We began to plan electives for the eighth grade and were delighted to hear him say, "I want to stay in orchestra." Well, he graduated last year and he played with the orchestra at graduation. With those students and their instruments, he made friends. He talked about and even ate lunch with them. He went on field trips even to New York to face other frightening experiences.
007But he trusted that community of students. He even signed up for the quartet project, a summer intensive. Now, I know other folks have shared what our music programs mean for the caliber of music played, and that's surely true, but I just wanted you to know that for one frightened autistic young person, music was a path to inclusion. As a retired art teacher, I spot students in all the performing groups who have similar needs. Not all students can afford early lessons. Those kids enter music programs behind, but lesson teachers within the school day can catch them up. Those kids can find a safe place to work on belonging. Easier for some than for others. Please don't take this from them. Thank you. Turn it off. Thank you. Now, we would like to welcome Mr. Jim Jubenville
008up to the mic. Make sure you do your mic check, Jim. Thanks. And I'm not seeing any lights. The pardon. Oh, sorry. All right. It's green. Hello, my name is Jim Jubenville and I'm a special education teacher at ALC AEO. I'm also the co-f facilitator of the labor management committees. Mr. Anthony Bonds, our assistant superintendent, and myself completed our fourth year together as co-f facilitators of the labor management process. As part of the process, we email all QLT members two weeks prior to the meeting for agenda items. We then share the compiled agenda with district leadership a week prior to the meeting to allow administration, especially Mr. Bonds, to look into issues requiring feedback from management. As I've said in the past, we stress the importance of addressing issues first at the site level before
009bringing it to labor management. We also keep track of larger items through a action tracker so the item doesn't disappear off our radar. We will continue to fine-tune the process as we move forward and also ask for feedback from the committee members to improve the product. We took a step back in what the labor management QT teams accomplished this year. In my mind, part of it was due to the budget cuts and sunsetting of er funding. I also believe sometimes it felt like we were just meeting to say we met and the administration could check a box. The DFT membership showed that they had good ideas to either cut expenses or generate revenue or both and those ideas often appeared to fall on deaf ears. Ignoring the labor portion of the labor management relationship harms
010morale and can damage trust between the two sides. Moving forward, the other issue that stands out from this year's labor management cycle has to do with the buildout of the former Duth News Tribune building. ALCAO staff raised concerns about the location of the building, about the school's needs for the second floor space as allotted by ISD79 administration, and their concerns about the way space was assigned to various programs assigned to the facility. Our staff believe there was never a compromise or finding a middle ground with these concerns. An additional concern is that there will be multiple age groups of atrisisk students assigned to the building, including some who may exhibit volatile behaviors being asked to share the same physical space. We can all do better. The four leaders of the labor management process, myself, Ethan
011Fiser, uh Anthony Bonds, and Superintendent Magus need to get on the same page about what is necessary to make this process work for the good of students and staff of ISD79. Additionally, you as the school board need to ask questions and not listen to only one side of an issue. Just as important, there needs to be a reboot of the strain relationship between district administration and the staff at ALCAO. Moving forward, some items we need to continue to work on are smaller class sizes at all levels, an improved for early childhood, and case load limits for uh birth to 21 case managers. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Next, I'd like to um welcome Mr. Chris Fold, please. We're doing it right now. We just had test. Thank you. Yes. So, thanks for having
012me. Um, I'm back. Uh, and I'll say again, uh, the plans for the ALC at the DNT need to be changed. Um, still no one has shared any data, survey information, research, or logic that could explain the space allocation for ALC students on the second floor. If you view the plans I just passed out on page one, blue is ALC and yellow is adult ed. Every day in the blue space, there will be up to, not always, but up to a 100 seatbased students, maybe 10 drop-in independent study students, 30 staff, and any new potential students or families that appear daily, totaling up to about 140ish students and staff every day. Oh, and adults, I should say. Every day in the yellow space, which is adult ed, they will house or that space will house
013three full-time staffish, various 0.2 rotating staff, and maybe five-ish adult clients at a given time, totaling maybe 10 adults. There's no logic to the second floor space allocation math, and the administration refuses to explain yet with data how or why the space is allocated this way. At ALC, we have the same children returning to this space each year for perhaps four plus years every day, forced to persevere in a crowded space with no gym, no cafeteria, no space for the entire student body to assemble, limited windows, and dark views of a depressing street in a parking ramp alley. While adulthed rotates adults through for short periods of time and will have an overabundance of dream space and bright window views of Lake Superior, which I suppose is why Adult Ed was invited to speak at
014a school board meeting a couple months ago praising this plan while we were suspiciously not invited to attend and share our thoughts on the plan. In fact, if you remember the last time I was here talking about this, I ran out of time. My mic was cut off. At that meeting, I asked 10 questions. Now, I'll condense them to one. Why are we sacrificing the basic needs of our already struggling full-time firstround teenage ALC students to overaccommodate our part-time second round adult students who have already had their first round opportunity in schools? Doesn't the district put the kids first? The plan needs to change and the solution is simple. Keep the existing design on page two on the of the handout. Flip that over, but move adult ed to the ALC middle school space on
015the first floor and keep all things ALC together on the second floor. Why wouldn't we do this in the first place? The logic works for the solution and the square footage is appropriate. There was a plan developed that did this. Jen Larva, Brian Brown, Principal Gloley, several of us from the ALC saw it. But then did Mr. Mr. Maggus or Mr. Bonds decide that would not be the plan. Without providing any reason or logic to support the space allocation, it would appear that someone has made a unilateral decision that can only be explained as punitive and personal against our students and staff and programs. I'm out of space, out of time. Well, I'm sorry, but I guess in closing remarks, if you're going to force students to travel to an inappropriate school location, then please
016at least give them an appropriate space when they get there. We have other things to say, but sorry. Thank you. Next, we'd like to welcome Mr. Brian Schilling. green. Today, I challenge you to decide. Will we sacrifice the very heart of our schools for short-term gains, or will we fight for the soul of education? Every cut to our essential programs chips away at the future of our children. What sets our school district apart? Picture a successful football team when players need strength training. Do we cut back on the weight room or have a halftime coach? Of course not. For success, just as our student athletes rely on guidance to maximize every ounce of their potential, our students depend on committed professionals for the foundation for literacy and critical thinking. The Atlantic states, "Students in elite
017colleges can't get through fulllength books anymore. and in part because they are coming prepared illprepared from K12 because of cuts like these. Isn't it our duties as professionals to provide them with the right tools, welcoming spaces, and expert guidance? We owe our students more, not less. Our district has a lofty lofty reading goal. We will help every student read at or above grade level from kindergarten onward. Studies have shown that schools with full-time certified librarians enjoy as much as 7.6 Six, boost in reading proficiency and a host of other academic gains. If our aim is to elevate literacy and prepare our students for a complex world, why would we cut the positions that serve as catalyst for such change? The proposed PAR support plan does not come close to address the literacy needs. State rules
018restrict Paris to just supervising or checking out books and not not teaching or offering in-depth reading guidance or research. It is not worth the immediate cost savings to gamble with our students need for media, information, and literacy. Consider another topic. Our library holds hundreds of thousands of dollars in carefully selected books and resources. Investments made over decades. Without expert guidance, this treasure trove risks being underutilized and mismanaged, contradicting the vision statement of Duth Public Schools. Quote, having responsible resource management. It is important to remember what our legacy will be. Every decision we make and every dollar dollar we invest should nurture the hearts and minds of our children. Do not let short-term budget gains erase the progress we are making. Look beyond immediate numbers. Invest in the people who inspire every child every day, such
019as at Denfeld where checkouts rose 35% in the first year back with full-time media specialists and at Lincoln at 16%. Lincoln's numbers even grew bigger this year with 48% more checkouts. Today, I urge you to think creatively and boldly. Let's reject a status quo that pits fiscal realignment against educational excellence. Instead, let's work together, consulting earnestly with those on the front lines, putting pressure even harder on the state and forging paths that keep cuts away from libraries. Invest in libraries. Invest as as us as technology experts. And let's send a clear message. Defunding our future is not an option. Thank you. I'd like to thank everybody for coming in and sharing with today. Um, this ends the listening session and the school board the business portion for the school board meeting