May 6, 2025 at 4:30 PM - Monthly Committee of the Whole Board Meeting

001Good afternoon to the monthly committee of the whole board meeting for the month of May. Today is Tuesday, May 6th, and we're getting started at 4:38. I'd like to call this meeting to order and then turn it on to clerk Mikeel for a roll call. Member Lemp here. Member Banks is excused. Member Durk Eater is present. Member Lemp is present. Member Lovel here. I am here. Member Sidowski here. Member Williams here. Superintendent Maggus here. Assistant Superintendent is excused. Deputy Clerk Zunich here. Board Secretary Pette. And here you're done. Thank you so much. And before we get started today, I'd just like to thank our um DUTH CTE students for our wonderful new name tags that they provided for all of us board members. They're wonderful and amazing with some great DUTH icons on them and

002then our name. So I just want to thank those students for providing these wonderful name tags for us. Just another example of a great education here in Duth. Um, so now we'll move on and Superintendent Magus will be running today's committee of the whole meeting. So I'll turn it over to Superintendent Magus. Thank you, Chair. Um, I appreciate this and if it seems a little clumsy, it's because Mr. Bonds, our assistant superintendent, has facilitated this meeting for for five years. So if I mess up, I apologize in advance. But we have some really uh interesting presentations tonight. We have uh under advancing equity, we have our Denfeld indigenous co cohort um presentation. We were going to have a policy under supporting every student on um or basically it was a presentation on on youth vaping,

003but we're going to uh move that off for for uh today's presentation. Then we have a secondary English language arts adoption purchase presentation. a presentation on multi-tered system supports grant and uh professional learning communities and finally a uh our first budget reading for the financial year 26 budget reading but the first um first presentation for tonight is the Denfeld indigenous co cohort and I know we have a group of uh individuals that'll be coming up to present and if you want to come up to the table now we have uh Aqua Ash Aquayashi, sorry. And I was working on pronunciation before, but I knew I was going to mess up when I when I came to do this. Uh, Sheila White, Amanda Horton, and we also have um me squigg right. Was it close? Yes.

004Thanks. And actually, uh, Sheila helped me with a little pronunciation, uh, exercise before I came in. And so now I've got at least a a better start. So my my my Spanish is better than my Jibway by far, but I apologize in advance. Thanks. Appreciate it. But, uh, we are very excited about the new cohort that we started. Uh, and um, I think when when we are talking about, uh, student success, we want to make sure that all students are successful. And there was uh some really innovative thoughts about how can we have people all work together and get get support so that they feel that camaraderie and opportunity to learn. And this is uh something that we put together uh based based on the needs there and also thinking about how can we bolster

005our graduation rates um particularly looking at our our American Indian students. How can we make sure that we're providing as much scaffolding so that students can be as successful as possible. So without further ado, I'll turn it over to our team. language teacher here at the district and we started. Thank you. Um so at we group of indigenous students that weren't really engaged in schools not really participating. So as a group we started talking about how can we better support these students and um one of the ideas that that that was approached was a way to indigenize the curriculum and making it a bit more relevant and interesting to indigenous students. Hopefully that would bring them into school and get them more engaged in what they were learning. So administration supported this looking at our

006history as a district with graduating students is not very good. what we do that we haven't done before. Um so as campus go within school model the goal is to increase engagement and graduation rates show the staff and spaces allocated by Mr. Tuskin and American American Indian education to start. So I really want to give a lot of um thanks and appreciation to Mr. Tuskin for really just saying okay what do we need to do to make this happen? So that's one of the regular activities. the eligibility that we came up with. We started talking about this in Januaryish of last year. We spent many months, many meetings um trying to get this all worked up before school this year and we focused on students that were at risk of not graduating, students whose grades

007and attendance fluctuate and students who benefit from responsive academic support. Um sometimes students who are struggling some research shows that if we can increase their sense of identity and their that will increase their competency in their schools. So this is just I'm not going to go through this whole thing but this is just the staff in the world have copies of the of the slides. We have four content teachers English, social studies, science and math core content core content. We also have Amanda is teaching social emotional learning attached with the um success and we have um looked at that curriculum and infused some and um indigenous culture into that. So that's our first period. So students that are not necessarily in the cohort, cohort students and other students who do not qualify the cohort are

008both eligible to be in that class um in the morning. And then we have our classes that we are trying to integrate more indigenous content into. Um we also have a person in the classroom for support that's there through the whole course um or through the whole cohort day to help support the teachers and the students in kind of those those key elements that go through all the curriculum together. Um and then under administration we have Tom Jerry has been just fantastic as a counselor with the student. So in addition to her regular that she has students as well so they have one place that they can go um the coordinator and then I support as we need to and we also have support from Dr. and American Indian Health um and they get involved

009up there. So they're helping us with looking at some data collection and doing some qualitative and quantitative data collection for us that we can see as we go what kind of effect are we having on the students and within the community. We also still connect mentor services away. We are utilizing pause and dash services that are already at uh a is partnering with us as well and seek to learn through technical community tribal community college um also has a monthly program that they have adopted our students into. So every month we work with that program as well. So there's lots of support services along with it. So right now our daily model is we have that morning class that is very culturally grounded but also We have standards teach that. Then we have a nth

010grade English social studies nth and 10th grade fourth hour science and then fifth hour is math and then a sixth and seventh hour in that same class. So that the students stay in the classroom and then the teachers rotate in and out. So we have our own class and students have already passed like math n. And then in that same class is one at the end of the and that space for the students to take other um other electives that they might that they might be interested in. So the goal um of the whole corner is to get a place to graduate and to graduate on time. We want to create an engaging learning environment for the students um work in partnership with the core content teachers to create an integrated curriculum with an indigenous

011focus. We're still working on that piece of it and to have credit deficient students earn credits and graduate. And Jerry and Samantha have been just fantastic in helping our students really see like where these holes are and how can we get you, you know, you are deficient on credits. What can we all do as a community to help you get where you need to be um and also creating alternative pathways to credit and to connect students to postsecary education options and help pathways for success. So, one of the things you'll see in one of the next slides is ways that we're looking ahead to how can we not only get our students doing well in school, but also looking at what is next. So, I'm pass over to Jerry because she's done all the fifth

012grade math. Um, when we started out in the fall, we had 17 students. Um, I believe there were six freshmen um and the rest were sophomores. Um what we found out though that the freshmen did not want to be um in one room for most of the day. They wanted to experience high school um going from class to class. They had waited for this. So within the first week um all but a few um transitioned out with with permission of their parents. They wanted to be in a regular class. Um so we started out then with um we had four freshmen um and the rest were sophomores. Um what we found throughout the um semester was that the freshmen um just did not seem mature enough or um had other things that they wanted to

013be doing. Um so we did not find a great deal of success with most of the freshmen. One excelled but the other ones um did not. Um the greatest gains that we found were for the sophomores. um students that um had never one student in fall semester. He as a sophomore doubled the amount of credits he earned in one semester than he did his entire freshman year. So the sophomores, they had the maturity, they had been out into the building for a year and um they really appreciated the support. Um students that were one student who never talked to anyone. Um I was walking in the hall like a month ago and she goes, "Hi, Mrs. Sorry. I almost fell over." because she normally would sit there with her head down. So, um the sophomores,

014it seemed like they were doing much better um academically and um just socially. Um the students that it wasn't working for, we transitioned out of the cohort, but we didn't just leave them. We still left them in the first hour class, the social emotional learning. Um some of them were more hands-on learners, so we tried to get them in those kinds of courses, the CTE courses. Um some of them were special education students. One of the things we found was that this program we didn't have um any special education teacher or parah support for that. So students with significant learning disabilities or or um specific learning disabilities, it didn't seem to fit for we didn't have that support. Even if they went to, you know, um like a self- advocacy, they still needed that support

015in the classroom. So we looked at team or um math or reading strategies, other things that met their needs. Um and then we added um as the freshman came out, we added two um freshmen at the semester that we thought were ready for it and that wanted to be in the cohort and sat down with them and that's going very well. The sophomores are um earning credit. They are very concerned about next year because they are they appreciate the support. Um they have better relationships with their teachers. They're learning how to advocate for themselves. Um and then we are um she's going to talk a little bit about how we're going to build on the successes that we're having. I just wanted to say that um I came into the uh this cohort in August

016and I wasn't quite sure what was happening. So I'm going to be leading the cohort when we start to get stop get I mean start again in the fall. So I'll be very happy to be part of that. Yeah. Midwitch. Member Sideski. Um thank you for that presentation. Um, a few of us board members had a chance to take a tour of Denfeld a few weeks ago and got to see um, the indigenous classroom. Um, so that was really great to see. Um, and I know one of the students kind of reflected on how supportive um, the program has been for her. So that was really nice to hear and just thanks for all your work on it. Um, I'm curious, my question is it has to do with the attendance piece. Um what kind

017of strategies are you using to um to address that piece Amanda Horton um I teach language at Dunel along with um working with the cohort um I would like to say dayby day case by case basis is really the honest to goodness truth about that um there's something to say about willingness. Um there's just something to say about being in the building. When we get our students in the building, we can do a ton to support them. We can connect them with a ton of resources. Um Denfeld has an amazing community. Um a lot of wraparound services, a lot of partnerships, a lot of just um building relationships with the kids across the board. Um working with is it Samantha Kapan? um and you know working with Dash, we have Ako coming into Dash. So

018that's been one thing that's really been helping is we have invited the community into our school to be a part of that team supporting our kids, but we've also gone out and participated in the community. Like we've had our um our credit recovery days and our attendance recovery days that have actually taken place um on our breaks um like out at Ako. We've had two of those. Oh, Nys, right? I'm correct about that. NYS, excuse me. Um, so and we've had dedicated teachers and support staff and community members that have come on those days to just sit with kids one-on-one, help them get caught up, help them, you know, just guide them in whatever it is they need for that day. Um, so that is a huge thing. Um, just trying to build relationships with

019the students is big. Um, building relationships with their parents or their guardians, um, is another big thing. having that open line of communication. I think one thing that really works too is trying to come um approaching things with solutions. You know, we all know that we have an issue with attendance. We all know some of the reasons behind it. Um I think you know trying to get deeper into the research, trying to use some of those strategies um building in the culture um will create that engagement. Food, food helps. Kids love food. you got food and coffee in the morning, they are there. Um but yeah, um we also try to put relevance. Um so part of seek to learn, it's a initiative out of Fondelac Community College where the students go once a month

020on field trips to do different they view different colleges and different programs. And um when they go out, one of the nice things is they realize that they have to know how to read and write and that they have to do math to be able to do what they do. So, um that I think adds some relevance to the curriculum. We have one student who wanted to be a firefighter and we the um the career center was doing a field trip CTE field trip to the fire school. So, even though it was for juniors and seniors, we put this 10th grader on the bus and he came back just he knows what he wants to do. He's on fire and he realizes that what he has to do to get into that program so that

021we're providing opportunities for that too. So hopefully when the the maturity is there, they can see what you know they've got the ability to do what they want to do. Can I just share a couple like really good moments? Um definitely when we were talking about our 10th graders like we have had some of our students really step up and start taking leadership roles in our school. They've been um working with a team to create like um assemblies that are teaching the school about American Indian language and culture. Um they we have have two of our students that started um they're participating in sources of strength um training and uh working with that organization. Um the kids themselves are creating relationships within the cohort. Like I had a student um I have a student who's

022kind of been struggling for a while and one of my other students the other morning was like, "Hey, go grab your notebook. Get over here. Sit down." and she did five assignments with him within that 45 minutes and got him caught up, which was just amazing to me. Um, another thing that kind of made me cry actually was two of the students were having a side conversation and one of them said, "I want Miss Horton to give me my diploma." This student is in 10th grade. They were talking about graduating. They are in 10th grade. So, they are starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. they're starting to see themselves in their post-secary world, you know, whether it's getting a job or going to college or just being a contributing member

023of our society. I just I think it's amazing. Thank you. And then uh member Loel, then member u um Laughler Kemp, and then chair Durk Eater. And I think we'll all start with the same thing. Like this is really when you talk about, you know, solutions. This this was crafted last spring for solutions to what we know has been a kind of ongoing decades long. I was at the Title Six U meeting last night. So historically, we know that our indigenous and our American Indian students have not succeeded. So this is an incredible So building the plane while you're flying it. You know, we there's a few times I think even the seven period day, we as board kind of approved to go forward with that knowing that the seven period day was going to

024have bumps and bruises and and growing pains and mistakes that we're going to fix. So, you know, I I applaud you and I support that we are building the plane as we fly it. Um my question really a little bit about, you know, um we asked about can we support students with significant learning disabilities? um are we looking to try to answer that for continuing forward or is that you know still a work in progress that does doesn't might not happen for the coming season or where are we at? Um at this point we don't have there's not um any funding for um a person. We would need a special education teacher um or a pair professional. Um all the classes at are at the regular gened level. So we don't have um the supports

025for that at this point. So that is something we need to look at in the future, but I don't think we could we have the capacity or the funding to do that right now. So hopefully when we get this going that would be the next mountain to conquer. So then the funding piece comes up and this would be a question for Superintendent Magus and and CFOs um Zunich would be is this funding from our general fund or or some of our um educational dollars coming from our American Indian funding and it's not a you know if you if we can't answer that tonight I I understand that too. just I'm just glad we are and when I see the kind of dedication that Denfeld has put I'm sure that this is coming out of um

026Principal Tusken as well when you are supporting um for you know hourly teachers I know Miss Wood I know Mr. young men and and uh they're they're then teaching um a class that wasn't in their schedule last year. They were teaching, you know, another science or English elective. So, I know that that comes out of yours. Okay. Y there's no extra money. All of us that are working on it are already full employees doing other and we have just reallocated part of our time to this. So it's not costing any extra money at this point. Um the professional that we have working with us um comes out of she's budget but she was reallocated from a different school. So there's a hole someplace else. Um, so everything that we've done so far has been just

027wonderful. Staff administrators like just taking the time to find the importance in this and okay well this class needs to be a little bit bigger so that we can class. I just I really just have and I have one and thank you. Thank you for that clarification because that's important too and and we support that and are so proud. I know that I think Denfeld was just recognized. I think I saw it in Mr. Tuskkins um principal note to his staff about this um promise, this cohart um vision that you have um shephered through this year has has also gained the attention of other schools across the state and you have been recognized at a level of success. Can you share that with us? I think I'm right maybe. Yeah, it was um the for

028the community because they watch so the recognition of the Minnesota Association of Secondary School Principles um does an award every spring you can apply for it and then they recognize schools. So we put the cohort in this year and it was recognized. So that's a statewide thing that gets recognized. Denfeld actually won three things this year. Um, and one of them was for the cohort. So, what were the other two? Uh, the other two were summer transition academy and the den uh behavior support team. Yep. So, so that's that's just incredible, too, that um through the challenges that present itself sometimes in our high schools that we've got um creative and supportive and hardworking and over-the-top people to come and and and gain together. So my last um oh my last comment was just being

029at the title six um evening last night. So our are our apac and parents um that I met last night um know about this going on and and have seen it and understand how that's used to support our students at least in the in the Denfeld. Thank you. We actually did a presentation to the just last month. Some of the parents have had students in the so how we can get some more support. Thank you member Laughler Kemp. Thank you all uh for sharing uh both this excellent presentation in writing but also um just your thoughts. Now um I was going to ask a question about the seek to learn but you answered that um very well uh and I I was just really impressed with the community supports and how you talked about both

030bringing them in but also bringing the students out. And I think I was at um I was at a a meeting with uh or principal Tuskcin the day after a pause day and he was giddy with uh the successes and and telling the story of uh going out in the community that that day with students on a uh so um we we heard his it through him. Um, I was curious, um, if there are community members that want to be involved in some way that come from, um, uh, uh, that bring might bring resources who who would I I point them in your direction um, to Yeah, she's the coordinator. Oh, okay. So, okay. I just kind of stepped up recently. So, I'm I kind of stepped up recently, but I've been trying to do

031outreach for um community members that could come in and be part of it. So, I started the community college or the four-year college. So, I I like that aspiration. Not even aspirational, I just like that piece built in to to get these students so that they can get those college credits that later is going to reduce their debt because they can maybe get those gened credits out of the way so they can maybe do three years instead of two years or maybe a year. So, I just really appreciated those two aspects as you're thinking about this cohort, how it's book ending. So, thank you for all your work. I was really um really honored to come in and see um when Mr. Tuskin took us through the students and so thank you very much. I

032appreciate it. Um if I could speak to the PSO for a moment. Yeah. Um many of our sophomores have signed up for the CITS initabi class for next year. So, that's going to be probably their first step into a college level course. And then the goal would have them be potentially um probably through FondeLac or LSC we'd have to see is having them take one PSO class in the spring perhaps online where they could do it together so that they learn um the rigor of a college course they'd have the you know the high school version CITS and then the PSO so that we step them through that so that they have the confidence they definitely have the skills I can tell you that right now and the ability but it's the confidence and the

033knowing how to access and and what to do. So they need to be guided with that. So that's part of the plan of this too. And I love that gentle entry into the American higher education system. We know that these first generation students when they come into these situation, it can blow them away. So the soft entry in through college, you know, CITS and then to PSO and then maybe the next step is a way to just gently onboard them into this kind of scary and overwhelming situation. So thank you for that. That's great. Can I just add one thing? We also have some students working on service learning credit and doing some things like that. So again, just you know, back to how do we work within our communities and you know gain that

034knowledge and that that experience. So that's another thing that we're working on too as a team even with like Samantha and them they're helping us with that as well. Yeah. I also want to recognize first of all I want to say even though I've been talking a lot today I'm like a seat in the cohort and it's really but we have two teachers would you either like to say something about I just want to give you a chance I agree you yes no um hi I teach the science class which is earth science for ninth graders but I have as many sophomores as I do ninth graders because they didn't pass it last year. And so I will tell you the sophomores are doing great. They are passing and we are having a good uh

035much better involvement. I totally support the idea of more time to do curriculum work because Oja resources are out there but not in a necessarily a packaged way. We know this about in all of the indigenous standards that are getting added into courses and science courses. So, um, it's been really fun. It's also been just really timeconuming for this nice little small group. Um, so I think the sophomore part is important. I'm very encouraged by what I'm seeing with my sophomores who are stepping up. It was nice. I got the two new freshmen added in. That was great. Um, what I'm realizing, and I would say this is one of my favorite parts of this, is that whole idea of how do brains learn best? And I know it's not, we don't need to say

036this is an assumption for every indigenous kid, but they love it when we, well, they don't love it when they first walk in, but once we sit down, they love it when we do a family table and we just push tables together and we sit around the whole thing and we work through labs or we work through things and they do drawings. I We've done this. We took a tour of the poop plant and we had to I had them all draw their house and we went through all of the drains and where it was going and misconceptions and I think having that availability of a smaller group that you're comfortable with. They didn't even something as simple as where do you live? How many sinks and toilets do you have? Some kids had two-story

037houses with multiple bedrooms and some kids have a little apartment with one bathroom that they share and not to feel self-conscious about that because you get to be this nice small group doing it. And so I think the other part I like is that we feel like we get to know each other. We feel like a family. It allows time and space to do that kind of group work. So, uh, I mean, I think that's been one of the successes is just that feel of altering the way that you teach. Not necessarily even just the content, but the way, and that's one conversation I think we need to continue having is how do we present the information? How do we spend time together? How do I do I give a test? Well, if we can

038have a conversation and you can tell me what you know or draw something or whatever, it's allowed me space to think through that part as well. Not just the indigenous curriculum, not just the yes, they're passing the classes, but that has been really fun, challenging, but I think successful. Thank you. And I just want to say Oh, sorry. Go ahead. No, please do. Please. I insist. Uh, so I'm Pamela Nelson and I have the math class and um we're doing intermediate algebra this year. So I have some nth graders and tth graders that hadn't passed it previously. Um, and a lot of what Allison has said has resonated for me too is just um thinking of ways to um assess learning and and work with students. Um, and they really do appreciate having a small

039class and having some because there's a little more time to work one-on-one. And um Amanda's been great about coming in and learning and helping out herself as well. Um which I think they it's a good thing for them to see that too. So yeah. And again, thank you. I just want to say too that if you're looking for uh time and resource over the summer or uh at other times, we'd be glad to be supportive of that. And uh I I really admire what you're doing as a cohort and I admire the spirit of Denfeld and in trying to make sure that we think about every student every day um and all of the district. I I think it's important that that we have that mantra and that we don't just have it as a

040slogan on our our vans, but but that we actually live it and uh that sometimes that means putting resource towards things that are uh in a meaningful way and not just using American Indian education funds for it, but thinking about our general fund. Uh I think those those conversations that we have are are important to to think about and recognize. And I just wanted to say uh how much I appreciate each of you. Um, I think the one of the biggest lessons of of teaching that I've had over my 30 years is that kids kids don't care what you know until they know that you care and it's very obvious that you care about your students. And I just wanted to say get you mitch for all of the work that you're doing. Thank you.

041and superintendent ends it so well. But the one question that I that begged when um the teachers presented is so if you're teaching you know your n your science to 9th and tth graders then do do our kids graduate out of the cohort as juniors that the group that you have right now will they go into more of our mainstream classes more confident of their learning? You know that just I I know that's probably a bigger picture but as board members I I don't know if you all thought about that too. It's like, okay, then do they go into that? Um, we're looking at a 10 11th grade model for next year. So, for the English class, um, you can you can you can modify with the standards. You can do a 10th and 11th

042grade. You can have them doing, you know, same different things but in the same space. That's possible to do. Math, you cannot do that. So, what we will, I'm guessing what we're going to do is geometry. Now those students that have already passed geometry, we will have an uh probably an algebra 2 concepts that same hour. So those kids will go together. Um the students who did not pass intermediate algebra, we will have a school within the school um that same hour as well. So they would go to that. So we'll have kids that stay in the cohort and then separate out and then maybe some other students who aren't in the cohort for other things will come in for that class. Um the way we do our advanced placement class at Denfeld, we don't

043have enough students because we're a smaller school um to run an advanced placement US history and an advanced placement world history every year. So about I don't know six years ago or so we started alternating them. So we are going to use that model for the cohort. So this year they're doing US history. Um the ninth graders that are in it are actually getting the second semester of US history. So they're going to be a grade ahead the second half of it. So, we're going to do world history next year for the 10th and 11th graders. And then those 10th graders would have US history their junior year. Um the science, I believe we're going we're going to do biology. The students um who didn't pass or that that need to do the earth and

044space, we would have that the same hour. And the students that pass the biology, we would have an probably an intro to chemistry or intro to physics that same hour. So, it's um Mr. Tuskcin playing with the master schedule and um figuring it all out and then um so we can do this. It's just it takes time. It's just like you know putting a puzzle together. But that's that's the plan. And then you want to make sure that you have those hands-on electives in there too because they need a break in the day. You know you don't want to have the core all on top of each other. So we need to have make sure that the classes where they have movement and those kinds of things are um spread throughout the day as well.

045So we got our we have work to do but it can be done again. Thank you so much. Um and we'll be moving on to our next topic. Uh thank you again which is secondary English language arts curriculum adoption and uh that will be presented by uh Jen Larva, Dale Usman and Jackie Awe Can you hear me? Yes, you can. All right. Hi, everyone. I brought with me Dale and Jackie who have been really leading the efforts with our um adoption process for our secondary English language arts um curriculum adoption. Um, I'll let I'll let them talk about a lot of things, but I'm just going to let you know it has been well past time for us to be talking about ELA um for the secondary level. And so I'm really excited that we

046have chosen some materials and they'll have an opportunity to share with you a little bit about what our process look like. Thanks, Jen. Um, thank you all for having us. I want to start off by saying a huge thank you to the secondary English language arts teachers who sit on the English language arts committee. Um, as well as the teachers who helped us pilot this year. They've taken on a lot of extra work to make sure that this process has gone smoothly and we're doing what's best for our secondary students. Um, so this is a 4-year uh process that's happened for us. I'm excited because this one kind of feels like my baby. This is the first one that I've been able to see go all the way through that process. Um and it was

047a process that I helped put in place um my first year. So you'll see from the slides um over those four years what the committee has done is that first year they took time to uh look at the 2020 Minnesota English language arts standards. Those have to be implemented next school year K12. Um so they took a lot of time just to look at what were the big curricular shifts and instructional shifts within those standards. Then the following year they conducted a needs assessment. They surveyed uh staff. They surveyed students as well. Um they also put out a survey to community and family members to get their perspective on the current English language arts curriculum. um what their suggestions were for making it better, also figuring out what is working well already that we don't

048want to make a change to. The following year, they took that information and they really prioritized it into a list of things that they identified needed to be changed in the current curriculum to meet those new standards and also meet what they heard from the community and staff and students. Um there I included a few of those things that really kind of uh surfaced to the top. They uh identified that they really needed more diverse literature in secondary ELA. There needed to be more differentiated support for students supporting students who are struggling with reading but also really helping students who wanted to um push their themselves. We identified that we needed improved writing instruction at the secondary level in in English courses. And we also really needed to update our resources. Jen alluded to this

049already. We are looking at some anthologies that are close to 30 years old in um our secondary classrooms in our English classrooms. Yep. [Music] Um so then yeah, the committee took time to start looking at core instructional resources that were available and they used uh district evaluation rubric to really take a look through those resources and make sure that they aligned to standards, that they offered teachers the support that they needed, that they had things like differentiated support for students and diverse literature. and they took that list of six and they narrowed it down to um two resources at the middle school level and two resources at the high school level. And that's what they did this year is they got a chance to be able to pilot those materials. You can see that um

050both middle school and high school piloted into literature which is from H Hotton Mifflin Hardcourt and then middle school piloted my perspectives from SAVIS and the high school piloted study sync from McRaill. And then Jackie is going to talk about what they saw through those pilots. Thank you. Um so on our pilot team we had 10 um ELA teachers. We had six at the middle school level and four at the high school level. Um and our teachers were involved in this process first, second and third quarter. Um first sec first quarter we really got them set up and um second quarter we were working with vendors. they were implementing um that into literature resource into their instruction and that would be in there for 6 to 8 weeks and then we would um gather again

051visit with the vendor about pros and cons reflect as a group on what we liked and didn't like and then repeated that same process in third quarter with um my perspectives and study sync um as a pilot team we had a lot of meetings it was a lot of time discussing those needs that they had expressed um in the year prior to see if the resources were needing those or if there were things that were still missing. Um, I collected feedback at the end of piloting all of these resources on that district rubric. Um, and we also had a rubric that addressed equity, diversity, and cultural inclusion. So, specifically looking for those uh features in the curriculums. Um, both SAVIS and Studyc were favorites of our staff. Um, they were ranked highest in access to

052culturally responsive texts, utilizing current best practices, um, allowing students to make real world connections, supporting student dialogue, uh, digital access. Um, these were all linked up with the new Minnesota standards as well, so saving a lot of time and effort on staff from the curriculum writing side. And then both resources had a variety of instructional differentiation strategies worked right into each unit and to each text. So really explicit instruction um for teachers to support kids in filling those gaps in their literacy skills. Um one example of the way these resources are set up is there's themed units um that really focus on not only diverse genres but diverse authors. Uh for example, one of our 10th grade teachers piloted a study sync unit called chopped, stirred, and blended. And the essential question is what are

053the ingredients of a culture? So this unit focused on the genre of poetry, but it also included uh key literary elements like uh theme, figurative language, connotation versus denotation, and then vocabulary activities and argument writing. So while poetry was the focus, there are short stories mixed in there. There's suggestions for novel studies. Um, fiction and non-fiction were both present in every unit. Um, and students were able to read about foraging, food science, maple sugaring, and how food is part of culture in India, Ethiopia, and China. This unit also made suggestions for novels such as how the Garcia girls lost their accents by Julia Alvarez um, and The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, which is a text that moved Congress to regulate food production in 1906. So the theme is is thoroughly embedded in the literature and

054the discussion points and ability to work writing into it is is wellversed. Um from my perspectives, it's set up in a very similar fashion. Um in a sixth grade unit, the first unit is titled Growing Up with the um also a variety of text genres. There's excerpts from Bad Boy by Walter Dean Meyers. The short story in that unit is 11 by Sandra Cisneros and the poem oranges oranges by Gary Stoodto is in there as well. Um there's multiple writing tasks, opportunities to practice vocabulary and the inclusion of modern media such as um several episodes suggested from the Moth podcast. So students are really getting access to modern multimedia sources while also bringing in some classics and really mixing in those diverse authors to give students access um to lots of cultural backgrounds and perspectives.

055Um with both resources, staffs are really set up to implement those new standards smoothly. Um and we have some writing time set aside this summer to help staff coordinate their efforts with the new resource as well and bring in the indigenous standards into their practice. Um, but this I'm really excited about these resources because they do bring in those voices that have been historically left off the page and and with resources that are 30 35 years old, it it was it was time to bring in um texts that are going to reflect all the students that are in our classrooms. I'm glad that Simone came back just in time for her to have a little panic attack. No. Um so um the adoption costs knowing that we were going to have we we knew in

056advance that we had science adoption, we had ELA adoption, we're going to have math adoption coming up, we have social studies adoption in between there. So we have the four big core and um I've always been like we need to be really responsible and not spend too much in areas that are frivolous because we knew that we needed to to save some money in order to do this. So, um Dale and I have had conversations with Simone, so she's well aware of this nice big price tag, but um there are funds that have been set aside, um for this curriculum adoption. They've been set aside for several years actually um because we knew that this was coming up. Um so, you can see here that, um we have eight-year contracts that um we're going to

057um enter into. It'll give us a $500,000 cost savings if we can do it in an eight-year chunk. Otherwise, it's more expensive for us to do it yearbyear by year. And I know that that's like how Minnesota likes us to do it with our funding, but um when you're doing a curriculum material adoption like this, you want them to last a long time. Anyways, um so we're doing it for eight years. It is um um there's print resources and there's digital resources combined in that. Um, so the total cost of this is um $694,94745. So there's a lot of fours in there. So um but that is something that um we're asking you to approve um so that we can move forward with making this purchase and um have that ability to um provide these

058resources even maybe even May. we're going to have some opportunity to um um give teachers an opportunity to play with those resources and learn more about them at their staff development day on May 27th. So, yeah. So, any questions, comments? Treker, can you remind me again? My perspectives, who puts that out? Is that Savis? S A V. I've never heard of them. And then Study Sync is McGra Hill, did you say? Okay. Savis used to be another company. Pearson. That's what it was. Oh, okay. Got it. Youard of Pearson. Um, and then so you said there's digital resources. Are the textbooks digital and hard copies? So, we'll have access to both. And then I'm assuming with the digital as they update content and that 8-year then we will have access to that most likely. Yeah.

059So, when we went to purchase it, we ordered a classroom set of hard cover um so that they would last a lot longer than the soft covers. Um, so every classroom will have a set that will kind of stay in the room and then the the textbook is available online and that does cover that 8-year contract as well. Thank you so much. Thank you, member Williams. Then member Laughler Kemp. Um, so the 10 teachers you talked about, um, six middle school and four high school, is that East Denfeld and ALC or is it just the two high schools or We didn't have anyone piloting at ALC, but we did get East and Denfeld. Okay. And then both middle schools as well. Okay. Thank you, Walford Kemp. Thanks uh member Williams for asking that question. That

060was one of my questions. So um uh so appreciate that. I also really I loved English class and so I love the way you talked about how history was weaved in. I actually just recently read The Jungle Again. That's a great book. Um um I had a question on uh where you talked about time invested in what the teachers did and I was curious what hosting walkthroughs was. Um yeah absolutely. Um so for both pilots, well all three pilots I guess with three different resources um the vendors did provide some support where they came with um Dale and Sally White and myself and Jen participated and I believe Brenda did a little bit too. No, it was just Jen. Um but yeah, we went into classrooms where they were piloting with the vendor and we

061were able to observe how students were interacting with the materials. We were able to observe how the teacher was using materials. We were able to answer questions um if staff members had concerns about how to use the resource. We did run into some hiccups with the um into literature one with it integrating with Canvas and so the vendor could work directly with the teacher on trying to solve that problem in real time. Um but so yeah, it was just an opportunity for us to see it in action um and see how we what kind of supports we would need to provide with that resource. Okay. And then just a a followup on um the so will students be using their Chromebooks a lot with the new with with what you you um uh you piloted.

062I guess that's going to depend on the staff member. Um they don't have to. They could use the textbook. they could um there's a lot of PDFs of the content that's in the textbook that teachers could print off. Um staff or students can write on their own paper using the textbook. So, same as we've had with other anthologies where they just worked out of the hard cover, you can do that or they can work um digitally and they can type directly into the prompts in the digital textbook. It integrates with Canvas really nicely. Um so that it's really up to the staff member about what's going to best suit their students. Okay, great. That's that's good to know in terms of if we have staff that need more training um in technology. So I think

063another good point to mention is that both of those programs do come with novel sets that we get to select. So that they have a library of novels that we can choose from. Um that doesn't necessarily mean that we'll start that this year. We want to be able to really see what those units look like um and how those novels would meaningfully fit in. so that we're not just selecting like a favorite novel that we've always taught, but we really want it to be part of uh meaningful units so that students will also be able to have some authentic uh trade books in their hands throughout the year as well. Member Lo followed by member Sidowski. I think member Zidowski was before me. No, I think you were ahead. Okay. Mine's a quick question too.

064It I just so when we looked at um the online samples we provide when we went to the websites. So are we getting new textbooks 9th grade, 10th grade, 11th grade, 12th grade in English like just in the high school? So every and they're all from the study sync. Yeah. So we'll get textbooks 9 through 11 because 12th grade is all elective space. True. Yep. So 9 through 11 will get textbooks and so will sixth through eight of their own of the Savage materials. Okay. Member Saski. Um, I just wanted to say I really appreciate the professionalism and expertise that you all bring to um the research that you provide for all these curriculums. I really appreciate that you laid out on page 26 um the adoption process and just kind of highlight all of

065the years of work that went into this. I remember when you sent out the survey to parents because I think I took it um and I appreciated that. Um, I think a lot of times people think we can just snap our fingers and we're going to do this curriculum or that curriculum, but this really shows um just the the expertise that goes into it, the time, the thoughtfulness. So, I really appreciate that. Um, I am really glad to see that diversity was included um in part of the rubric and just I see that that was part of the feedback and that it was a priority. Um, so I really I appreciate that and and I'm glad to see it. Thank you. Thank you, member Mike. Yeah, thank you um to you sitting here, but then

066also the committee. Um it sounds like they've put in extra effort for this and so I appreciate that. Um I'm curious more on two things just process just so I can learn what happens next. So is it at our regular board meeting this month that you'd be asking us to approve? Okay. And um and that's with the my perspectives in the study sync which you brought forward here today. Great. And then um in terms of the adoption cost, we kind of like briefly mentioned that we have that money set aside because we've been planning for this for a long time. In terms of the total cost then is that money that we've had set aside have we budgeted enough? Is it are we having to do some moving around or? No, we do have money

067set aside for curriculum in our assigned fund balance and um that money has as Jen alluded to has been collecting over the last several years. Um they used to put um x amount of money into it every year to build up the fund. We have not been able to do that for three years, but we do have enough money to cover this purchase. and looking forward to our future curriculum changes that will be upcoming. Yes, they they know what the balance is, so they need to stay within that that amount. They're aware of it. And then last question, um we're obviously at the end of this process for ELA. Are we in the middle or beginning of the processes for the other subjects then? Right now, I know I've now I say that I remember

068seeing a spreadsheet with lots of colors that told me this, but I'll allow you to summarize it real fast. Yeah. Um, I'm going to get excited because that's the stuff I like talking about. That's the favorite part of my job. Um, so social studies is just a step behind. They are currently whittling down that um, list of resources that they're looking at. They've gone through the whole process of well, both math and social studies now have gone through the process of analyzing the standards um, getting feedback from the staff, students, community um, and also taking the time to prioritize that feedback. Um, social studies is um, set to pilot next year with the resources they're they're taking a look at. Elementary is choosing to pilot. Secondary is planning on doing more of a homegrown situation.

069Um, so they'll be spending a lot of time next year already starting to work through that written curriculum. Um, math is to a point now where they've taken the time to analyze the standards. um and they're going to next year start taking a look at all of the really great math resources out there and see what they can um whittle down to maybe just a couple of options to pilot. So those those are the two big ones that are following ELA and they're just a couple of steps behind. So great. Yeah, we're looking good as far as that process goes. I feel good about where we are. Good. Thank you so much. Thanks. So I would say uh as well that I I I love the work of curriculum cycles and curriculum adoption and I

070would also say that uh the board can take some of the um some of the praise for this too because of the work that we've done to be financially responsible and and make sure that we had money for their curriculum cycles. It's really important and you think about over 30-year-old curriculum. I was I was barely out of college and just starting teaching and and I've been at it for 30 years now and to think that they'd be the same books uh it's it's kind of shocking and I think that you know I know that our our social studies US history books end with Bill Clinton and so I think we we're at a point now where we're replacing many many things and putting in like we we have our our um new middle school and

071high school schedule but we also have curriculum that is relevant and meaningful and it's been uh researchbased and put through a process like this. Uh I'd also say as a as a superintendent, I also had worked as a teacher and then as a principal and then as a district office person each time going through a English language arts adoption in different places and it is a lot of work. I couldn't figure out why everybody was signing up for like the PE adoption cycle or something like that. Why? Like why doesn't anybody want to sign up for the ELA? and then I found out it was because it's about 10 times as much work as any other adoption. So, uh I want to say thank you to uh Jen and Dale and Jackie for all the

072work that's gone into this. Thank you. And and I feel I should go to Denfeld and grab one of those Brown Intro to Literature books and put it in my like like my historical collection of things from teaching. Um, and I really appreciate, Jackie, that you listed some of the authors that are included in our on our new purchases because they are authors that I recognize. They're they're really great um examples of what this new curriculum can bring. But then it just begs the question like no ninth grade Odyssey, no ninth grade Romeo and Juliet. I mean, some of those I mean we we've taught those since I came in 1985, but I'm I'd be really glad if we're updating and and bringing in new things. Great answer for you. It's still in there. It

073is. So, yeah, I I actually had the opportunity to use the Savis curriculum in my last teaching job and Romeo and Juliet um was in the 9th grade curriculum. Um we're using study sync, but that is still an that seems to be a core topic across all curriculums for 9th graders is that we touch on Romeo and Juliet. So, that is still in there. And that was one thing that really appealed to us about these resources is we don't want to completely abandon the classics, but we do need to make sure that we have texts that every kid is seeing themselves in. And so I really do feel confident about the direction we're going with that. Um, and the staff are into it. And and to Mr. Magus' point as well, um, these staff members

074put in a lot of time and I really want to make sure I recognize their efforts. There's a reason we only had 10 out of the more than 30 staff members. this was a lot of work, but they were passionate about making sure we invested in something that would really last um and be easy to work with for staff. So, very proud of all the work that they've done. Thank you so much. And as we uh have the the group transition, I also want to recognize uh and we we'll be talking more about this in the coming coming of weeks, just our structures and some of the things we're doing with to to segue into the Minnesota multi-tered systems of support. Having strong universal instruction is one of the most important responsibilities of our district

075and thank you to the team for putting that together. And now I will bring up um Brenda Sparts and Jen Larva will remain at the table while they'll be talking about the Duth Public Schools Minnesota multi-tered systems of supports grant overview and professional learning communities update. Yeah. So Brenda and I are here today. Um we had applied for a grant um with the state. We qualified under our requirements for this grant. Um and we applied and we know we're getting the grant. Um we had to do a couple little revisions and um redo our budget in a couple little areas, but um we were um up to $200,000 are in the grant awards and we have applied for $200,000 and by the end of the month we'll find out exactly how much um of that

076we have obtained. So yeah. All right, I keep going. I don't know who wants to We didn't we didn't like plan like who's going to say what. Oh, you'll do the next one. Okay. All right. So, as far as this grant goes, there were some required things that we needed to have, and you can see those listed on there. I'm not going to read through everything, but we've been doing the work around Minnesota MTSS for um a couple of years now, maybe maybe two years now. We've always done the work of MTSS, but Minnesota came up with their own framework kind of just after COVID. Um so, we've been transitioning more to the Minnesota MTSS model. Um we have been doing work with the um with the state collaborative the statewide team. So the northeast

077service co-op houses um coordinators and leads and advocates and we've been working with them. Um Gina Cole happens to be our Minnesota MTSS support. Um she works with Brenda and I directly um and supports us as a district um and then also supports the people that also work on her team at our sites. We have a couple of advocates that have been working at our sites. Um so these are some of the requirements that you can see on there. Um I'm going to talk a little bit more about the um in progress ones and the upcoming ones rather than the ones that we've already completed. Um so as part of this grant, we have to identify some roles um who will be responsible for Minnesota MTSS efforts. There are things that need to um meetings

078that need to be attended on a very regular basis. They're called communities of practice that are with the Northeast Service Co-op. Um there's just some requirements with this grant. So, we need to make sure that we have people that are identified as doing this work. Um we need to also have action plans, which we do, we call them action cards in Duth, but um action plans that then we need to make sure that we re we're reviewing them and updating them monthly. We've been doing it kind of quarterly more so or a little bit more than quarterly, but we haven't been monthly doing our our meetings. Um, we've called it expanded principal plus. We're going to actually reformat that a little bit so we can have these monthly meetings that we need that we're required

079to have as part of this grant. Um, and then we also make need to make sure that we address all five areas of u Minnesota MTSS. um that is like infrastructure, data systems, um the tiered supports, family and community engagement and assessment. Is that the last one? I think so. Yep. I think that's that's all of them. So, all those components need to be addressed within Minnesota MTSS. Um other things that we that we're looking towards as part of getting this grant is that we've taken time as a district to establish some Minnesota MTSS um um practices. we need to go to like the school site level now. So it'll be schools will be engaging site teams will be engaging with our selfassessment of MTSS implementation for school leadership teams. That's the whole like training

080pathway. Um we'll have some school teams that will then use the assessment piece for um the school sites. So it's a little bit different than the district. It's really more at the student level. Um but we'll we're going to be moving in that direction. Now um we also need to um ensure that um our newer principles that we've had in the last year or two um and any new ones that we have coming um get on boarded um with the um district level training and then some of the school leadership team meetings. And then we also have to um ensure that we have um oh I already addressed the communities of practice. We already we have to make sure that we're we're attending all the meetings that we're required to do as part of that.

081And as you're uh going through the slides, you might notice that we uh have a bit of a alphabet soup of acronyms and there's a uh glossery of the acronyms at the end of the presentation for board members and public. Okay. So the next uh slide here just you know why did we go after this grant? Um, we really, like Jen said, we have been dabbling in this for two years. Um, and it's what we've done has been really impactful. Um, as you see the the graphic up there, that is um a graphic of the five components of the MN MTSS framework. The first thing up there, infrastructure for continuous improvement. You've heard us talk about the learning leadership team structures where we have um the the cabinet, we have um the uh TLE team,

082we have all these teaming the um what else? Oh, principal plus all these different teams that we have at the district level to address many different functions of our system. Then we've also waterfalled that down to the schools and we did that a couple years ago and we've continued to massage that as we go just to get better and stronger at our teaming structures. But all of that work that we put in the last two years all had to do with this first piece of the Minnesota MTSS structure. We actually got most of the guidance from that um from that um guidance handbook that uh Minnesota has. So now we're just pushing that further. Um, family and community engagement is the second piece up there. When we did our district level assessment a couple years

083ago, that's where we came up with family and community engagement coordinator because we realized that was maybe a gap in our system. And so we again, we've done some of this already as a district. U multi-layered practices and supports. How do we set ourselves up in the schools for addressing what's happening in the classroom? How are we intervening on behalf of kids? And then that intensive piece of then special education if a child needs it. So how do we set ourselves up? You know, we've done a lot of work with that intervention piece and setting ourselves up there. Um then of course assessments um and then database decision- making. So those are the five components that we will be focusing in on. We have been and now just with this grant we can be more

084intentional. And then in the yellow there expansion to the school level teams. That's really where we need to get stronger. We've done a lot of district work. Now, we have done a lot of work at the uh school level, but we need to get to that fidelity piece where what and how we're doing things in the school is really like what what we need. Um, and the only the only way we can do that is we have to be there. Jen and I cannot be everywhere. Um, it's it's just impossible. So, we need a team that can address that continuous improvement framework in the schools and in the classrooms. what specifically are teachers doing on boots on the ground. So that's what this is all about um better outcomes for students. I mean that's really

085what we're um we're here for and so this will support that. I'm going to talk about goal one. Um so we identified three goals as part of our grant. Um and so our first goal is that we need to identify our Minnesota MTSS focused staff who are going to coordinate, lead, guide and support the implementation. Um and 40% of their time needs to be spent in fulfilling the responsibilities of the MTSS grant. So we are um putting in well when we get to the budget page which is next you'll see that a big part of our investment um with the grant is into that FTE so that we can have focused intentional time being spent on the on the um activities related to the implementation of our grant. Um so we are going to identify

086and assign responsibilities for one elementary and one secondary focused staff person. MTSS looks very differently at the elementary level than it does at the secondary level. And what we have discovered is that a K12 scope of somebody's work is really hard to really drill down and guide. So, we're really great partners and we work really well side by side, but we also need that other that other person that we can walk with us um in that forward facing direction as well with our team. So, that that's really what we're intending to do. Um, again, we're going to be partnering, collaborating with Compass, which is the statewide name for Minnesota MTSS. They have a team that supports um the work and they're called Compass. And then the MDE supports, which um we they're from the Northeast

087Service Co-op. That's our cooperative. But we're going to partner and collaborate with them to um continue to just expand our capacity and develop that capacity that we need. One of the big things that we're really excited about is that we put money into this grant for us to do some summer data retreats for our continuous improvement teams so that they can start the work of their comprehensive needs assessment. Um every um is it three or four years? I think three years we get the Northstar plan. Um so schools get reidentified. Some will get off of the list with the state of needing extra support. Some will be added back on. Um but it the cycle starts all over again like every three years and so yep we have done the comprehensive needs assessment about three

088years ago but we need to like revisit that again more intentionally not just like at updating it but like really taking a look at our comprehensive data. Um so that is something that we're going to be having teams um come together and do over the summer. And then our our curriculum instruction assessment team, CIA, we have been working on um developing an MTSS handbook based off of the the the um template that we were given. Um we are needing to start like reaching out to some stakeholders now and getting some more input into that. We just kind of fleshed out the first layer. um these roles will definitely um take over that handbook development and working with folks um and and getting that that feedback that we need. So when you look at the budget,

089you'll see that um a good chunk of this $200,000 that we have applied for does go into um th those roles 40% of that of that position those positions for that dedicated time. Um that handbook development with the stakeholders um that's about almost $4,000. And then the summer CIT retreats is the other big pocket of money that we have invested in and that is $56,000 too. Um I'm just going to add to Jen's with that summer retreat. That's very exciting for all of our um school leadership teams to be able to meet in August when we haven't done that in the past. It takes September, October, sometimes we're into November before they have because we we're setting aside six hours in August for them to be able to do this and we're paying all of

090these people to do it through the grant. So sometimes it takes us sever at least two months to get to where we're going to be prior to teachers coming back. So that's just pretty exciting that we don't have to spend two months doing that. Um the second goal um has to do with what I what we described as now this water falling down to the schools. There is a semi DLT with this district leadership team does this big assessment. I think it's about 108 components. We've showed you the results of that. We've done that for two years. Well, there is a school version. We have not yet done that. But with this grant now um with these people focusing the elementary and secondary person focusing they will be learning about the semislt and then having

091schools conduct that with their school leadership teams. And so it's the next step the next generation u moving it down into the schools. Um so that's um exciting as well. uh they will have to participate in the um leadership pathway. Compass is coming up with a whole catalog full of what they're calling the pathways. Um so in this specific goal, they will do the um system leadership pathway. So that's I I'm excited for that. Um we are going to pick two schools, one elementary and one secondary school to champion almost to train the trainer. So they will champion the work. They will engage in this work and then they will come back and then we'll do it with all the schools. It'll take us just a little bit longer. Um but um the compass people

092told Jen and I we were too ambitious. So, we had to scale our plan back and we were like, "Okay, but we're still going to do it with all schools. We're just going to do it a little bit slower and then in this kind of champion with train the trainer type model." So, um we're still going to do it, but we'll we'll do the two schools for them. Um, and then these, um, everybody will also, I mean, the district, um, reps that will coordinate this, we're all going to go to the Compass Institute in June. And like Jen said, that's built into the budget, too. So, you can just see this budget is Yeah, the budget there is for the travel expenses for the stipens um for this in summer institute and then those pathway

093trainings. So, we'll have um members from each school that we choose have some training stipens because they don't actually go in person, but it's like from 3:00 to 4:00 or something like that. So, we'll need to make sure that we have some time and space for those people to to do the work. All right, goal number three. Um this is pretty pretty easy. There's no money attached to this one, but um we need to implement and monitor the progress on the stakeholders engagement um with SIPs, which is what our school improvement plans are called. um and we run those through our continuous improvement teams. So um these identified roles will help train and support the CITs that are working on the CNA, the comprehensive needs assessment and the school improvement plans um their development and

094they'll also um work on at the school sites like we have a family and community engagement framework that had been developed. I know Adele and Shalon hadn't shared that with you, but like what are those expectations around what we're supposed to be doing at our sites? They're going to help with some of the some of that work and help monitor that implementation of of that framework. Um and then again, um they will also help along with Shalon or or the family and community engagement coordinator um do the um there's a family and community pathway training. we had to identify which pathways we were going to be engaging with with Compass. And so that was one of them that we chose as well. And there's no line a budget line item for that one. So you

095can just go down to our timeline which we have um um submitted our we resubmitted. We had to do a revised application and that was submitted on April 29th. Our funding award letter should be coming out any day now. Um so hopefully we will get the full $200,000 that we asked for. Um and then funds will be available um beginning in late May. We did reg we did put in for the summer learning institute. That's the only expense that we have that's coming out of the fiscal year 25. All the rest of the funds then would be um moving forward for the fiscal year 26. Okay. Just a side note about that compass institute. Jen and I are going to be presenting. Oh yeah. um because and and John and Anony's going to too, but

096specifically we will be that that first component of infrastructure where you set up your teaming structures. They are um really happy with how we have done that in Duth. Um they think we are on the cutting edge of how and that should look according to their guidance and so we are doing a session at the institute based on our teaming structures. So that's kind of fun. We're excited for that. Yeah. Um, sorry. Just thought I would throw that in there. Um, before we move on to the PLC update, I don't know, John, if you want to give them a moment to like ask some questions just about the grant. Yeah, I think that would be wise or at least an opportunity. And I would also say that um as you know part of the work

097that that was one of my superintendent's goals is making sure and the also the goals I always say my goals are your goals because it's the goals of the district uh is to make sure that the that there's a strong coupling between not just the school uh the school district's strategic roadmap but also that there's a strong pairing between that and the school improvement plans in each of our buildings. So this uh we we have already gone down that road considerably, but this gives us uh a much better framework and also additional resources to make sure that that work is um continuing and that it's it's something that is uh able to be ongoing and sustaining and not just part of one or two people's hard work. Uh any questions at this point thus far?

098Member Williams, sorry. And then member Laughler, member. Oh, many many people. Um, I have two questions. Um, so the two identified coordinators, does that include the family community and family engagement coordinator? No, it does not. We will still have that role in addition to these two coordinators will work in collaboration with our family and community engagement. Okay. And then um the two schools that will attend the leadership pathway, I understand that they're coming back and will train within. Um but how are those two schools going to be selected? Well, we haven't gotten that far yet, but um we were kind of waiting to make sure we had this grant, which we should get that letter any day, and then we were going to launch ourselves into that. So, we're just not quite there yet. But

099we do know that we want one elementary and we want one secondary focused um school. Are you going to I guess think about like what parts of Duth are being represented with the schools? I think it's probably going to be um or like size of school or you how would you decide? We only can choose one. So, you know, so one secondary, one elementary. We you know, because of the budget. Um but I think really it's it's going to come down to who already has some established MTSS structures in their school that maybe want want to go through this process with their continuous improvement team because they're going to have to go through a process with their leadership team. Um so you know taking a look at their capacity too like um what schools are

100are feeling like they have the capacity to do that additional piece. Thank you. Let's see who was next. I apologize. Member Laughler Kemp and then member Mike Cell and then Miss Loel or member Loel. Sorry. Thank you. Um I I I was curious too about uh which schools um and how the process was going to be chosen. I also was curious um who are the district and school leaders that are attending this training. Again, you identified some of the administration, but what uh people with the boots on the ground are going with you? Are you talking about the Compass Institute? Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. So, Jen and myself and Anthony. We have Anthony in the budget. Uh, we also have, I believe, two elementary principles, a middle school and a high school. So, taking a

101few principles with us. Um, um, we also have the some of our team. Yeah, some of the district level team. Um, Dale, Sally, who else? I think Laura. Yeah, Laura. Special education. Special education is part of it. Yeah. So we tried to get a representative group that can go down and uh learn more about compass and the expectations. Okay. And then just a follow up too with uh when this grant comes through uh when it comes through um uh how will the um other staff because you you're looking for a lot of staff to participate in different things and so and they'll be paid for that training, right? Yeah. Um h how will will that process work as you kind of earlier described what schools might be available? what schools have an interest, have the

102capacity or so it would be their CIT team that would be like so when we're talking about the um the two schools um the ones that are identified they're going to probably have to talk to their CITs to see if there's some willingness to even engage in this which is why we don't know which schools are going to be wanting to participate but they'll be paid for their time. Um and then the other piece of um the um data retreats again that's another CIT. So usually um we're tapping into that leadership structures that we've been talking about our teaming that we have and that leadership team that continuous improvement team at each school site is really where we focus in on. Okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. And then I just one last question.

103Um, you talked kind of earlier in the presentation about we took time as a district to learn about the M the Minnesota MTSS and I'm just curious. So what did that look like? Was that at those principal plus meetings? Was it okay? Yes. So it was uh one full year. Um I mean there's not six sessions but it felt like it took all year. Um, and it was with Compass coming in virtually and it was our whole leadership like all of us were sitting at the table going through that which is why I said we have some new principles that have not gone through the district leadership training that we'll need to have add on to that. Okay, great. Thank you. That sounds great. And just as a side note, I know in the elementary

104schools anyway, the CITs are already choosing dates. Um, they're already talking about the summer retreat. Um, so we're kind of trying to proactively put that on the books so they're all aware, they make a commitment to come. Um, so they're they're already making plans for those member Mike. So yeah, thank you so much um for all this. Um, can you remind me so I know at the middle school level and at the high school level we have dedicated MTSS coordinators at all four of those sites. Do we have dedicated MTSS coordinators at all of our elementary sites as well? So, our MTSS coordinators have been actually re rebranded more as our social emotional behavior coordinators because when we talk about MTSS that had been happening at our sites, it was more on the behavioral side

105of things. We're more focused on the academic side of things. So, um we don't have any coordinators at any any level that is focusing in on the academic side of MTSS. Got it. Thank you for that clarification. Um, so we have those people who focus on parts of it. Um, and so is the goal then having these two new positions funded by this grant then to help them with the parts that they don't concentrate on or to elevate the work they're doing? I'm just trying to understand like where the roles are going to overlap or be singular. Yeah. So we have um Todd McGawan and he does at a wear grant and these SEB specialists work directly with him and that that's more in the line of PBIS. We have that whole PBIS initiative we've

106been doing for the last couple years. And so it really is, if you're talking about the triangle of the multi-layered systems of support, it really is on that SEB side that those SEB specialists, they focus down there that um they could potentially teach the um secondstep curriculum in the elementary and the middle schools. So they really don't touch academics at all except for we know if kids are able to um you know attend to the work better and um then they're better at academics. That's really their goal. The actual tier one focus of core instruction and curriculum that happens for all kids in the classroom. They don't do that at all. So we've really had this gap there. Jen and I do it a lot at a higher level with the principles. We really need

107someone paying attention to the SIP and the implementation and the execution of how it looks in the classrooms when it's in front of kids. And so these two positions will help us do that. Um, and that's really the goal is what we're say we're we're doing and how we're doing it and our execution. We want to make sure that fidelity piece is there. And so I these people will help us and they'll be a partner with us in making sure that happens. Great. Thank you. I don't know if that answers your question. Yeah. No, that's providing some of that foundational review of all the different roles that we have. Um when it comes to the work that's being done currently, um you know, the things that we've accomplished thus far, is that funded through grants

108as well or remind me how that's funded? Just No, actually. um the learning leadership teams and um our teaming structures, the principal plus the the um we have an EIT, elementary um instructional leadership team. We have the SILT, the secondary version of that. You know, that's that's all out of our heads. I mean, that, you know, that's that's what we do. That's part of our jobs and it takes a significant amount of our um of our work to do that. And but it's good work and so far it's been very impactful. But we just need that next layer down that's touching teachers and the classroom. And that's really the goal here is to make sure it gets to the kids. I think it's important to note too that when we look at the um some

109of the realignment that we're doing within the teaching, learning and equity department, uh we we're also consolidating in our our um technology department. So we're we're uh reducing we've reduced several positions and so this is still very much within our um our cost savings goal that we had for the department and it actually that the the department goals for for central office were significantly more than we're asking for for the for the staff. So uh or for the uh sites rather. So we are still this this actually the the restructure just within the positions that that we're talking about currently is about $40,000 in savings. So I've also talked with our um with the you know various other people about making sure that that money is set aside for potential enrollment uh fluctuations or bubbles.

110So if we have high, you know, classes where there's a higher number of students that that um savings could be applied towards those those um bubble classrooms. So even though it's it's an enhancement of of a couple of of positions uh and a trading in of another, it's um really when you when you look at it, it's still a cost savings for the district, but also a realignment. And I can put that together in more of a chart form and show things during our our human resources meeting because I think it's important. It's more important now than ever that if we're making a shift in our positions that we show why uh and that's not even taking into account the the grant funding piece, but it's it's u part of our realignment of resources. And

111I think that as uh Jen and Brenda has have said, there's there's a lot of work being done there. I also am very excited to have our our test scores for graduation uh released tonight at midnight. So I think that that it it goes to show that that uh the hard work of these teams, the hard work of our principles, the hard work of our teachers is uh paying off. Can't go into the details of the scores, but you you know what they are and it'll be great to see them publicly. I just have one last followup then. Um in terms of grant funding, is the who's the payer? Is it state? Yeah, this is a state grant. Um so this is through fiscal year 26 but um we've been assured there'll be other opportunities

112for us to continue writing grants. There's a commitment at the state level to their system their their um compass and the system that they have of training and supporting. So we'll have other opportunities that we'll probably be applying for and bringing forward in the future. So great. Thank you so much. I wanted to just mention one other piece. Um compass. We talk about Compass and we have the North Northeast Service Co-op and they have a whole slew of people now working um up there in math and uh ELA and I don't they've changed a lot. One of the things they're changing for next school year is their structure. For the last six years, I mean last four years that I've been here, I've had someone coming from Compass and helping me with the six identified

113elementary schools because we've been identified through that Northstar and we've explained that over the last few years, but she has been coming um well, we had a new person this year and she literally goes to the schools. She attends the CITs. we meet um the two of us, but then we also go into the CITs and she she's really done a lot of work there in conjunction with um our our priorities as a district with me, with the principles and then with the CITs and it's been awesome, but they are taking that away next school year. So, we won't have that person coming to focus. They're going to focus more on the district level, which is the person we already do that with and wanting us to come present at at conferences related to our

114systems and structures of support. So, I think that we're um we're very very much on the right track and I think that we're we're being seen as a as a leader in in the Minnesota multi-tered systems of support. And I'm not sure who was next if it was uh member Lo. Thanks. I'm keeping track for all of us, too. Um but but in actuality I I was holding out all the way until Sarah's last question or member Mikeel because I I wanted to know about um yes we're when we get the grant is important and that's the philosophy but you know that letter hasn't come yet but I wondered about the ongoing cost you know like so this grant is is for next year and this is what we're accomplishing we're going to hire the

115directors we're going to set up our vision for the for this we're going to go to the retreat this summer. All of that is already because we know we're going to get the grant and it's a one-year and so we have to reapply. Yep. So, it's a one year for now. Um, one of the interesting things, you know, we always talk about supplanting and you can't supplant this grant. They actually let you do that. So, we already have the funding for these positions. We can then use those funds differently. Um, so $120,000 will go towards people's salaries, but it it helps us with our general fund. Okay. So again, just to reiterate, because I know that there's a lot of eyes on budget, u the the realignment of the positions within teaching and learning and

116equity without the grant will still result in a savings of of 40. the current the current realignment, not talking about the the director position that we didn't fill or or the uh uh TOSA positions that we didn't fill that that already met our goal, but this realignment with the uh technology director and the um the there was a uh DWIA position there that was that was eliminated. The net result will be at least a 40% or sorry $40,000 uh savings apart from the grant. So, it's nice that we have the grant and that helps, but we also realize grant funding can be fickle and you don't necessarily know when you're going to going to get it. So, we don't want to have it's nice to have it baked in for now, but uh we've already

117accounted for that and we've made budget reductions that exceeded our target and then the easel will will take us another $40,000 further. And just a just a to follow up on on that. So that that those were basically my two questions, but the other thing I'm really blown away with as uh just the systemic um overstructure that has transformed this district over the last eight years that I've been on the board. Just the vision that our leadership has had um gets us to this point already. But it is overwhelming for someone who worked in the district with with not a lot of really really tight focus from the from the classroom to to here. So it it's been it's it's overwhelming with the systemic change the the infrastructure stuff. Yeah, you guys are busy but

118appreciate it. Appreciate it. Yeah, it's just really really sets us up for the results that I know um will be um continued to be shared. Thank you a lot. Laughler K. I was just wanting kind of a high level overview on you. You talked a little bit about what this looks like has looked like at the district level and what are the concerns or challenges or uh strengths that you see in um how it will uh be brought at to the school level. I mean you talked about the CITS teams and that and I just just again a very just high level. I I think our teaming structure is really where what our strength is lying in currently. you know, we do we have the district level and then we also have and you can

119see it if you actually go to the next slide. I know that's called PLC's but it is on the next slide and I know that you probably have access to that. Um we have the district teaming structures and the elementary and the secondary levels that you can look at later. Um but you know that is one of our strength areas. I think at the elementary we've been doing a lot of work. Um you know I was a principal how many years ago in the district and we we I was in the cohort we had the kind of like our our cohorts that we were running through. Um and um I was in that first court. We we really do have a lot of established practices. We've identified curriculum. We have um interventionists at all of

120our elementary sites. I mean there's a lot of systems and structures there. Um when you talk about challenges, it has been um um I guess eye opening for me to see that secondary is just a harder um a harder place for us to to get all these structures and stuff in place. We don't have interventionists at the high school. we have minimal interventionists at the middle school. And so when I think about and I get excited about it is like having somebody who can help support and and direct at just the secondary level and and get that up to speed, I think is going to be a great resource. You know, our our our lens is more about credit recovery and getting kids across graduation where I think um the focus is so different at

121the elementary level. So they're two different animals really. Thank you. Just to add a little bit to that, really the calibration of practice across like our ele our nine elementary schools that's been huge in this learning leadership team structure and how we've set ourselves up that way. Um and then consistency like um that's it was really siloed work across our elementary schools with schools doing things very differently. We still have some of that, but so much less. Um, one of our newer principles the other day, she was like, "So, you mean if someone transferred from one of our schools to another school, like they would have a very similar experience?" And when kids, we have kids transferring, especially in these central schools and westside schools, from school to school to school to school and then

122back again. Um, many kids do that. So, we really want consistency across like our elementary schools so that when they leave a school and go to another school and then go to another school, which we have a lot of kids do that, they're having some consistency in academics that they can count on and that their parents can count on. And so, that's that's really another thing we're trying to um promote through this. Yeah. So PLC's, we've talked about PLC's before and and two years ago we did a PLC reboot. We had some challenges um going into that year um and we had to kind of um stop and uh reframe what we were doing. And then this last year we jumped in again. Um PLC is a is a critical piece of that infrastructure for

123the schools. That's where teachers sit down, they um look at their practice, they look at student work, they analyze assessments, um they that's where they um align the standards across their curriculum. Um all kinds of things happen in PLC's and if we don't have strong PLC's, we lose a lot of that continuity of what happens in the in the classroom. And so they're very very important for that tier one core instruction like that means what happens in the classroom. And so just um we we want our teachers to see how important their work is. And so it's called out on those frameworks um as the tier one um delivery and planning for instruction. Um you go to the next slide. So PLC's will continue to be a priority next school year. We had developed a

124PLC handbook which is h if you sit down as a PLC and you have this handbook literally you can just follow it and it leads them through the process of setting themselves up for success. And so we'll we'll continue to use that handbook. We have PLC hubs. That's where they document their work and there's a lot of guidance in there. There's there's a lot of autonomy as a teacher team because every single teacher team is different. They are all addressing the needs of a different student group. Um whether you're in Piedmont or Congden or Lincoln Park or East High School, you have different kids and a different purpose for sitting down as a PLC. So the hubs really guide the work, but it's really up to them to execute what they need when they sit

125down as a PLC. Um, we have PLC Thursdays. Secondary does their PLC's in the mornings. Uh, elementary does theirs after school. We dedicate Thursdays to that just so we don't have IEPs going on. We don't have other meetings. So, we we've just set that side of time um that time aside just to be really um intentional for PLC's and we're going to continue that. What we hope to get out of this effort with this grant is increased monitoring of implementation um that the monitoring should be happening through CITs. We have pockets of that. It's not really a lot of fidelity right now. And so with Jen and myself and then these new roles, we just hope to have more monitoring of that implementation and that fidelity piece of PLC's because of the importance of the

126work. Um, and then ensuring that they are focusing on priority work. Um, what do we want our students to know and be able to do? That's all about that teacher clarity piece that we've been talking about for a couple years now. Um, how do we know if they learned it? It's all about assessment. What do we do if they don't learn it? Intervening on behalf of kids who struggle. And then we have kids sitting in our classrooms who need extension. And so those should be the four focus questions of the PLC's. And um we're going to continue to work on that as we move forward. Oh, and here's our acronym page for you. Jen and I will continue to try to put an acronym page if there's a lot going on in a presentation. just

127so you'll have it at your fingertips. Any questions about PLC's? I know that's not a lot of new information about PLC's, but just wanted you to know that we're continuing to focus on that work going into next school year. Yeah. I I just wanted Did you have a question, too? No, go ahead. Okay. Just on the PLC Thursdays, is that the um district or school um school choice PLC and then the PLC's that other staff are involved in happen on other days? And is that still just a committed of like one Thursday a month type of thing? Um it's up to two Thursdays a month for the district. We call them school or teacher le and district two Tuesdays, sorry, two times during the month. Um regular school teacher le ones are on Thursdays pretty

128much every Thursday and then the up to two um you know we have some months where we have you know breaks and stuff so up to two um chair I just want to take a minute and just lift this work up um in conjunction with the Minnesota multi-tered systems of support because really what we're talking about right now is improving academic outcomes for our kids starting at kindergartener all the way up through 12. Right? So now this is intentional work that we're going to be doing as a district investing from our general fund even though we're getting a grant and investing in these structures to make sure that every classroom has a standard of practice and that we are making sure that curricula that um is supposed to be learned and academic outcomes are improving

129on a school by school and on a classroom byclassroom basis. So that's really what I want to lift up because we spend a lot of time talking about a lot of other stuff which is important and leads to improved academic outcomes. But this is really where the rubber meets the road is empowering our teachers with the pedag pedagogical practices to make a difference in a classroom which has to do with the read act. How do we teach reading? How do we teach how do we teach math? How do we teach science? And just for the record, I've been out of the classroom for a couple years. I know that if I'd go back into the classroom, the students and the brains that I'd be teaching to are very different than they were 3 to four

130years ago. So these PLC's, these are areas that allow teachers to get the information they need to change their practices to update their practices for the students in front of them. So I know we've been talking a lot about rearranging and budget reallocation and but this is very important in these two pieces of information that we just these this is focused on improving the academic outcomes of our kids. So thank you member Mike. Yeah, I always get excited when I hear about the work that our district is doing around PLC's and um especially how it's focused on individual kids, but using that data to support the practices um and getting our teaching staff and you know and our our district administrators to really work together to identify those and to support our teachers doing that.

131Um I'm curious uh like as you talked about the PLC hub as a place to track their work. Um, how are we finding that our teaching staff is is utilizing these new time and resources? Is there some like like high level like information about the success it's having and the buyin that we we're getting? Well, so you're asking a super good question and I think we are having pockets of success, but I think that monitoring is probably not as strong as it should be. And so moving into next school year, um I think that was one of our moving into next year, we really want to get stronger and better at monitoring the implementation and the execution. And so that'll that'll be a focus. We actually have a group um from Compass. They asked us

132if they could go and meet with our principles and this is happening right now and they are asking our principles like a set of like 10 questions about PLC's about the implementation. How do they feel it's going? So they're um doing a survey if you will which is awesome. Um and then they're going to give us the information that they learned from this survey. They're going to use it too for their purposes, but then they're going to share with Jen and I. So, I'm pretty interested to learn about that that but that's actually happening right now. But yes, that is a piece we want to get better and stronger at and that data will help us moving forward next year because this is they're doing it on behalf of us for fidelity checking. Um, and

133so it'll help us like improve for next year. So that's really why we asked them to even do this because it's an action card. We wanted to get really good data around it. Thank you very much. And finally, uh we will have uh executive director Simone Zunich uh coming to present on uh fiscal year 2026 preliminary budget and review. This is our first reading of our budget for the committee of the whole and our second reading would take place uh later this month month on the 27th. So, please welcome Executive Director Zunich. Evening everyone. Good evening everyone. It's finally my turn. So, um I have for you uh before you the preliminary budget. Uh is this the weak one? Okay. Is this one better? No. Okay. Is this better? That's better. Okay. Maybe it's maybe

134it's the operator. Um uh I will be presenting the budget three times in the next two months. So tonight will be the preliminary um highlevel overview. Um I'm still waiting on some decisions from the education bills. I did speak with the department of ed on f last Friday and they said it'll be another week or so. So I'm giving you our best estimates right now. I'll be going through timelines and um the good news is right now I'll be presenting a balanced budget to you. Uh the next time I come on May 27th I will have those beautiful pie chart sheets uh breakdown by fund for you that everyone likes. So I think by then by May 27th I should have some more accurate numbers. But I feel confident that we're 98% there. So, okay,

135I'll start. Um, our timeline, um, excuse me, April of this year, we've start we started with individual board member meetings. Uh, they occurred to review the five-year forecast and the FY26 preliminary budget. May 6th is tonight, committee of the whole, our budget first reading. May 27th, it will be a I called it committee of the whole. Is that really a special board meeting or is that a committee of the whole? No, that's a special board meeting, is it? It's a committee of the whole just on budget. Okay. So, my my words are correct there. And that'll be our budget second reading. It'll just be focused on the budget that night. And I will include categorical aid breakdown and basic formula aid information. June 9th is our HR business services. I will just present it in

136the in the agenda there for um on the consent agenda. And then June 13th is our committee of the whole. I'll do a budget third reading and I will include our categorical aid breakdown and final aid document. And on June 17th, we will bring I'll bring it to the board for budget adoption. Um smaller. That's okay, Patty. and my mic is off. Um, there was previously a question asked if there was ever like if if a board member maybe wanted to propose a amendment or something like that, when would when could that take place? That could take place at the regular board meeting um as a as a proposal or on the 17th at the regular board meeting when we'd adopt the the budget. So, those would be avenues for that. Um, I think I

137had mentioned that the May 27th might be an opportunity, but that's a committee the whole. It's not listed as a regular or a uh special board meeting, and so it would need to be changed if it was something that we wanted to do at one of those meetings. Uh, so it would be at the regular it has to be at a regular board meeting when we would uh propose any changes. So that the two opportunities for that would be the regular board meeting that we have coming up for May and then the regular board meeting on the 17th of June. Thank you. Okay, Patty, you can go to the next one. Um I've included a summary of overview definitions um for those that are interested. General fund is our 01, transportation is 03, and operating

138capital is 05. Many districts combine those three departments, and they just call it the general fund. Um I we've had it here historically separated. I like to have it separated. I like to be able to look at uh you know, transportation and operating separately, but those are all the general fund. Um and additional funds include our food service which is fund two, community service fund fund four, construction fund is six, debt service is 7, our trust fund is eight, and our internal service fund is 20. The process for general fund revenue budgeting will include projecting and analyzing current federal, state, local revenues along with forecasting legislative or local district changes to revenues. Uh the good news is our basic formula allowance for this year is 2.74% which translates to $1.9 million. The FY26 budget will

139be presented as a balanced budget tonight. We will provide the categorical aid breakdown at the second reading on May 27th. And tonight the compensatory aid is reflected with the FY25 allowance. So this year's allowance. We are waiting for the 26 education budget to be released. And that's why I called MDE on Friday. uh because all the revenue documents that you use to um calculate your budget are reflecting the new comped, but um I chose to leave in this year's amount because I'd rather add it than take it away in a couple of weeks. So, we'll see what happens there. So, revenue projections. Um I did I did this last year for you and I thought it's just maybe helpful that got printed funny. The first line, the gened aid uh last year was 74.5. This

140year it's 77.6. So uh an increase of 3.1 million over last year. Uh that does include the the 2.74 in the basic formula. Uh aid increase. Our special education aid last year was 23.7. this year or excuse me this year is 23.7 next year 25.9 um with an addition of 2.2 million I don't know why that printed off like that but a property tax levy sorry about that uh 45.1 last year it did go down to 43.2 two for next year as we know because of our LTFM adjustments. Our federal funds um right now I decreased it by 200,000. I that will we'll have we'll see how that uh plays out in the next couple of months. Uh right now I have no indication that anything is changing. I haven't been informed of anything. Our

141nonfund uh nonfederal grants I've kept the same at 2.3 million and the same for next year. our funded programs uh 9.1 and uh I I think next year we're going to be at roughly 8.7 which is a reduction at 400,000 and our other revenue um la this year is 5.7 million next year 7.5 so with an that will be an additional 1.8 8 million for us. Uh our debt service will when I see 200,000 at 28 million to 27 that's roughly roughly flat. And food service we're going to increase by $100,000. And community education went down 300,000. Somehow when we communicated this document to board, some of the changes uh were affected here. So I'll have I'll make sure that get gets fixed. um in the box. Okay. And ours, Simone, it is yours. Okay.

142Yeah. Okay, good. Oh, that's good. That makes me feel better. Yeah, that's okay. Um um to the box uh in the box to the right, the FY26 general fund revenue shows the basic formula increase of 2.74 million. Additional factors, as I explained, special education aid is based on prior year expenditures. Now, this number right now does not reflect um our additional aid that we will get for special education. I should have some final numbers in a couple of weeks there. I explained our property tax levy has a decrease due to LTFM adjustments. Our federal funds hold steady unless we hear otherwise. Funded programs are student support services, gifted and talented transportation, etc. And other revenue includes fees from patrons, student activities, and miscellaneous local revenues and grants. And we've had some nice uh increase some

143nice grants that we're getting. So that's why I increased it um generously. Um our expenses, so our salaries and wages this year. Um remember this is all funds put together. I don't have it broken down by just general fund is 85.6. Um with our budget reductions that decreased it by 1.1 million. Employee benefits are relatively flat. Um our TRA is going up 75% for next year which will be roughly a little over half a million dollars. We pay um around 11,000 excuse me 11,746 for TRA a year. So um it's going up 75 for the employer portion. We will get some revenue from the department of education to offset that. It's part of our levy. Last year it was a little over a million dollars. uh purchase services 12.3 this year I bumped it up

144to 129 uh for next year because the um supplies have increased tariffs have increased when I've met with uh committee our board member Saddowski we've we've talked about that how our our supply costs have really gone up so I increased that number um capital expenditure ERS I increased uh we anticipate having roughly a million dollars more in U repairs that we need to do in the district and other expenditures. Um that could be anything that's not LTFM that could is just general education or excuse me general fund. Our debt service that will match itself and food service uh the expenses match the revenue. um are to the in the box to the right. The FY26 salaries reflect a decrease due to the district budget realignments. Benefits show a slight increase over FY25 which reflects an

145increase in pension employer contribution and health insurance premiums. purchase services expenses show an increase over 25 due the anticipa due to the anticipation of increased third-party contracts such as transportation. I mean honestly all the contracts are coming in at more money. They're costing more and of course supplies and materials. Uh we also in anticipate increased supply and shipping costs. So yeah. So here's the the good news. Um the general fund, the top line, you see our proposed 26 budget to our proposed uh expenditures. And we see um we still have a increase of $248,851. So um I'm very pleased to announce that that we have for me this is a balanced budget. Um, it doesn't say zero, but it's it's balanced. Uh, with with the high dollar amount we have. Food service, 6.1 million in

146revenue. We anticipate spending $6,95. So, a difference of $24,000. Community service. Um, our revenue is coming in at 8.1. Right now, I'm anticipating only expenditures of SE 7 million7. So there's almost uh $462,000 there where uh revenue over expenses. That will be a conversation that we'll be having. I think there's plans to for some program changes there too with um classes, adding classes and whatnot. So I think there's some exciting things there. Our debt service um for next year our revenue is 27.8 8 million. Um the bill should come to 27.3 million. So we will have uh overage of 462,000 there. Our trust revenue of 320,000 um expenses 270,000 internal service is showing a negative of 65,000 and student activities um those can just vary year to year. I always just anticipate that that is

147basically takes care of itself. So, so overall, um, we're showing to the good if you look to the bottom right of a million 1,183,68, but that of course is all the funds put together. So, we generally focus on the general fund and right now, um, it looks balanced. I had our MARS coordinator put this together for us um for projected enrollment and this is exciting. In 25 we budgeted the bottom line. I'll go with the 8,68. Next year I'm using the budgeted amount of 8,999 and we're going to increase that to 8,125 and then 8,150. Um but what the numbers that actually come in um are usually that total enrollment. So that's why I'm very conservative with our enrollment our ADMs. But then um at the end of the year when we finally get our

148numbers in basically in November, December, that's when we see the um efforts that come in and that helps in offset our general fund. And that's why I panic when June is all over and I'm thinking we're just so over budget, but then once these numbers start rolling in, it looks a lot better. So, so I will have a lot more detail for you on May 27th. Um, but I'd love to answer any questions right now. member lod. So, a couple questions and most of it is is really revolving around what we see as the current legislative climate in Minnesota and just some assumptions that you that we have made and you've shared that with us about um state funding projections and where you see that in your budget. and the one I'm a little bit

149more targeted to. So it is it is that question given given the the legislative climate, you know, what are the risks, maybe some opportunities associated with this projection, especially in the area of pension because that is seeming to be something we're um seeing in the legislative bill as far as a pension and and I know we're supporting that as a district. We are. Yes, the superintendent has supported that and I know there's a group that is uh working on supporting that. Um you know basically when we get our um younger teachers are coming in and when they are set to retire those numbers they have to work longer which essentially is is more of a cost to a district. So they're trying to offset that and um you know I'm I'm very happy that they're

150looking at that reform. They did meet with us. So that's not affecting this budget right now. There's nothing that there's nothing that we need to do to make sure that we have funds avail that that were our budget is still what you've got if the pension bill passes. Correct. Actually the pension bill if the pension bill passes it will it will help our future budgets. Basically uh as Simone was pointing out right now there are the rule of 90 is um the the um people who are benefiting from the rule of 90 have are beginning to age out. So the people that had graduated uh in the 80s uh and started teaching right away and benefited from from the rule of of of 90 uh they they're phasing out of the system and so new

151people uh may may not be able to retire quite as as soon and so we would be keeping more experienced employees but quite often our more experienced employees are also at the top of the the u pay scale. And so, um, rather than, for instance, having somebody retire who's making $85,000 a year and hiring somebody at $50,000, you're keeping the $85,000 employees over time. And so, the pension bill um basically proposes that there are that there's pension reform where somebody can retire at age 60 or 62 and that would be funded by the state uh for for that pension reform. So, it wouldn't put the cost of the uh retirement on the district. Is there anything else? Anything else you need? I mean, I kind of directed it towards pension, but there's a lot of

152things that cause I'm sure cause you some concern over. So, um, long term, I'm always thinking about uh any legislative appropriations. Um, you know, the budget is relying heavily on funding allocated by the state legislature for the upcoming bienium. So, this includes per per pupil funding formulas, special education funding, transportation aid, and funding for specific programs. Um, we were lucky enough to receive an additional inflationary amount for our basic formula because I had originally calculated 2% and that's what I have going forward. So, um, you know, I that I don't know what's going to happen yeartoear there. Um in our enrollment projections um you know our state funding is tied to enrollment. So the budget is always based on projections of student population and any changes in demographics or student migration can impact any of

153this funding. Um I've talked to you about inflation and um state revenue forecasts which uh also influences our education funding are also based on these assumptions. So we really have to watch on the e uh economic health of the state of Minnesota. So, and um you know, any specific policy decisions they make will affect any of our key funding and um any risks. Um you know, our risks are lower than anticipated appropriations, unforeseen budget shortfalls. Um, I do read a lot about all of that and how even the state, you know, is talking or they're already going out to 2029 and where their budget's going to end up or land. And um, increased mandates without corresponding funding are a big challenge for districts and I think that's a big issue for many districts, especially the

154bigger districts, um, because that's a big number. And um on the positive side, any opportunities we have, hopefully there'll be a favorable legislative climate, um targeted funding for specific needs, and they're looking at giving us more flexibility in funding. Um so we have, you know, our for our funds cannot cross over and pay fund four cannot pay for fund one. fund. The general fund cannot finance the um food nutrition fund. So, I think they're starting to talk about more flexibility there. And um but to address the variances that we may have coming up is what we've been doing right now. Um we will look at budget, our budget reserves. So, that's our assigned fund balance. It's very important to us that we keep a good and you guys the board's been doing a great job

155at making that a priority. Um we are prioritizing our spending and um you know if it haps happens we may do a hiring slowdown which you know we're already doing our reductions. So that is another thing that could we may need to do depending on where our budget lands. We'll make adjustments to programs and uh seeking alternative funding sources. I put that in there, too. But I mean, we have a healthy uh community that is so great about partnerships um with our Northland Foundation and Duth Superior Community Foundation, uh the Full Service Community Grant, Project Aare, M MTSS. So, we're we're very lucky to have a wonderful community that helps uh support and partner with us. And um I think that's it for me for that question. The the one the one area I would

156add, sorry, no. And you remarked on it earlier, but not not to this question is the federal funding because the the president's budget calls for billions and billions in reductions in education spending. They do keep title one in place, but some of the other title programs are significantly affected. And so seeing how that plays out, that will be uh something that we're watching carefully. And it doesn't seem to be necessarily business as usual uh so to speak. And I'm not sure whether member Laughler Kemp or member Mike Saul was next. I just have a one quick question. Okay, go ahead. Um, I'm sorry I didn't get this ahead because I'm just noticing it now, but looking at last year's um, first draft of the budget presentation. Um, I see that under other revenue, we were

157projecting for this current year for it to be 7.9 million, but in our current year's um, projections for next year were showing that we had 5.7 million. Yeah, I saw that, too. I have to look into that. I think we may have revised that down. I'll have revised it last year. Yes. And so what's in our correct that makes more sense because I was like how did we lose two? Yeah, it's lost on a spreadsheet. Okay, so that makes sense. All right, thank you for that clarification. Sure, member Lamp. Yeah, I have a couple followup questions um to the the pension bill just you were talking about that and um I thought and I think I read the article too quick, but you were quoted in the paper I think and was there a dollar

158amount that you had talked about that we that would help our district if that pension um so there wasn't a I don't remember a specific dollar amount uh but but there are two um two different bills, one in the Senate, one in the House in the House uh bill if I remember well there are two bills I can't I and I think in in one of the bills it is looking at a 60 year retirement with 30 years of of experience the other is 62 the 62-year um pension reform would still be better than than uh nothing by far uh but but we we're proposing the 60-year uh possibility partly because I I believe that that teaching is a calling Uh but it's also incredibly hard work and we we talked about the the work

159that's that's done and I think that if somebody's given uh there so much time to the to our children 60 years is a is a u reasonable age at which to retire with a with a decent pension. I I'm glad that we have been coming out supporting the uh pension reform bills. Um I had um another question. Um have you heard anything from MDE? Have they been sending any information on um any more concerns coming down from the federal level? More specifics, I guess. No, I have not heard anything. I have Mazbo this week starting tomorrow and I am presenting with our um an forecasting um software company and um there's three team members that I work with and I'll be presenting tomorrow. We're doing three 30 minute sessions right behind um the school department

160Minnesota Department of Education Kathy Ericson. So I will be attending her um session as well to see if there are any updates but no we have heard nothing. So okay great. And then just the last uh piece um I just I guess I want to say a couple things. um you're going to do great at the workshops tomorrow. You're a great presenter. Thank you. So, uh go in there with confidence. Um and I just I guess as a board member, I know so many conversations have happened. I know um and I have a great deal of respect for the work um director um Zunich that you have done uh uh and the work you've done behind this budget process as well as our administration and other staff and I know I'm a better board member

161because of the knowledge you have continued to provide and train with us as board members. So, I I appreciate that you uh and and I recognize like all board members do that, you know, we're seeing school districts all all across the state making cuts and and there's just so many uncertainties coming um down at the federal level. And so, I recognize that. Um, I guess that the one piece I'm just really struggling with with uh the uh some of the cost savings that we we've been proposing uh is is around music. And I I know I and and others have talked about it at the board table uh and we've heard from parents on that. And I guess what I've been struggling with is because I just, you know, both as a parent, uh, as

162someone that's been in the community and and, uh, in the music world a little bit, um, that when we talk about advancing equity as one of our core goals, music is such a key piece um, with uh, that allows every student any place in our district to um to to participate and and because we have strong booster clubs because we have offered um uh individual lessons to anybody who wants to participate um because it's cheap to rent uh instruments um or booster clubs uh help for kids who can't play. I'm just really struggling with the cuts uh for our middle school music. Uh and it seems like um that the the savings um is or the the amount is so minimal when I look at and hear the budget. And I go back again to

163um um if kids um uh aren't having a good experience in the middle school, they do not stay in our programs. Uh they they if um and private lessons build those relationships as well as consistently help give confidence to our kids in staying in music. And so I'm just um I'm I'm wanting and and there's many other things I could say and I I'm look forward to hearing from other board members. Music is also a career pathway, you know. So I think a lot about that. I think of my own nephew who came from very little. uh he the booster club bought him his black pants and uh and he's a music teacher doing incredible work in a a small rural community. And and so I'm I'm just I'm hoping that as we continue talking

164about the budget, we can still think about keeping um this minimal uh cuts, but the long-term impact of of it uh um having individual instructors at the middle school. I I think I think we're we're not advancing equity the way we could. So, I I just I know we're all working hard and I I I I recognize that, but I hope we can still look at that in the next few conversations. So, thank you again. Yep. Thank you. Sorry, member Mikeell. Um, yeah, I think I listening to member Laughler Kemp. I feel like I can echo some of those um statements and feelings that she's having around this issue um uh in terms of like balancing our budget in in the ways of looking at certain um areas. um recognizing that a lot of hard

165work has gone into all these particular numbers and um by many many people and um honoring that they're coming to this with um the best of intentions for a well um a good school district that thrives for all of our students. Um I think of this subject on on a number of different levels, but most importantly is the the number of students that are participating in our um academic classes that involve music. Um which is, you know, quite a bit. Um, and as La I remember Laughler Kemp kind of referenced, you know, starting them out, um, with a strong of a foundation allows them to then, um, you know, increase their abilities as they go as they go forth. Um, you know, we we heard words tonight in different areas, you know, about small groups

166allows time, allows um space to do special kind of group work. Um, and that's what I think that that secondary lessons teacher is able to do at that middle school level when we talk about sixth grade classroom sizes and bands being um, you know, in the 30s and 40s. Um, and I'm just imagining some many of those students this are first time picking up an instrument. um you know what a challenge that must be recognizing that it's also a challenge for our math teachers and our English teachers to deal with quite a variety of um abilities in their classes as well. Um but just listening to the voices of our community um and the voices uh that have come before us when we think about the long-term health of our district and what keeps people

167here um and what attracts people in from the outside. Um it seems like the long-term um gain of keeping some of those positions might be uh best to keep that as is. Um and then maybe in the future when there's more revenue coming in looking to reallocate you know to improve even more but as um I'm sure every department would say they would want that for themselves as well. So thank you member Saddowski. Yeah, I would echo um what members Laughler Kemp and Mike Cell have shared um just about those concerns about some of the cuts to music. Um I think another thing that I would add to that is just the looking at the historical context of cuts to music over the last 30 years. Um we don't we no longer have musical instruments

168being taught in our elementary school level. um which is why we originally from my understanding anyway um implemented the lessons in the first place. Whereas a lot of other disc schools across the state teach those instruments early on when um there's research that shows you know the importance of doing that and that's why we implemented those lessons. Um I also think about community engagement when it comes to music. That's one of the only um places for our community to come in and see and hear and experience our academics. Um they can come see our sports, but as far as academics, it's hard to go see a chemistry class or a math class, but they can come to a concert and they can see the academic rigor that we have um at Duth Public Schools. So,

169I'm struggling with that, too. Um, I would also just add that I um just kind of related more to the budget overall, I really appreciate um that you keep all of us stakeholders educated. Um, we've had so many meetings about the budget and um these cuts that we're experiencing now for a long time. Um, and I would just encourage the public to keep, you know, to keep engaged in that as well. there's many opportunities um for for us and our public to learn about um our budget. So from watching HR business meetings to these meetings to our schoolboard meetings. Um and I really like the timeline that you put out here. Um thank you. Thank you member Loel. I just want to appreciate the um comments of our our other colleagues, member Laughafler Kemp, Member

170Sidowski and member Mike Cell. just really appreciate your your your thoughts, your honesty. I just really want to step out and say that budget cuts are really hard and and I feel like if we're going to share about the success and the needs and the desires of our music, which I don't deny that is a wonderful thing that I would then, you know, we're going to go down that road of our media specialists and our other um check and connects our other um cuts that realignments that we've done. So I just want to caution us but to continue to to dialogue and to think through what you presented tonight are are really you know strong sentiments and as we heard from member Magus that you know there is opportunity for you to do some more

171possible you know asks of the administration but I also want to value the work that our leadership has put in everything from our senior leaders to our principles who we asked to look at their budgets and make reductions. And I just think I value the hard work that's been done since last summer when we first started down here. How we have invested in the stakeholders of our district to suggest where they best thought. And I know that listening to our community is really important for us. So I'm glad we have that more opportunity. But again, I I just think going forward we really have to to think about where that that line is. But I appreciate the comments of other board members that see music as a value. I certainly do as well, but I

172also see the other values that we have also laid out before us. And I just don't feel I I want to go back to my administration and make sure that they see those those realignments, those positions that we have to cut, the 0.5 in media, the 0.5 in lessons um in both sections of middle school. And just know that our leadership that's been here making um presentations, showing us, you know, making a timeline that honors the tough choices. We've given a lot of time for community to come and share with us. And and I'm I'm glad they did. But again, I think that what what I really value is leadership that makes a decision and sticks with it and goes forward. And as a board member, we have supported this budget process since the beginning.

173And I just hope we continue to talk and share. And I just want to thank all board members for sharing their perspectives tonight. Uh they're very important to me. They don't fall on deaf ears. And uh the some of the changes that we made already, the some of the initial planning was was for a deeper reduction in in some of the the lessons. Uh, but we wanted to make sure that we we put half or more than that back, which we've we've done. But I think we can still do we still need to do better. We need to think about how can we make sure that our community partnerships are strong. We need to consider uh a variety of things in in those areas. And as as a brother of a professional musician and as

174the the father of a musician, music is important to me personally and professionally. And I think that we need to continue to explore what we can do to to um best provide support. And I think when we think about our long-term planning, uh think about what can we do to make sure that we have all the resources we need for for our students to have the successes that they need. Uh again, thank you for your your input and and these choices aren't aren't easy and we'll continue to have reflection and planning and and um continue moving forward. But I want to say thank you to uh the board, but also thank you to executive director Zunich as she prepares for her presentation at MASPO tomorrow. Thank you. That concludes our presentations for tonight. And I

175just want to say that super assistant superintendent Bon Bonds's job of watching the mics, his skill is far superior to mine and I apologize.