001okay I'd like to call our mate on a first school board meeting to order wanna first start the meeting out by thanking the students and staff with our pathways program for coming and doing a poster board reception of the projects they've been working on and we'll be hearing from Alyson woods and beth levine and some of the students hopefully but it was a great way to spend the last hours to see all the wonderful topics students chose to do research on this year so thank you for that and then the other thing I just wanted to start the meeting off with is a really a big THANK YOU from the board to all of the different staff and parents community members partnerships that we have for putting on many events in the last couple weeks
002of school here there's been a lot of end-of-the-year field trips and concerts and honors nights and just many many activities to choose from and I know us as board members have received invitations and been out many schools doing lots of fun activities as well as with our own children and so it's just always a fun time of the year as a parent as well as as a school board member to be getting out in the schools or I'm looking over at principal Clive being out on the boat without her students or Dane students with River quests so just a big thank you again for parents staff volunteers and students and again community members for the the many ways you help celebrate the work that we're doing in our schools so thank you we want to
003get started then with roll call and share Agoura our clerk Gorham can you do the roll call please Thank You chair I am present member kirby yeah cherrylle off for Kim yeah remember lo fault remember Oswald remember sanstead remember trinka superintendent granteth assistant superintendent horton deputy clerk ericsson secretary Dolan's secretary t-ball and student reps Emma Emma Natalya Vanessa Farrell chair we have a quorum okay if we all could stand for Pledge of Allegiance okay we want to get started first by approving the agenda may I have a motion to approve the regular school board meetings for a bolt excuse me a motion to approve the agenda for today second okay moved by member sanstead sorry seconded by member low fold any discussion okay all in favor of approving on tonight's agenda please say aye okay
004motion carries 7-0 and then the next item is reading and approving the minutes for the regular school board meeting of April 23rd can I have a motion to approve okay move by member sandd state could I have a second seconded by member Kirby any discussion okay all in favor of approving the regular school board meeting of April 23rd please say aye okay motion carries and now we're going to jump into the school and community recognition so if members can join us on the floor members of the board I'm pleased to introduce Miss poppin Berg Miss Moore Miss Kurth mr. hoppy and mr. Hensel assistant principal at Lincoln Park middle school the trio's Talent Search program and the st. Scholastica serves students in grades 6 through 12 they recently presented the Lincoln Park middle school sixth
005grade team with their friend of trio award here are some excerpts from the presentation many believe that sixth grade is too young to begin encouraging students to think about their educational plans after high school that is not the case for sixth grade the sixth grade team at Lincoln Park middle school this students entered a dedicated group of teachers understands that early exposure to future possibilities can create excitement and self-confidence and they share our belief that higher education can be within reach for all students this team has not only given class time to recruiting campaigns in career workshops but they also consistently excuse students for group meetings and college campus visits some of these teachers have been supporting the efforts of Talent Search for over 20 years of this existence at Lincoln Park and have helped
006us guide over 800 trio students through sixth grade talent search has been extremely fortunate to have such a fun patient and passionate group of professionals working besides us and we want to especially thank Miss Moore and Miss Kurth for their 21 years of service for the trio program and this growth or Miss Moore excuse me for 32 years of service in our school district thank you very much for all that you do yeah during Oh oh okay okay great we're going to now jump into the audience portion of our meeting and just a couple comments about our public comment time first of all if people just got here you can sign up to speak over on the table over to the right there and a couple things information to know when you sign up to
007speak at board meetings persons wishing to address the school board sign in if you have any handouts for the board please give them to the school board secretaries located in the back of the room right there first thing persons addressing the board will speak in the order in which they signed up each person addressing the board will have three minutes persons addressing the board may not merge their time in order to allow one person to speak for more than three minutes and the clerk of the board will start the spotlight timer at the start of each person's time a green light means go a yellow light means to start wrapping up in a red light means to stop and persons addressing the board shall confine their comments to matters pertaining to the agenda or revelant
008to matters of administrative and district concerns and member Gorham would you now read the 11 tools of civility please Thank You chair the 11 tools of civility this school board recognizes eleven tools of civility that will provide increased opportunities for civil discourse in order to find positive resolutions to the issues that face our community these tools include pay attention listen be inclusive don't gossip show respect be agreeable apologize give constructive criticism take responsibility be honest and care for others show your evidence share your reasoning community vision and priorities for Duluth schools we will build on our shared beliefs and values of unity high achievement and responsible use of resources to create Duluth public schools and classrooms that are safe supportive and inclusive we will to inspire every student to achieve their potential and prepare students
009to lead productive fulfilling lives as citizens of Duluth in the wider world great you great thank you clerk Gorham and again if you still would like to sign up you can sign up over on the right there and our first speaker tonight will be Bernie Burnham well hello everybody so I also want to speak to the pathways program that is represented here tonight by all these fabulous boards and then we had some students here earlier I'm just going to tell you a few things and then I know that Beth and Allison are going to come up and talk about a little bit more so are the teachers that are in the program at danp elder Allison wood and Ed Lewis and over at East are Susan Schmidt and Sameer Sheikh and of course they work
010in partnership with st. Scholastica and their students go out to Laura McArthur and Myers Wilkins to interact with our second-grade students so this a few years ago and crafter 4/9 we're down at MEA and saw this program with dr. Bianco and thought this was a great idea and know that it was something we'd all been interested in doing in Duluth is creating a pathways to teaching program so happy that they're here tonight and great to see Alda I mean take a look at the topics if you get a chance they are pretty amazing next I want to talk about the wear orange for kickoff nap for national gun violence Awareness Day which is on Friday March 31st you're gonna hear about this probably a few times tonight but I want to let you know that
011it's going to happen at 4 o'clock at City Hall and our Duluth Federation teachers is a sponsoring organization we're going to in court encourage folks to wear orange on that day and so we hope you all will join us in that last week we had a retirement celebration we had about 20 teachers who were there and we had some guests that came and joined us too which was very nice for our teachers to see the superintendent bill grants F assistant superintendent Jeff Horton and Rosie and David were there too so it was a fun night and people got to share their stories about why they came into teaching it was it was a good evening for everybody and a fun thing that we'll continue to do in the future the last thing I'm going to
012talk about is the officer elections that we've had recently for the DFG as you may or may not know I think most people know now but I will be moving on to a new position with education Minnesota I'm the vice president-elect and I'm very excited about that work that I'll continue to do on a statewide level and at the national level so we have a new president who will be here at some point when he's ready Ethan Fisher leaving our DFT in very good hands I think I'm happy that he is going to be our president we also had elections for three vice-president seats we had 11 people put their Nieman to run in that election which was pretty amazing that's the first that I seen in my 20 years of being in Duluth so
013for the seats that were open we have Jim Olsen who was a teacher of Myers Wilkins sandy Jamar is returning to the board ed Lewis from Denfeld and then we have a couple of places because we have some seats that were midterm so Dean Harold will be returning as well from Lincoln and Stacey actor huff from layers welcome so I think our board is going to be look it's going to look a little different but I think these are all great people who are going to continue the great work that we've put in place the last number of years and I want to thank you after being in Duluth for 20 years 20-plus years because of course I started with my kids when my oldest daughter started kindergarten 27 years ago but I want to
014thank you for all the work that we've done together Duluth will continue to be my home I'll be back and forth from st. Paul but I'm not going away and I will be involved still this is my community so thank you for all you do [Applause] we are going to have some other opportunities to celebrate Bernie and the role that she's provided as a DFT president on in the next few weeks but it's been great Bernie to have you come up at our meetings every month and bring teachers with you from across the district and students with you across the district and really share the many incredible things that are going on so we really appreciate your presence at these meetings as well as the many ways you've partnered with us as administrators and as
015school board members so thank you again the next speaker is Beth Levine hi I'm a instructor at the college of st. Scholastica and the School of Education and Bernie can I introduced our program st. Scholastica has only one other College in the school's course besides this pathways to teaching course and we saw this as a real opportunity to contribute in the field of education I'm sure you all know that most of the teachers in the country are white the vast majority of teachers are white which poses some problems for all students grow your own teacher programs are and I'm going to read off of this frequently cited as one of several potential solutions to address teacher shortages and the teacher diversity gap most high school grow your own programs have a GPA requirement of 300
016or higher have a traditional Eurocentric curriculum they focus on child development and they not they're not really informed by a critical theoretical lens and yet they claim to be designed to attract students of color we were lucky to partner with dr. margarita Bianco who has pathways to teaching as her trademarked program and she's designed a little bit of a different grow your own teacher program so there is no GPA requirement students who are marginalized typically may have had some pretty bad school experiences not because they're not bright or willing or eager but if we eliminate kids with lower than 3.0 GPA we're not capturing maybe who we need to the pathways to teaching program the curriculum is focused on equity and justice it's informed by research on what attracts teachers of color to the field
017it is student voices centered and it is informed by a critical theoretical framework frameworks such as critical race Theory critical pedagogy and socio-political development theory and so who would we look for to take this class career interest data who has looked at students who need direction who may not have yet identified career interests students who may be underperforming dr. Bianco suggests you look at students who need a boost to keep them going and engage them or need college credit students who are leaders which students have a demonstrated leadership even if perceived in negative ways and who else is males be intentional about increase recruiting men to go into teaching so we partnered with Denfeld on East and this has really been I don't know a really remarkable thing for all concerned we the Scholastica wrote
018a grant to the Minnesota Department of Education last year to help us get this off and running which supported to teachers that Denfeld it instead of one they had a big group 30 kids and it supported them to work together to co-teach which worked really well and one teacher part of the grant supported the second teacher at Denfeld and then there was a teacher at East so Allison and Edward were at Denfeld Susan Schmidt was at East I'm a little concerned that it's a pretty tough class to teach with one teacher and both classes for next year will be bigger and Allison can speak to that so I would hope that somehow the the board and the district could support this everybody's trying to diversify the teaching field and this is a proven way to
019do it and boy it's been it's been really amazing first Scholastica to work with these students some of our students got involved - so it's just lots of benefits all over the place so thank you for letting me speak a little bit and I'll turn it over to Allison hi I'm Allison wood one of the teachers at dent Feld and um thank you everybody for listening and looking at the posters we're gonna leave them here so you can look at them over the next few days my biggest push is that we have been so proud to watch these students especially students that have never done something this level before to watch them learn how to annotate a college textbook learn how to summarize a lit review and get stuck in the moment of I can't
020do this and push through and so the fun has been watching him work with their second graders the the challenge has been working through the college readiness piece but they were so proud last night to show their posters to the community and they they said today they said it was just so cool all the grown-ups that came like actually cared they were asking real questions and they were listening to us so carefully and I thought it was just it was just really amazing they were so proud of themselves and also very relieved but I think very proud so our biggest excitements are that we have a number of our juniors who are going to be creating an internship around this for next year the work readiness experience and so we're going to continue to capture
021our juniors as seniors with some excitement working with Brad beats and a yoke I know things to get that going so it have that on your radar because we're gonna have to do some problem-solving around how to grow that and then the second piece is just class numbers as we look towards doing this doing the know GPA requirement no testing requirement is huge because we got kids that would have been cut out but we're gonna continue if we really recruit who we need to recruit that's going to be huge and you can't teach 25 kids how to write a letter review in a month with one teacher and 25 kids so we are problem-solving around that in terms of tutors and some students may be from um from CSS coming and but we're really gonna
022have to figure out how to support that as we look forward to the future we are super thankful to CSS for their support they have been amazing exciting and really a great resource and anybody who got our email from me asking for data or help thank you for following through on that so thank you very much Thank You Alyson again for organizing this reception tonight the next is greg jones and peter falling store my name is greg jones and my name is peter throwing surf and we are the co-directors of the delivery's drama department and we're just coming off a show that we were really proud of called the Curious Incident of the dog in the night-time which featured the challenges and triumphs of a main character on the autism spectrum and we had a
023lot of staff support and community support for that show and we were really proud of the job our students did in that performance our winter production was The Lost Boy which was the biography of JM Barrie and how he wrote Peter Pan and we were runners-up to the state competition and what we're here to talk to you about is a program from the Hennepin theatre trust called spotlight and they come out to local you invite them to come out and evaluate a show and we invited them to come out and evaluate our musical this fall Bonnie and Clyde and we are just going to kind of quickly tick through some of the people who were recognized during that performance so we were recognized in many categories but the names that were given to us as
024outstanding performer in a lead role were Lainie Joey is Bonnie Parker and Ezra Crickett as Clyde Barrow we also had some honorable mentions and that was Kate bring Curt as Blanche Barrow and Lucy Salma the young Bonnie we received an honorable mention in the technical leadership from our stage manager Jamison Paquette and some of you may know his mom and we also had an honorable mention in our technical aspects of our show like our lighting and sound operation and so we have a list from them so it's Ian France Joey Warner Mariah Loffler Kemp and John throw we had some shout out Awards which are new Awards we're giving to students who caught the attention of the evaluators and that was Hans Halsted and lo and our overall production was ranked as an outstanding and
025so we were really proud of that for you know we we liked going through the process it's kind of cool to have some Outsiders come in and look sort of behind the curtain and in front of the curtain and give you some feedback about what it is you're doing well and where you could strengthen your performance and it's it's a program that's available to anyone they really like going to outstate performances and so we don't always do it we haven't done it since um Anna's family episode this award has allowed us to bring students to the state level to perform at the Minnesota State Theatre on June 11th and so Lani Joey and Kate bring Kurt and Lucy Samoa will take part in the performance that evening they'll go down in the morning and then
026perform the evening at the state level with other kids from across Minnesota all right thank you very much thank you for your support [Applause] [Music] thank you so much and they didn't even let us know what the name of the show is for the fall so I guess we will just have to sit on the edge of our seat okay the next speaker is odorous milk must sorry if I pronounced that wrong Doris nope it was perfect and I'd like to thank everybody on the school board and superintendent for all the excellent work you've done on behalf of kids in Duluth but I'd also like to thank you specifically for your work and your commitment to equity and I guess I just want to point out and that I'm here for two reasons one is
027that as a volunteer for loaves & Fishes we really get to know kids who have to struggle the other reason I'm here when I really think about it is that I love school I just enjoyed so much I love to learn and I especially liked it because I could do pretty well pretty much effortlessly that was a real treat but when I met loaves & Fishes I see that these other kids I don't learn effortlessly it's really humiliating it's often boring and frustrating and kind of painful for them to watch other kids around them do well and they have to struggle hard to just get by and so when I want to ask you and I'm sure you you know I've thought about this from time to time is why would a kid like that
028grow up and come to a school board meeting you know we just don't have their voices here in front of you the way we have so many talented wonderful kids here and you know parents who had a similarly great experience in school so as much as I loved it I can't help but say to myself how do we you know really put a priority on equity and how do we bridge that gap so what I'm here to talk about and first of all I just want to say this pathway stuff sounds terrific and I'm so grateful it's in place but what I'm thinking about is hiring the next superintendent and I'm thinking about that early because sometimes it's just sort of well you know here's how we do it and I think that you know
029you've shown a commitment to equity you've passed the tool and I think we should I'd really like to see how are you going to use that framework to start right at the beginning how are you going to say can we hire an agency a hiring headhunter firm that has people of color that have a track record of going into other communities that might be more diverse than Duluth and are you able to convince that company that you just don't want to have them list equity as one of the qualities but that you're intent that you're going to insist upon it and so for all of those kids who aren't here today I'm asking you to put this at the top of some attention and to really program your hiring with equity in mind thank you
030[Applause] Thank You Doris the next speaker is Sousa or excuse me Sara mill Cassell hello everyone my name is Sara mic cell but you can call me whatever you want my family lives here in Duluth I have a 7th grader at or Dean East and a second grader at home Croft I'm also a volunteer with moms demand action for gun sense in America I'm here to tell you some things that you may already know but firearms are the second leading cause of death and our American children and the leading cause of death for black children in the u.s. nearly 1,500 American children under the age of 18 are killed with guns every year that's an average of four children every day when American children are killed with guns the majority of those deaths 53% are
031homicides that's nearly 800 children per year additionally 600 children die by a firearm suicide each year in nearly 100 or unintentionally shot and killed moms demand action for gun sense in America has developed a great educational program whose goal is to reduce kids access to unsecure guns but be smart campaign focuses on helping adults keep kids safe when guns are present and I have some information for you which I'll leave with the secretary unfortunately here in Duluth we are not immune to gun violence and threats of gun violence as I'm sure we're all well well aware and I want to thank the district as well as a school board for everything that you do and have done to keep our kids safe as Bernie mentioned national gun violence Awareness Day followed by the wear orange
032weekend is coming up next month and on May 31st all are welcome to me of the steps of City Hall to kick off the wear orange campaign during wear orange everyone who believes that we can a must solve the problem of gun violence in America we'll take action and stand together in a bold statement of resilience and fortitude as we advance our efforts I understand you will be considering a resolution to acknowledge the National gun violence Awareness Day that's kind and I'm so pleased that this body commits you reduce gun violence and keep our kids safe thank you so much for your time Thank You Sara the next speaker is Jessica Olson hi everyone so yes I'm Jessica Olson and I am a parent of two kids in the end of the school district my
033daughter goes to my ribbons when my son is that organized so I think I first of all say thank you publicly to all of you for the job that you do as school board members and as superintendent and student representatives so it's you do amazing things and invest a lot of time in our students so thank you and also I mean just because I believe in public education I believe in the power of educating our students and I really am so excited about the future of our of our city and of our students our future leaders we have amazing teachers and staff who work hard to ensure student success and sorry I don't have a lot of public speaking experience and my voice is shaky so I just um I'm also here just because um
034because of that support of public schools I was really excited to work with a lot of you on the levy passage this past fall I'm really glad to have those first two levels passed funding is so important for our students and so we I'm really glad that we had those further thank you Duluth citizens for doing that and I also just wanted to express my concern when I learned about the 2019 2020 budget just knowing that we have to make cuts that the overall budget is is lower and the elementary school budgets Myers Wilkins is the school with the highest needs and it also is being asked to make the most cops next year so I just wanted to express my concern about that and just I'm very glad that you passed the resolution last
035year regarding compensatory education funding I understand that the dollars for the coming school year are associated with that however I ask that you would kind of remember the spirit of that resolution and kind of keep that in mind as you're moving forward with the budgeting process so thanks for your time Thank You Jessica the next speaker is Joan Peterson and then just to remind anyone who just came in if you would like to still sign up you can at the front there thank you hello everyone I'm here tonight to speak to you about the upcoming where orange to end gun violence event and June as gun violence Awareness Month first of all I appreciate and recognize the work that is D 709 is doing around creating safe school environments with facilities trainings and support of
036mental health issues for students and staff our children and staff should not have to be traumatized by school lock downs either practice or real children have become sitting ducks in America to that end I am here from the Northland Brady United Chapter also aligned with protect Minnesota to highlight a few things and the other president of my group is Mary Stewart back there in the orange shirt so there have been 15 school shootings since January of 2019 I would say that's 15 too many the most recent as you remember was at a stem school outside of Denver where one student was killed and others injured Kendrick Castillo died and was called a hero I call him a victim our children are dying from gunshot injuries in astounding numbers every year in what I call a
037gun violence public health epidemic so you have heard from others Bernie Burnham and Sarah that you've been invited to our kickoff for wear orange day which was dedicated to a 15 year old Chicago student Hadiya Pendleton who was shot and killed by a bullet meant for someone else and let that sink in bullets are flying on our streets they're meant for somebody but Hadiya was in the way just a few weeks after playing in her school band after President Obama's second inaugural parade so the whole event was started by her friends and family so June is also gun violence prevention Awareness Month June 21st is national ask day ask as a program for parents to ask if they're loaded locked guns in the homes where children and teens play and hang out almost every day
038a child finds a loaded gun and pulls the trigger with tragic results more than every day a team uses a gun in a suicide so I did leave some ask brochures for you with the secretary back there also I'm aware that you are going to pass a resolution and I applaud you for that I think it's very important that you do this and I hope that you will all consider voting in favor of it the Northland chapter moms demand action and the Duluth Federation of Teachers are all co-sponsoring our event and many people will be there including community leaders mayor Larson will be reading a proclamation so I urge you all to come I urge you all to wear orange and I urge you all to support the resolution thank you for all you do
039[Applause] Thank You Joan okay is there any other speakers okay we can move on then to the there were no reading no communications that were sent to us this month and so we'll move on to the report of the superintendent and then the school board reps so superintendent grand said thank you your love for Kemp and first off thank you to all the students from our pathways to teaching class your research projects are impressive and I know how much work you put into them and how much time it took and thank you for sharing them with us we enjoyed hearing about your class your work with the elementary students and what you learned throughout the year so thank you also to all the staff that support the development of this class and to college of
040st. Scholastica for your partnership ever since we first started working on this program happy to hear that there are quite a few students interested in the class for next year and hopefully that will continue and we'll have more future teachers in our midst I want to give a brief update on the legislature we don't know a whole lot at this point they have continued to make some progress the the base formula agreement at this point is a two and two over the next biennium and the details will be worked out in a special session which is scheduled for Thursday we they kind of have to start all over at this point so we are back at working with our legislators to try to get a specific Duluth language into into the bill and into the
041plans we are so thankful for our local legislators that throughout the session they've been helpful they helped to talk to other legislators and bring the story of Duluth into their conversations the special education formula that was implemented in 2016 has had negative effects on our budget since that time Duluth is an outlier with this formula and we continue to work with legislators to make sure that they understand that we have been negatively affected by this formula MDE has shared our story as well and when they have testified and so we we remain hopeful that we'll be able to address this issue in the special session on the kind of same topic regarding our own budget we've continued to work with building principals to develop budgets principals have been working with their continuous improvement teams to
042determine the needs of their buildings and how to best meet those needs we have a committee of the whole meeting of the board scheduled for June 4th that's where we'll be going over the final budget it will be discussed again at the regularly scheduled business committee on June 11th and the hopefully come to a vote on June 18th 18th for the special for the regular school board meeting if for some reason we have some more things to work out then we would be scheduling a special board meeting before the end of the month because that is what the statute requirement is for us to have a final budget in place by June 30th as you've heard a few times tonight tune is gun violence Awareness Month our country experiences far too many deaths due to
043gun violence as as you heard some of the statistics from our speakers tonight and the ask campaign encourages families to ask questions before allowing children to play at someone else's house and I I know as a parent it might feel awkward or uncomfortable to ask questions but it is important to ask questions because our children's safety is is what it's all about so making sure that you ask if there are guns on the house and if there are ask how they are stored if you're not comfortable with the answer invite the other child to your house to play and make sure that you're not putting your child into a situation where something unfortunate could happen so again there will be an event at City Hall on May 31st at 4 o'clock where the mayor and
044I and others will speak on the topic of preventing gun violence I know that when you hear the our students speaking there you're probably going to hear how many school days there are left so I won't put that spoiler out there seniors have a few less days as graduations will be held the first week of June and again this year our students have earned millions of dollars in scholarship they are going all over the country and seeking out opportunities [Music] in so many different areas our students have accomplished a great deal and we're very proud of them speaking of scholarships each year in May the Haise Memorial Family Scholarship is awarded to randomly selected a randomly selected student from Denfeld and from East it was originally a Central Family Scholarship and now it has been
045split one for Denfeld one for East all of the students names are entered into a drawing and tonight our recipients will be chosen so we'll be drawing the names of one person but also a alternates if for some reason a student chooses not to accept the scholarship for continuing education of their choice the awards this year are are you ready for it two thousand one hundred and twenty-five dollars each and so we'll be asking our student representatives to draw the names and I believe our that the names from East are in the bowl first all right you can head on down yeah I feel like we should be asking for a trouble all right the East's recipient is Sophia captioner [Applause] I need two bowls they doesn't love to they don't know and the dunfield's
046recipient is Taylor Trey alright thank you so much and congratulations to our winners tonight that'll be a fun surprise when they are notified of that scholarship again if they for some reason don't accept them we have drawn alternates and those would be announced in the case that that it didn't work out for the people who were chosen first alright Wow after that excitement I think we are ready for our student representative reports and we might as well keep the same order and start with representative Farrell from East it's an exciting month at East and not only because there are 11 days of school left last night we had honors night at East where seniors were recognized for their academic achievements 125 seniors are graduating on honorable 35 students are graduating with the 400 grade point
047average and 2.4 million dollars in scholarships were awarded and now we just added $2,000 to that graduation will be held on June 5th at the deck last week was Teacher Appreciation Week where teachers were thanked for all they do for us students we also completed Mental Health Awareness Month at our school this included many fun activities for the students also last week students went on a field trip to the Walker sculpture park and art center and the Minneapolis Institute of Art students said they appreciated this opportunity as they helped them gain knowledge of career options in the art field this month 14 students qualified for State history day also earlier this month hounds had another successful blood drive and the last one for the year they collected 87 units of blood bringing this year's total
048to 253 units on Thursday this week orchestra is having their spring concert this weekend East's Destination ImagiNation team will be heading to Global's in Kansas and that is all all right so last month that's very any kind of beginning of this month we organized a mock crash at her school to demonstrate to students the dangers of distracted driving which included a live kind of representation of a crash in our own parking lot with students from our school participating and then we also had a public speaker come and share a personal story of his of losing a family member which really created an impact on our students to make sure not to text and drive not distract driving and make sure to be careful on the road tonight we have our senior band concert and Friday
049at 7 p.m. there was a choir pop concert we also introduced this year new class called act out loud and they worked to produce create and write their very own show and performed it for us and assembly and also performed it after school where they had a good attendance so that was an amazing program to encourage people to get involved with theatre and participate with plays and writing their own ideas and incorporating their story this month had people have been busy finishing up their AP tests and students have been um preparing for graduation seniors will be graduating on June 4th at 7 p.m. at Denfeld High School Auditorium our honor honestly is this Thursday at 7 p.m. to honor all students who have been working very hard to maintain a GPA of 3.5 or above
050and the most exciting event of course besides the fact that there's only 11 days left our robotics team made it to state and there's 220 robotics teams in the state and only 36 qualify to go to state so it was a huge accomplish to make it there and they actually placed second at the state finish you know our state finalists so that's very exciting I knew that the 11 days was gonna work in there somewhere seniors have a few less than that but we hope that everyone has a great finish to their school year students make sure that you're working hard do your homework study for those finals you have to finish strong you don't don't slack off quite yet there are so many things to do in Duluth in the summer there we also
051have many programs through our summer school programs through community education and so many opportunities to be involved in the community we hope that you enjoy yourself this summer keep busy and keep reading and we will we will be here be watching for information to come out on our summer breakfast and lunch programs we will be making sure that it's in the media it's in our social media and in our school newsletters where you can go for school breakfast and lunch all summer long so we will make sure that everyone gets that information very soon and that completes the superintendent report for me great Thank You superintendent grant set and Emma and Vanessa thank you so much it's just always exciting to hear the the many different things that are going on throughout the district and
052you guys just really put it together well and we wish you both well in your final week of classes as well and we look forward to you joining us throughout the summer at meetings as your summer jobs and other activities allow but we look forward to having you with us as much as you can okay thank you okay we are going to jump into now our standing committees and we'll start with our Education Committee and chair row fold if you could do that that would be great my team comes forward that's good I hope that at times throughout tonight's education review that if you've you know if you think that there are things we would want to add and share with our community to turn your light on as I go through I very seldom
053you know just really need you to clarify something but you know our last education meeting was full of incredible presentations from a number of programs that you all supervised so in my you know in my overview I hope that if you think that there's something to share please add it either at the time we're going through it or at the end before I ask for a vote on accepting the Education Committee because again we really had rich conversation good presentations lots of good information and I couldn't possibly do it justice by being up here reviewing it for though for the community so thank you so we're going to start with our education report this was based on the committee meeting we had last Monday and I just want to thank remember Oswald for chairing the
054committee as I was traveling in Omaha with Denfeld speech team so sometimes I'm out of town so we are well experienced in helping each other as a board do all the duties we're supposed to do so thank you and a shout out to to the pathways teaching displays and to the staff and leadership and as a board I hope we will have conversation over the next week's and stuff about our role in making that a good is a good program so okay I when I whenever I ad-lib I kind of get off track so well we'll stick we'll stick to the script here okay so we start we started and again I always want to say to that we're on YouTube we had 47 views this week so that was good and I can't possibly
055encourage more people to either attend and person on our committee meetings or watch them and respond either through email or come to our meetings tonight because really there there's a lot of great presentations great information that we go over and learn we're learning from our staff at the committee meetings and sometimes we ask what's working and what isn't or how things are going and we're given those presentations at those committee meetings so I would really encourage our public to attend em or watch them on YouTube so we always start our committee meetings with reports informational items and we start with our assistant superintendent Hortons report and the purpose of this report is to provide regular updates for the Education Committee and for the board regarding teaching and learning because that's his area of supervision for
056our our district and so assistant superintendent always shares current information regarding implementation of some district policies and district initiatives and school operations and this month assistant superintendent Horton reviewed things like that our front office staff was given some in-service about balancing security and welcoming and that what what that looks like for our front office employees and I found that really you know gratifying that we're moving right along with including everyone in our safety concerns and our front office certainly they're the first line of defense for our districts and they are talented and they love our district they love working in the schools they are the heartbeat of our district so we're glad to give them in-service on safe and security assistant superintendent reviewed again the importance of our grant process we've had some other previous
057information about how grant processes work in our district and now we're hoping that we're just continuing to reach out to our district our staff and our coaches for understanding the grant process assistant superintendent talked about navy week and that was kind of a conversation we all had about what what is what we can happen with the Navy coming in and working with us and being relevant in building relationships so he he talked about that we had a report on our full service community schools and it's important to hear about our journey and the support for our full Community Service schools our leadership staff attended a conference and learned shared and came away with a strong understanding of where we are at with our community school process and how we are a very effective full service
058community school as compared to other districts throughout the country but we always we didn't go there just to compare ourselves and come away you know patting ourselves on the back we went there to learn to share to observe and to bring back great information to continue our journey of the full Community Service school assistant superintendent finished his report by a shout out about our anonymous gift that has made some some circles in our community but not maybe to everyone and just a shout out to a an anonymous donation for our Piedmont lunch bill or debt and we had a to help eliminate or close the elimination or close the debt for our lunch at Piedmont and that was the assistant superintendents report it's recommended that the school board receives this as informational and that leads
059us to our next item always on our education committee and that is our report from our curriculum director and instruction and the purpose of this report is to provide regular updates to the Education Committee and to the school board regarding teaching and learning and so director of curriculum and instruction Gail net Len shared with us current information regarding the status of the work and of the curriculum and instruction department and Gail's report to us was kind of brief because the rest of our Education Committee concerned curriculum updates and curriculum overviews we heard about the planning is underway for the August staff development you 11 days left and our staff is already preparing as they should and I know they will for August staff development so director net Lin shared that it's a recommended that we
060receive miss net --lens report as informational and then that leads us in our committee to the informational presentations which were curriculum surrenders are surrounded so we had a an eighth-grade pilot update from curricular curriculum director Gail net Len and our math specialist patty Bambenek along with Jane Joo teen and there was one other okay so that was so it was so they shared with us the the pilot program that was going on at or Deen East for eighth grade math and there was rich conversation and updates and observations we had a lot of questions about you know how how we go forward with it and listen to the YouTube it was really well done I don't think I have the ability to just you know wrap myself and share all that went on but the
061the new math pilot seemed to be successful they want to move it into ninth grade it just seems like there's a lot of excitement and energy and it looks like math is successful being taught in this new pilot way and I can remember thinking when I was listening that it was more about students learning in groups and students teaching and it you know we used to call it you know the sage on the stage and that isn't the way that we know effective teaching happens it's more a cooperative cooperative and a collaborative way so a shout out to that math pilot update then we launched into the presentation that took up a large chunk and it was the 2017-18 graduation rates and strategy presentation that you all were such a part of and I want
062to thank you all for the time you gave last week and the staff that came and presented we first heard in all of these were you know assistant superintendent Horton kind of preface this with over the next five months we are going to get presentations from all of the different overviews that we had last week as it pertains to graduation rate and the world's best workforce okay the goal areas of which graduation rate is one yeah okay so and so so laughs so our meeting last Monday you know really focused on that graduation rate piece of it and over the next five months we'll we'll hear about other goals of the world's best workforce so first of all we had highlights from our graduation rate and a PowerPoint and dr. Lake wanted to share what
063we define as a four year graduation rate so she kind of talked us through that but we also she shared with us the understanding about the five years six years seven year graduation rate and how that figures into our district's graduation rate she highlighted that 18 percent of our students receive special education services as part of their IEP and it is in their goals to graduate in that fifth year sixth year or seventh year range which is totally in sync with their IEP goals and so we just spent some time understanding that I don't think it's the first time this board has heard that information I think it was but it's also just a good lens for us to look at the data that we're getting and understanding that and I think that was really
064dr. Lakes really intention is to share with us the data but then also have to understand the different subgroups the different numbers within the groups and you know we have to understand that if we're going to understand the progress I think I was I was struck by you know the graph that talked about 2014 and 2016 and and how each if you went into the five years six years seven year that graduation rate went up M for our district and and so it's important to understand the four year the five years six years seven year it's doctor Lake also talked about the date and the reading data and the percent and how the size of the group is being reported out plays a big factor in how that graph or dip or change can be
065reflected from year to year and so that was dr. lakes part of our presentation and then assistant superintendent gave us a huge overview of all the programs that we've got in place to help our graduation completion that we all want every student to graduate in our district and that is our goal but we also know we have to have support and we have to to be intentional about that so he gave us this whole list of some of the programs and I'll just highlight some of them that was shared we have a school within a school we have check and connect we have the bar program we have PLC's in place we have community service schools we have credit recovery which is going to be reached out into our high schools as a another opportunity
066for students seniors especially to recover credits we'll also offer it here at ALC then we moved into Ron Lakes presentation and he reviewed programs and partnerships going on in our district I'm related to mental health he highlighted the sources of strength he updated us on a wide variety of things that are happening the make it okay campaign led by Sarah Miller our mental health screenings that are being increased and made more available and just the regular training for mental health the early interventions the early detection he talked about social emotional behavior I mean just this whole gamut of information for us but for our community and that's why I think it's so important that community it attends the committee meetings we don't often get news reports in our newspaper and frankly you know I think
067if they just come and listen they'll get great information but then we had a presentation by Edie house and she talked about project dreamcatcher for our American Indian students as a way to try to bolster their graduation rates we heard from Jason Crane we heard from William house on Indian American Indian and the carrick Adam II that's happening at Lincoln and finally Brad beats talked a little bit about the impact of CTE on graduation rates so how did I do Kru I mean it was a long presentation with lots of great stuff so I know I could have just said we had a great presentation but I I wanted to hi I'm to honor you by sharing what I think I got out of it and what my board members got out of it and
068just a good way to relate to even though there's less people in the audience now but it's still good it's still good and then I think assistant superintendent you just concluded this by saying the Northstar plan we have way we have a ways to go in all of our Greg you know in our increasing our graduation rates and being successful with every student but we are focused on growth and high achievement for all and by 2025 will make our North Star goals so thank you for that presentation so it's recommended that all of that that I just said I know is informational and we and we receive it right we're good okay we have five grant applications that we are that are in their first stages they're coming to us to approve that they can
069go forward with is what these grants so we have grants from the Minnesota Department of Education on behalf of Stowe elementary school about providing I think like fruits and vegetables 13,500 by Pam bowl we have a grant from the Perpich Center for Arts it was written by director curriculum gale net hland and submitted to the purpose arts center for 2500 for art's leadership team and to provide leaders with professional development we have our third grant was from the National Association for college admissions counseling it was written by Jerry sorry a counselor Denfeld for 750 dollars to provide transportation to a college fair that they have in October our 4th grant was from the minnesota department of agricultural agriculture for coolers I think by Pam bow as well for Stowe at Lowell and Lakewood for four
070thousand five hundred dollars to purchase dairy coolers each school and our last one is the Jeffers foundation grant application for Stowe school it was submitted by their principal Nathan locally for five hundred dollars and it will focus on the implementation of a school garden project at Stone so those are the five grants and then the one grant is a partnership with the dual public schools with Lake Superior college and algebra two and I think we had some conversation about this grant at our meeting last week and director net 'land clarified for that so these grants are recommended as informational next is our action items and we have a policy revision it's for our musical instrument it's policy revised and it's going to be remembered 625 and it is about our change in our musical instrument
071rental and we talked about it last week at committee it is on its first reading and so we're recommending that the doula school board accept and approve policy 625 for its first reading we have resolutions my first resolution is resolution II - 5 - 19 - 36 45 it's acceptance of grants awarded to the dual public schools and so we're as Minnesota statute 460 5.03 requires a school district to accept grants by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor in full and whereas acceptance of the grant in accordance with the donors terms is in the best interest of the do of public schools now therefore be it resolved that the dual of public schools does accept the below described grant from said organizations in accordance with the terms set forth within be it
072further resolved that the rule of public schools wishes to extend its grateful appreciation for this organ for these organizations so we have three grants to accept and the yeah and you can see that in your board book do I have a motion ice I'm ocean I'm ocean this do I have a second it's been moved by member low fold seconded by member Sam stead is there any discussion okay all in favor of this resolution please say aye okay motion carries you can continue at resolution to read its resolution II - oh five - 19 - 36 46 the resolution is response to American Indian education resolution of concurrence and non concurrence for 2018 whereas Minnesota statute 124 D point seven eight requires a school board to respond in writing within sixty days in cases of
073non concurrence to each recommendation made by the American Indian education parent committee and state its reasons for not implementing the recommendations now therefore be it resolved that the loulou school board submits the response to the american indian education resolution of concurrence and non concurrence for 2018 report as the report is attached I move resolution II - five - 19 - 36 46 is there a second second by member kirby is there any discussion okay remember us well thank you I'm gonna be voting against accepting this because I feel that this is just more of the same that we've done every year it's kind of a discussion once a year that the parents of this committee asks for certain things and we go yeah well we do some and we could maybe do something else but
074I don't feel this has a definite direction for how we can increase the achievement of our Native American African and American Indian students is by far comprehensive it's or not comprehensive its leaves a lot to be desired for the confidence of teaching our students where they are not graduating and they have the lowest graduation rates right now of all of our students and I think we need to be more intentional and how to do it I would hope that we can continue to work with them to create a an action plan this is much more of a discussion of this is what we'd like and this is what you know what we can do if they there's no sense of direction there's no sense of action and I'd really like to see that improve so
075I'm gonna vote no thank you remember Oswell member sanstead I'm an agreement with my colleague member Oswald on this this is the fourth year I've seen this document come through and it just feels like a little box we check off every year and it shouldn't be that unfortunately the timing this year that it's presented to us at the same time that we're having deep discussions about budget and other things I think this deserves its own its own meeting and its own discussion of the process we do we did here last month from the panel of parents about how their process works but I I want to know more about what the district how the district responses are developed and who's involved in those and what our follow-through actually is whether or not there's any accountability
076with this other than the parents coming back from year-to-year and asking for unfortunately the same things because we don't seem to be able to make any gains improving how we're providing an education to their children so I am like why is going to be voting against this because I would like to see us put forth real effort on this superintendent grant said I know again we've had presentations on this process and I think it would just be helpful to clarify again kind of the process that when we get the how we sit down and work with the parents and the equity staff thank you as as members instead said last month we heard from the parent committee the parent committee is the one who develops the document along with Edie house the coordinator of the
077American Indian education and then once that is presented I sit down with Gayle Nell and Freud our curriculum coordinator and others to see where where we've improved in areas and then we sit down with Edie and we we go over at step by step as well and make sure that there's agreement between her Department and the district on the things that are included in the report so there were areas where we we have made considerable gains as far as the collaboration with our curriculum specialists and providing training specific to American Indian culture and history and American Indian Standards and the opportunities that we've provided for specific cultural trainings there were some areas that Edie shared to that they've they've included because they they know that we've done more and they don't want to to lose
078that what we're doing so they want to continue that it it's a positive process that we go through we also have our tribal consultation when we go to present to the tribe leadership on the title plan and our American Indian education plan and we collaborate with them as well on things that we're putting in place that's how we we've increased our amount of special specialized training that we provide as well curriculum director Allen Freud did you have anything that you wanted to add okay Thank You superintendent grant said and then remember lo fault so I'm just going to you know kind of kind of start like I'm a new board member and I haven't seen this document four times I've seen it twice though and as I look at the resolution I'm not critical of
079our decisions or anyone's decisions to either vote or not vote for this resolution but as I look at the resolution I'm not so sure by accepting the resolution we are then saying we are accepting that our Africa our Native Americans are you know doing well and we have no way of improving this is just a resolution that says we have had conversation and we are willing as I mean because it's a state requirement to have this statement passed so I don't see at least in my understanding of this resolution it's just saying that we've gone through the process we have asked our community our Parent Advisory to come forward tell us what they think is going well what they don't think is going well we've seen that we know that there's areas we can improve
080but the actual resolution is just saying be it resolved that we have we have come forward and we have sat and had conversation about believing you know that there's places we have we can certainly do better and this is just a resolution that says we we submit to that process so I don't think mics by accepting or not accepting I that we are saying you know we're content or we we we appreciate or we support that we're doing the best we can I think it's just a resolution that says we went through the process and we're continuing to do that so that's my feeling about I'm gonna vote to support it but I don't want it to be interpreted like I think that our parent advisory you know I support what they're asking us to
081do and we will continue to work on that in good faith maybe what if you're voting against it you're saying that we don't we don't think we're doing it in good faith but I think that we've shown areas of improvement ET house was part of your graduation rate presentation with us last Monday and and kind of celebrated the program called no it's not well check and connect is probably working in that program too but it was the butterfly catchers dream catcher dream catcher and you know I would have to think that some of our initiatives in the Ojibwe immersion is also going to as they move forward going to make you know more of an impact of success so I think we've made steps and I think the resolution I can vote to accept it
082because I know we're aware of our problems we're aware of the challenges we're aware of the successes were aware of the the things we need improvement and I'll support it thank you remember low fold I'm gonna turn to superintendent our assistant superintendent Horton yes thank you very much um since we didn't have this since we have had this conversation I didn't want to add that superinten ground Sethe and I have talked about some different things we can do to see this in place to increase student achievement as we said that while we're working hard to support all students achieve we try to think of what can we take from this and where can we look to do some things so on my agenda for MINIX being with the early childhood team in the carrier kindergarten
083we'll be looking at how we can maybe support that and if that would fit into our future needs so we'll be having that conversation look forward to today we also had a meeting with the Missal department and check and connect about how we are looking to scale that up we've seen some great results as you've seen in some different board presentations so we're talking about how we can expand that and so mr. Crain will be taking a team down to in the next couple weeks I believe down to SEO and next Wednesday to st. SEO and st. Paul as we look at how we can continue to use that evidence-based strategy which has been shown to help close gaps and increase achievement our graduation rates for students so I just wanted to just make you
084aware of a couple next steps that we're working on definitely there's more to do and a lot more conversation halves I think we were all acknowledging but those are some initial next steps we've talked about in the last month Thank You assistant superintendent Horton remember us well I think I just wanted to respond to member loaf all that that our resolution is acknowledging the response for the concurrence but it's also approving the response and what I am saying by voting no is I don't approve our response because I don't see the movement that I'd like to within the language remember troika thank you yeah and I want to thank the parent committee and all of the staff for all the work that they do on this I know that it's a lot of work I
085want to echo member Sam stead and what she was talking about you know if this is the second year that I've seen this and there's just so much ambiguity that's in here around some staff being trained but there's no specific metrics some dollars being allocated how do you know there's there's a language in here about continuing to re to reconsider class sizes I mean it's just it seems like it's a lot of the same and it's not while we are making progress it's not getting us the the results that we need so I will not be supporting this resolution tonight member Gorham so what I what I feel like I'm hearing here tonight and thank you assistant superintendent Horton for sharing some of the next steps I'm seeing that a conversations happening and that there's
086a response what I'm hearing from my fellow board members is that we don't understand the extent of that response and the follow three in it and how how intentional is this process I I don't really know that I feel I don't understand I know that um and surely there are others with with other programs and needs in the district but I think when we look at the data that we have as I said in our last Education Committee I think it's clear that perhaps we're trying hard we're doing a lot of things but we're not getting the results we want so I guess the question and the challenge I posed is how can we look at doing better with this process with the specific populations of students that were called to serve that's my question
087I'm not sure so I invite that conversation and that feedback I'll support this moving forward for now but I want to hear that know that and those are going to be my questions with regard to every group we're discussing in graduation rates etc Thank You member Gorham i I just have a quick question is there any implications if we don't pass this resolution as it said in the resolution we do have 60 days to respond it's been I don't know how many days the last board meeting so we would have time to respond again but we would need to be within the 60-day frame okay is there any further discussion okay then we'll be there's been a motion to approve resolution e5 1936 46 did it can I have a second oh I'm sorry this
088excuse me it was seconded by member kirby okay so all in favor of resolution 'if I've 1936 for six please say aye aye opposed okay is I clear a clerk quorum on the boats on that okay yeah let's do a roll call vote so I voted in favor remember Kirby yes all right cheer Loffler count yes okay number low fog yes never Oswald remember say instead no remember Trinko no chair the resolution passes for two three thank you clerk Gorham and then member low Falls you want to continue a few more things just to wrap up our education committee meeting last week but thank you we just have extended trip requests we had one from den Feld's jazz van they went to oh Claire we also had an extended trip coming up for the health
089occupations or our Xhosa students are going to a national competition with their instructor miss Olson from June 18th to 22nd it's recommended by accepting my whole committee report that we approve the to extended trip requests part of the education committee that I enjoy is announcing diploma requests and celebration so congratulations to Valerie dodge Caleb Davis Travis LaPlante Carly Gelineau Payton carbo Hayley Smith Jason Joseph Northrop junior ELISA prude home and Austin mailing and Margaret Nelson and Madison Dolson an Estonia Marie Rodriguez Hannah Wren death her in her net her and Eze her Hernandez I know her and Steven cop and Liam Ed's oh those are our graduates it's recommended that the doula school board accept and approve the diploma requests and we congratulate them and finally we have a data sharing agreement with the Regents
090of the University of Minnesota through the Duluth campus Upward Bound and it's recommended that the Duluth School Board accept and approve the data sharing agreement for the four UMD Duluth as they service our students that are in their Upward Bound program I move the Education Committee report from May 21st 2019 you remember low fold seconded by member trinka I and assistant superintendent Horton would like to make a comment thank you first of all we're gonna bow fold first of all thank you for just taking the time to go through that and discuss all of the different work that has been done to support our students I really appreciate you honoring our staff in doing that graduation rates are one of many measures and I think it's important to note that the work we're doing but
091I also want to express my appreciation for the entire board in stating that we need to do more and that an especially around our just recent conversation that we need high achievement for all students and the channel continue to challenge us to do that better and I think that's important that you do that and I appreciate that we're gonna burger on your conversation from our community actually came up in our check and connect meeting today we were trying to remember your exact quote we didn't pull up on YouTube but and how you challenged us in that meeting how we can support all students so thank you for that discussion and then we look forward to reporting back on how we're going to be helping students achieve in Duluth public schools great thank you assistant superintendent
092Horton okay any further discussion on the Education Committee okay it's been moved by member Lowe fold seconded by member trinka all in favor please say aye okay any opposed okay the Education Committee passes and again thank you remember low fold for giving such a complete picture I really can't believe you weren't there but thank you so much that's really important for everyone to understand the depth of the conversations and the presentations that we have okay the next item on our agenda is the HR committee and member kirby thank you all right the HR committee met and some of our reports were usually had staffing updates and this includes the number of staff we have retiring this year and I think there were that day 23 teachers and 45 total staff and do we thank them
093for all of their many years many many years of service for some of them next we went to our action items and probably the one that garnered the most discussion was policy 404 employment background checks we had postponed this definitely from a previous meeting and so we had a further discussion about this and I think most of the discussion revolved around whether or not a complete background check had to be made on every prospective employee before they started and after this discussion it was felt that some of these things this is the case in most instances but in some cases it's not possible and it puts this district at a great disadvantage or Kenn for other employers so perhaps you want to speak to that a little bit mr. Swersky we did I believe it's
094on page six include formerly some of the actions that we do take in terms of including conducting a search history from the minnesota public criminal history website the national sex offender registry in the minnesota meth offender registry and these searches will be conducted prior to an employee's start date and other state public record websites will be used when appropriate so it's just a it's our our way of doing a check prior to our BCA checks coming back formally next we went to this will where this is a second reading new policy 404 and we will delete the previous policy we discussed very briefly the employee right to know program which is a regulation concerning hazardous substances next we have what happens yearly which are two resolutions the first being a determination of certified hourly staff
095which is I think we all have this copies of this before us first is resolution HR 519 three six four three I will read that first be it resolved by the school board of Independent School District number seven or nine st. Louis County Minnesota that the employment of the following hourly teacher shall terminate effective at the end of the school day on June 7th 2019 unless another date is indicated below in which case the employment of the individuals shall terminate on that date the further resolved that the clerk of the school board shall notify such teachers in writing before July 1st 2019 of the termination of their employment and there are five people listed and maybe you want to talk about this again it's primarily a housekeeping measure these are certified staff that work less
096than a point five and more than 14 hours a week which is 0.35 it's just a formality four of those names on there were on there last year came back many of them returned year after year one of them was a new person that was on this year most likely will be back in some capacity next year thank you it's been moved by member kirby seconded by member trinka resolution HR five one nine three six four three is there any discussion okay all in favor please say aye any opposed okay motion carries seven zero you can go on with the second resolution and HR 519 3644 termination of certified probationary and at its non-tenured staff whereas during the first three years of consecutive employment all teachers in the public schools in cities of the first
097class are deemed to be in a probational period of employment during which period the school board may renew or not renew any teachers annual contract as the school board SEL shall see fit the term teacher includes every person regularly employed as a principal or to give instruction in the classroom or to superintend or supervised classroom instruction or as a placement teacher and a visiting teacher now therefore be it resolved by the school board should be of independent school district number seven or nine st. Louis County Minnesota as follows the employment contracts are the following probationary teachers shall not be renewed and their employment shall terminate at the end of the school day On June 7th 2019 unless another data is indicated below in which case the employment of the particular teacher shall terminate on that
098and there are two names there be it FURTHER RESOLVED the clerk of the school board shall notify such teachers in writing before July 1st 2019 of the termination of their employment I move resolution HR 519 36 44 thank you move by member kirby seconded by member low fold any discussion on this okay all in favor of resolution HR five one nine three six four four please say aye all right any opposed okay motion carries seven zero and member kirby you can continue thank you we have another resolution I can bring it up here resolution number HR 519 36 47 it's a resolution authorizing school board members attendance at the Minnesota State Minnesota School Board Association superintendent search workshop resolved that Independent School District 709 st. Louis County Minnesota pay costs incurred as per district policy
099for school board members to attend the MSD a superintendent search workshop in Duluth Minnesota date to be determined we discussed this I will move resolution HR 519 36 47 move by member kirby seconded by member as well and we'll have some discussion now on member trinka you can go ahead thank you I appreciate that we're moving forward with this process my request would be that a would be really mindful of dates and giving people enough lead time because summers are difficult even though this is a priority and a lot of us work ramps up in the summertime and so I just want to be really mindful of people's work and personal schedules I also would request that we have the opportunity to see the agenda ahead of time so that we can ensure that our
100time together is spent with the clear goals that we're looking for as a school board and not something that just maybe is predetermined by the School Board Association even though they are the experts in this I just would ask for a little bit of a heads up on making sure that that workshops it's what our unique needs are at ISD 709 understand never sanstead thank you my question is just related to this resolution specifically it is framed as paying costs incurred for school board members to attend I'm wondering if that's just the cost of MSBA to come and provide the workshop because I don't imagine we're gonna get hotels to attend a workshop here in Duluth so I just want yeah I can clarify that so yeah it is to bring on NSBA staff here
101to do the workshop for us and we will have this workshop here in Duluth it would include school board members as well as our HR director and in terms of the time of course like all of our meetings we will look at do a poll to look at people's schedules it is about a three hour workshop though and as we talked last month when we raised doing this workshop idea that it could be done in June but NSBA could do it in July as well in terms of the generous timeline that we have to work with as well and so what I'm hoping if this passes is that we will already tomorrow be in contact with nsv Abe come up with some dates and then get them out to find a date that will work
102for all of us as board members to really start the process of learning about what our role is what our different timelines we could be working with what are different ways we can approach superintendent search and have us to have really our first really discussion around it and I will well we between Tim and I we'll see about you know what getting an agenda ahead of time but this is a workshop that NSBA does do and has done with many school districts around the state so thank you any other questions or comments about the workshop itself okay so this has been moved by member kirby it has been seconded by member as well all in favor of resolution HR 519 three six four seven please say aye any opposed okay the resolution passes seven to
103zero and thank you and just as your chair I look forward to us having a really thoughtful thorough process and this being the first step in our superintendent search and I really appreciate you know everyone's input in both when we have it but also in attendance at it so thank you for supporting this resolution member kirby you can go on with the rest of your thank you the only other item was a discussion of nepotism which there was nothing new to present and it was not felt to be urgent so we deferred that to a future future meeting so we did not discuss an effort is amande that was it so I we did discuss the superintendent and hiring memo and we just discussed that now so I move the acceptance of the Human Resources
104report okay it's been seconded by member as well did you have another comment member turn Kyle your light when I okay before we approve this I just want to thank the HR staff for the work on the policy around background checks I know we kind of put you through the wringer on some of those discussions and so I really appreciated the explanation that you provided at the HR committee meeting and the additions that are made explicitly in this policy because I think that it it it sends a strong message to our community that of course the safety of our students is top priority so thank you and Linda for your work on this i apprec-- okay Thank You member trinka for those comments so it's been moved by member kirby seconded by I think member
105oz well had already seconded it and so all in favor please say aye any opposed okay motion HR committee passes 7 to 0 and now we'll move on to the Business Committee and member trinka thank you I too must extend my gratitude to remember Oswald for running this meeting we had her running circles last week so thank you for taking the leadership to run the business committee meeting last week I appreciate that there was a lot of really robust discussion I'm gonna go in order of the committee not in the order of the way that the meeting went even though I think that's like the best part is that was what the meeting started with but I'm actually gonna ask CFO Erickson if you wouldn't mind you gave a really great summary at the committee
106meeting about ap use and about where we are in the budgeting process and I wonder if you would just be willing to speak to that a little bit especially as we see some of the numbers change and why especially with student enrollment why those changes occur I think those are important details for the public to know they do I had thank you in the APU report that was included in the packet you can see that our estimates are actually down from April and part of this has to do with the volatility of our 11th and 12th grade enrollments and we talked about that in committee we are hoping then that these will stabilize and we've been working with our Mars Oaks since that meeting to make sure that our estimates as we get prepared for
107budgeting and doing our final budget for fiscal year twenty of the work that we have to do is based on estimates and we have to use the information we have now to project into the future and so we are currently projecting a smaller ADM estimate for fiscal year 20 but this last report got a little bit closer to where we had projected so we will be continuing to review that and again if you're looking at the sheet that has the the three charts with the blue and red bar graphs you can see again that the high school enrollments it can take many students to equal an ATM in high school because we have many students who are coming in and out of the district they have multiple options for enrollment so they may be not
108registered full-time at the district more than our elementary students have a little bit more stability so as we watch those and we watch those trends grow we can see that it may take up you know over to students to generate one ADM in many cases so again this is something that's very critical to the budget process so we do have to monitor these very closely so I appreciate the opportunity to clarify thank you for that I appreciate as always I love the the charts and graphs and look and I know that you love them more than any of us sitting up here probably can buy and do but I appreciate you walking us through that because this time of year is really volatile with student numbers and that does make a big impact as we
109look at budget dollars so thank you for that were there any comments that you wanted to make on the current budget or financial statements are pretty straightforward okay thank you next we discussed fund raisers and I continue to be impressed by the creativity of the schools and the students and the groups with what they used to do for fundraisers as member oswald brought up during the committee meeting those the Denfeld baseball team is selling discount cards and they've raised almost 11,000 dollars so good on them for being innovative and identifying additional opportunities to generate dollars for their programs we then went on to it's that time of the year where we're looking at renewing a number of contracts that are relatively standard for school districts so the first one that was discussed was a change
110from the Minnesota Department of Education in the cost for adult meal for adults to receive meals at the schools and so those numbers that have been informed by USDA have increased to two dollars and 30 cents for breakfast and four dollars and five cents for lunch and if you've eaten lunch or breakfast at any of our schools it's the best deal in town as far as I'm concerned so that was briefly discussed we then moved into bids RFPs and quotes I think there were a number of references to milk over the course of our different committee meetings which I thought was interesting but looking at a new food service distributor again based on the bidding process that has standard to the district we also looked at a bid for dairy products for children nutrition and
111then we looked at bids for PRI circuits D I D service numbers and other calling services so all of those were discussed again all of these went out for bid publicly and will be recommending that we move forward with with vendors based on how their bids fall into alignment with the needs of the district as well as certainly being fiscally responsible and then the last RFP that we discussed was copier service contract we had didn't have any new quotes no new policies and regulations or change or contracts we do have a consistent place holder on the agenda to look at leases and there were none this month so with that I will move into their resolution section of the agenda and so I'm going to start with resolution B - 5 - 19 - 36
11248 acceptance of donations to Duluth public schools whereas Minnesota statute 465 dots are three requires a school district to accept donations by resolution expressed in the terms prescribed by the donor and fall and whereas acceptance of the donations in accordance with the donors terms is in the best interest of the Duluth public schools now therefore be it resolved that the Duluth public schools does accept the below describe donations from said organizations in accordance with the term set forth herein be it further resolved that the Duluth public schools wishes to extend its grateful and sincere appreciation to these various individuals and organizations so I move resolution B - 5 - 19 - 36 48 second okay it's been moved by member trent assetid by member low fold is there any further discussion okay all in favor
113of resolution b5 19 36 48 please say aye aye any opposed okay motion carries 7 0 you can continue on member trinka great our next resolution is to look at the support for stow elementary school of forest designation and this really was I think the highlight of the meeting and I think that Avery deserves a star in the mail for coming as an elementary school student to share with us her experiences and geocaching and planting flowers and tracking animals and swamp mucking the pond I wanted to say Swamp Thing the times that's not the same thing and so we thank mr. Cokely and the grad student from UMD Leslie who has been - have been doing a significant amount of work out at Stowe in order to get that school forest designation they've also been
114working in partnership with with a number of organizations and Gary knew Duluth as well as the YMCA and so I do want to promote that on the last day of school Stowe is having a a big picnic to celebrate the hopefully the launch of this school forest designation as well as to dedicate the dog park in honor of officer Haws and they're going to have food and celebration and a lot of community organizations who are going to be there so that was a really exciting presentation and fun to see all of the student driven activities that are behind that so with that explanation I would like to move resolution B - 5 - 19 - 36 49 where as the school board of Independent School District 709 recognizes that a school forest would have a
115positive impact on students teachers parents in the community where students would learn a variety of subjects and have a place that enhances an appreciation of natural sources and heightens community pride and involvement and whereas Stowe elementary school parents staff and community members wish to begin the process of establishing the Stowe school forest as depicted on Exhibit A now therefore be it resolved that the school board of Independent School District 709 supports the establishment of the Stowe school forest and outdoor classroom comprising of approximately 17 acres in the southwest corner quarter of section three Township 48 range 15 and then there's a list of blocks behind that that fit underneath that under that designation so be it further resolved that the board of Independent School District 709 supports enrollment of said school forests in the Minnesota
116DNR school forest program for educational purposes I move resolution be - five - 19 - 36 49 okay it's been moved by member trinka seconded by member Gorham is there any further discussion I would just like to thank the parents and the staff who have done so much lend the community the Gehry community that has done so much work from what I understand and from what member are from what our chair shared the amount of time and energy it takes to go into getting this designation is really significant and they did that it was a very organic community driven event with strong support from the school district so I think that this is a really exciting opportunity yep thank you so much remember Trinko and I was just going to make one comment that just
117really more for the public again that we're very fortunate to have at our elementary schools this designated school forest status also at home craft at Condon at luster Park at Lowell at East High School and am I missing any of our other schools and Lakewood elementary so we we look forward to our schools continuing to grow school for us designation and and work together with the many community partners so any other comments on this okay so all in favor of resolution e RB 5:19 36 49 Stowe school forest please say aye any opposed okay resolution carries seven zero and member trinka you can go on thank you we had a second presentation from a gentleman whose name I forgot to write down with skyward transitions and this will be coming up again at the next
118Business Committee meeting but it is exciting it's really exciting finance and HR software and ultimately you know it sounds like the the pearls to this are it saves us money that this company has over 40 years of experience and a hundred and 50 districts run that product in Minnesota and so it also would provide a lot of resources to our finance staff if they if you ever have good colleagues who you can call to ask questions that's a really positive thing so I look forward to furthering that discussion next month we had a number of informational items expenditure contracts we had no renewal of contracts no no cost contracts revenue contracts or change order signed as always mr. Spooner gave a very thorough facilities management and capital project status report and one piece that I
119would like to highlight and that is just the amount of work that his team has had to put in additionally because of the crazy weather that we've been having and so the additional snow plowing and additional floor cleaning and a lot of additional work that that they've had to put in so a big thanks to our facilities staff for keeping our schools clean and safe the other thing that I actually would like mr. Spooner to just briefly talk about because you did get very excited about it during but the committee meeting is the results of the radon testing and I think it's important especially in the way that you framed it why we're doing it how well we did and what the implications of that are thank you remember trinka and I to get excited
120about your report on radar and so go ahead mr. Spooner sure remember trinka member Loffler members of the board mmm we conducted radon testing this year and currently radon testing is not required by mdh or EPA it's identified as a best practice but I feel that radon will go the same way that lead testing is gone and it's going to be required so we felt best to do so right now ins and see where we stand and we did 963 tests and they all fell below the 4 picoCuries per liter and except for four tests which were slightly above and when you get tests that are above the action level that means that you have to do a different type of monitoring a continuous radon monitoring with a monitor that's placed in each room so
121we did four of those and they came out really low so really good so in essence our district has completed radon testing we're compliant with mdh and EPA regulations and the report now has gone to you it will go to the state and we're compliant until the statute or the next testing period arrives thank you and member trinket you yes thank you one other piece so we did of course discuss the updated preliminary budget information that was a verbal update and I just want to remind everyone about the June 4th Committee of the Whole meeting where we will be discussing in depth I would recommend people bring caffeine what have proposed budget is part of this part of the trick of all this as we're also waiting to hear from the legislature on some pretty
122significant legislation that would impact our budget numbers and so whether or not we'll have that information by then unless they go on the special session we'll see but fingers crossed so I know that that puts the finance staff in a difficult position because you're having to do a number of pro formas with a number of different situations and so we thank you guys for that for all of the extra work that you're putting in it sounds like it's maybe taking a toll on your vocal cords so thank you for that can you can you remind me the meeting time the on the on June 4th yeah and just a reminder it's from 4:00 to 5:00 because then we go on to a graduation thank you or excuse me 4:30 to 5:30 and then we go
123on to a graduation thank you 4:30 to 5:30 here committee of the whole I would encourage everyone to come and then we based on state statute are required to pass the budget in June and so there may be additional meetings if need be but we're hoping we're hoping that that won't be the case so for future items the adoption of the FY 2011 in June in June we will also be getting a presentation on cost to upgrade this building and we're hoping the board members are all hoping that includes a very thorough tour we'll be discussing in July the FY 21 10 year capital facilities lands so I can't wait to see that mr. Spooner will be discussing the annual review of grants and donations property updates and policy so with that I move the
124Business Committee meeting from well from May 14th thank you move by member trinka seconded by member a.oswell any further discussion and remember Oz will I see your light on any other okay go ahead do you want me to move the motion no it's been moved by member snow I mean do you want me to pull it sorry or can I just talk to my wife yeah go ahead touch coupon on page 42 in the expenditure contracts is the contract for the ALC graduation ceremony that we were just talking about and that lists the start time of commencement at 6:30 and yet are in our schedule it says 6 o'clock well I would like to know what time to show up okay we will look into that and make sure everybody has the right time thank
125you and when I say we I mean Linda Melinda we will look forward to an email from you tomorrow ah thank you any further discussion on any items on the Business Committee okay so the Business Committee has been moved by member trinka seconded by member as well all in favor of the Business Committee report please say aye any opposed okay the Business Committee passes 7 to 0 thank you okay we just have a couple other items here and the next one is the special resolution we've been hearing about through some of our community speakers and I'm actually bringing this resolution forward so I think again we've heard many reasons why as a district and as a school board we should be thoughtful about gun violence and so just going to read through this resolution I
126know I had a couple board members that have approached me about just a little bit of word smithing and that can happen in the discussion period but I move resolution SP five one nine three six five Oh resolution declaring the first Friday in June to be national gun violence Awareness Day in the duluth public schools this resolution declares the first Friday in June to be national gun violence Awareness Day in the duluth public school district to honor and remember all victims and survivors of gun violence and to declare that we as a country must do more to reduce gun violence whereas every day a hundred Americans are killed by gun violence and on average there are nearly 13,000 gun homicides every year and whereas Americans are 25 times more likely to be killed with guns
127and people in other high-income developed countries and whereas protecting Public Safety and the communities they serve is the highest is the district's highest responsibilities and whereas support for the second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizen goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns away from dangerous people with dangerous histories and whereas in January 23rd our January 2013 Hadiya Pendleton a teenager who marched in President Obama's second inaugural parade and was tragically shot and killed just weeks later should be now celebrating her 22nd birthday and where else to help honor Hadiya and the hundred Americans whose lives are cut short in the countless survivors who are injured by shootings every day a national coalition of organizations has designated June 7th 2019 the first Friday in June as a fifth national gun violence Awareness Day and whereas the idea was inspired
128by a group of high daya's friends who asked their classmates to commemorate her life by wearing orange orange they chose this color because hunters were orange to announce themselves to other hunters went out in the woods and orange is a color that symbolizes the value of human life and whereas anyone can join this campaign by pledging to wear orange our June 7th the first Friday in June in 2019 to help raise awareness about gun violence and wear as we renew our commitment to reduce gun violence and pledged to do all we can to keep firearms out of the wrong hands and encourage responsible gun ownership to help keep our children safe now therefore be it resolved that the Duluth School Board declares the first Friday in June 7 2019 to be national gun violence Awareness
129Day in the Duluth Public Schools we encourage all schools to support their local community's efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and to honor and value human lives do I have a second seconded by member sanstead is there any discussion and I know member kirby had a couple wordsmithing there so go ahead and then I'll call on you member trinka these are pretty minimal I was fully support this I was it did it here the one to the third whereas whereas public whereas protecting Public Safety in the communities they serve as the district's highest responsibility I don't to be nitpicky but I'm gonna church to our highest responsibility I would just say a significant responsibility it says the same thing that would be one suggestion and the last thing was in the last
130sentence we encourage all schools to support their local community's efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and to honor human value honor and value human lives I would just cut it off either cut it off it's a gun violence and gun violence period or to honor and value their lives because we're talking specifically of people who lost their lives to gun violence not general human lives so little things but Our Lives instead of human life and then it's not our highest priority but it's our highest what is it they are highest responsibilities well maybe not we have lots of them but I would say it's a significant one member kirby based on our earlier conversation i thought for that first whereas whereas protecting public safety in the communities they serve is a high
131priority of the district and does that sound good everyone ok and then take it into consideration the last piece we encourage all schools to support their local communities efforts to prevent the tragic effects of gun violence and kind of leave it at that people comfortable with that ok great thank you member trinka your comments I have one question in one comment my question is because we have specific dates in here like June 7th the first Friday of June in 2019 does this mean that we're that this resolution only lasts for a year I did have a similar question to some of the people who brought this forward and because this is a coalition effort and it may change a little bit this resolution next year and so at this point rather than we want to
132keep it specific to this year kind of similar to the mental health awareness month that we did last month as well so sure sorry go ahead so my comment is in the one two three fourth where as support of the second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens go hand-in-hand with keeping guns away from dangerous people with dangerous histories I think that that's a is part of a false narrative that it's not always dangerous people with dangerous histories you know we heard earlier about kids who have access to guns that because they just find a gun in a household so maybe that's maybe that's a little too nitpicky but I think as we're talking about the discussion overall it's it's broader than just pointing a finger at quote-unquote dangerous people and so I don't know if this
133resolution has to exactly match that the coalition resolution if that's the case I'm supportive otherwise I would like to just strike that all right I did speak with again the folks who brought this forward to me and we can tweak it as long as we're not changing the spirit of it so we can tweak some of the language to language we're comfortable with I think you couldn't just say something support for the Second Amendment rights of law by invading citizens goes hand-in-hand with gun violence awareness or something along those lines it doesn't make it about dangerous people okay so so unless anyone has something different so where as support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens goes hand in hand with keeping guns away okay okay great oh I'm sorry okay I'll start with
134member sands dead I think it was mentioned earlier in terms of responsible gun ownership in the ask at playdates movement sort of thing and so I would suggest that we say whereas support for the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens goes hand in hand with responsible gun ownership then you're okay okay are people comfortable with that then goes hand in hand with responsible gun ownership do you want to add to that member as well I I'm in favor of what members answered suggested I was just going to point out we could just end it after citizens with a period but I putting responsible gun ownership in theirs it's fine with me too so let let's add it sounds like there's agreement with responsible gun ownership goes hand in hand with responsible gun ownership so so
135good okay any further discussion or comments on this okay member trinka this'll be quick I promise I wasn't going to talk too much tonight I just really want to commend the district for taking the stance I think it's really powerful I think it's powerful that we're doing it in coalition with really passionate work that is happening across the community so I'm really really proud to support this resolution okay great okay okay any further comments okay I just want to make one personal comment to being I brought it forward but I over ten years ago I had the opportunity with my fifth grade daughter who's 30 now to go on a bus out to Washington DC with thousands of other people for the first kind of march on Washington Mother's Day march on Washington and it
136was very moving and I this issues very near and dear to me for many reasons and I'm just so grateful for the work that members of our community have been doing some of the speakers we heard tonight just to continue to raise awareness and particularly raise awareness with parents on some things we can do such as that the ask campaign and and other issues so thank you board for taking this resolution seriously and and supporting it and being very thoughtful I I know personally for me it's you know it's a very important resolution and and to take tonight as well so so it's been moved by myself seconded by member sanstead any further discussion okay all in favor of resolution SP five one nine three six five oh please say okay motion carries 7-0 thank
137you so much okay and then we've heard about the June 4th meeting next week there are no other meetings on our schedule I do want to mention a reminder that on Thursday the gosh May 30th there is an early childhood celebration at Clyde that we all got invitations for and so if you can attend that to support our early childhood programs and then the only other just kind of general comment I have is this weekend is Memorial weekend we have Monday off and we hope our staff enjoy that extra day off and I hope all of us take the time to think about what Memorial Day is all about Condon School celebrated with a Veterans Day program yesterday that was very moving and was also a wonderful reminder of what the long weekend is about
138as well so any other questions or comments before we have a motion to close the motion to adjourn by member trinka is there a second second it by member sanstead all in favor please say aye okay motion carries 7-0 right have a great long weekend