Edina Public Schools: April 12th, 2021 School Board Meeting

001tonight is monday april 12th and we do have a quorum so i'll call this meeting to order due to the current federal and state emergency declarations and guidance about limiting person-to-person contact due to the coven 19 pandemic this meeting of the edina public school district school board is being conducted online in accordance with minnesota statutes 13 d 021 people may monitor this meeting from a remote location by using the district's youtube channel meeting participants are reminded to keep their computer on mute please remember to utilize the raise hand feature and then wait wait to be recognized by me i will determine the order in which participants wishing to speak will be recognized before we start the meeting i wanted to take a moment to recognize that we are meeting virtually in accordance with the curfew

002set tonight by governor walls as a response to the unrest in our neighboring communities our thoughts and prayers go out to the family of dante wright the larger community and all those affected by this loss of life including our own families staff members and all students who are already navigating the stress of this pandemic and could be feeling additional stress from the derrick shoven trial this school board meeting is clearly not going to solve society's ills but i do believe consistency for our students is important during times of unrest and in our schools right now we are growing leaders of today and tomorrow so let us continue with our meetings for tonight but remember the backdrop under which we are working um the first order of business tonight is agenda approval do i have a

003motion to approve the agenda for tonight is there a second second second we'll now vote by roll call to approve tonight's agenda allenberg hi fox aye green i jones aye michelson tonight's agenda is approved um john will you please quickly review the agenda for us yes we'll start out right after this with excellence in action recognizing the editing high school girls basketball team's care package project we will hear from members of the public that john topo read we have a consent agenda that has items on it we have for presentation uh present uh our may referendum presentation uh that's the information uh webcast that we are taking out to uh different community groups um the in discussion you'll discuss the 2021 positive bond review and comment that the mde has provided you'll presentation on the

004long-term facilities maintenance bond and a discussion on the physical earth science course design and curriculum and then in action you'll approve uh the purchase of the issuance of that bond and um excuse me the purchase of that issuance of the bond yes and then uh purchases of buses and then approving the equity consortium proposal that was discussed in in the work session earlier and then we have some announcements right at the end great thank you super nun schultz um speaking of leaders of today um in tonight's excellence of action we're going to talk to the edina high school girls basketball team and and learn about their listen learn care project that they created in partnership with the black student union on the project was their way of learning more about racial inequities and provided a

005platform for them to share and we're providing them a platform to share about what they learned um here is ali murphy to tell us more so welcome thank you um i was informed that jamie were you going to say something before i start the presentation i apologize here is our head basketball coach to um tell us more before the presentation no problem i just um would like to proudly announce our student leaders who are on tonight we have senior captain ally murphy junior katie getzman junior maya dawson and junior martin fullerton thank you and welcome all of you thank you for coming um i'd like to take a moment of silence to acknowledge the tragic death of mr dante wright thank you um i will present now all right hello i am ali murphy i'm

006a senior at edina high school and a captain of the edina girls basketball team i'd like to talk to you tonight about our team's racial justice efforts this season it's called it's bigger than basketball i'll tell you how it began how it evolved the impact we had and most importantly our plans for the future but first we'd like to sincerely thank mr troy stein for supporting this educational effort and also the school board for creating an environment where edina students are encouraged to become tomorrow's courageous leaders today where it began most of you are aware athletes have used their platform to shine a light on the need for racial justice black disproportionately experience increased police violence and shootings just because the color of their skin this has to stop our country is better than this

007this fall i read about two black high school basketball players in florida who chose to wear black lives matter warm-ups for their game they not only were not allowed to wear the warm-ups they were pulled out from the court the game was canceled and they were threatened with suspension at the same time destiny adams one of the best high school players in the country requested to wear a black lives matter warm-up shirt in order to peacefully advocate for racial equality and her request was denied by her school board when i read this something inside snapped at that moment i decided i was going to use my platform as a citizen and as an athlete to shine a light on the need for racial equality conversations education and positive change i've been inspired in my advocacy

008for social justice by my basketball trainer and long-time mentor mr pj hill pj is a wells fargo financial advisor a former pro athlete and a vp of the naacp pj often explained to me white people can choose to care or not to care that people of color are treated differently that they don't feel safe when they call 9-1-1 people of color don't get to choose to care this inequality and is their life every day that really hit me i decided to choose to care and i have the courage to care i decided to step up get out of my comfort zone and care first i requested permission to wear these warm-ups from mr stein one of the most exciting days of my life when he agreed and offered his support thank you mr stein second

009i asked the black student union eddie dyna for their permission and their partnership in this effort i took the lead from them they wholeheartedly agreed to partner and were thrilled that edina athletes would use their platform to advance racial equality then i approached my coaches i asked for the time to speak to the team after practice about the plan to wear the blm warm-ups and why the coaches agreed as a side note i'd like to thank our coaches jamie guard chapman jared chapman and kevin chan for their support in these efforts i know this was outside of everyone's comfort zone but it's a hundred percent right and i appreciate their courage i told the team i was designing blm warm-ups and i would aware i would be wearing them at each game i explained with

010documented statistics the impact of systemic racism next i invited black edina alumni who played basketball to come back and speak to their team about their personal experiences with racism this was a profound experience it was eye-opening for the white players then current black teammates asked if they could have the time after practice to speak about their experiences with racism and why they don't feel safe one teammate said it was the first time she felt like a proud black woman at edina meaningful conversation started on the team the moment of truth came right before the first game i had a warm up for everyone if they chose to wear one the church the shirts said black lives matter on the front and listen learn care on the back because i think it's time for white people

011to listen to black voices learn the fact learn the facts about systemic racism and start to care like pj hill taught me white privilege is the choice to care or not to care it's time to choose to care we can't wait any longer at our first game and for every game this season every dyna high school basketball player chose to wear a shirt encouraging people to listen learn and care about ending racism not only our team some of our opponents requested warm-up shirts here's a video from our game against [Music] hopkins we were in great company this season athletes across the country decided enough is enough and they advocated for change the u of m gophers lay high women's basketball and even stanford women's basketball decided to advocate for change from the warm-ups and the

012educational speakers and articles from our team our efforts grew we realized we had an opportunity to educate ourselves and others teams we presented a snack box to the opposing team before each game with yummy snacks hand sanitizer and a letter explaining our efforts to promote racial equality along with a pivotal article from the nba great kyle korver explaining white privilege in racism i'll give you a moment to read this letter the response to our advocacy efforts with other teams was more positive than we ever imagined in fact it started real positive conversations on social media here's an excerpt from a very popular post from the st louis park coach and his respect for our team comments included edina has come a long way this is hopefully news that the future is bright and my heart

013really needed this my favorite was that's so dope other programs need to follow edina's lead this season took on a meaning much bigger than basketball it meant proudly advocating for basic human rights don't get me wrong it wasn't seamless and easy people don't like to go outside their comfort zones at first but there's nothing like feeling it there's nothing like the feeling of standing up for something that's bigger than yourself thank you once again to mr stein our coaches in the school board for the real life opportunity to learn about courage integrity true edina values and choosing to care but it's only begun i'm a senior and the next generation of edina girls basketball leadership is already planning their education and advocacy efforts i'd like to turn to introduce katie getzman maya dawson and martin

014fullerton okay hi i'm maya dawson and as being one of the only people of color on the team and not having much diversity let me present myself actually so everyone can see me one second oh i guess that didn't work okay i'm just going to okay sorry it's okay okay okay i said as being one of um the only people of color on the team and not having much diversity down in high school this group and the important discussions we have had have been so important to me personally because it's provided me a sense of feeling accepted and has given me an opportunity to be heard amongst my teammates through being able to share my life experiences as being a person of color this also made me excited that we're able to protest racial injustices

015through our warm-up shirts and kneeling this was the first step to making real change within the community and hopefully open people's minds and views on what the black light matter movement truly stands for this all gave people on the team a way to show support in a way they wouldn't have that would have had access to otherwise this idea started small and became something that brought not only our team together but other girls basketball teams to become more interested in the black lives matter movement and gave them an opportunity to show support [Music] hi i'm katie getzman um my passion for black lives matter matter um started after the tragic death of george floyd something like this had never happened so close to home close to home before after seeing the video and how truly

016awful it was it opened my eyes to the harsh realities that black people face on a day-to-day basis people like me who have never felt any racial racial prejudice in their life could have easily gone about my day and ignored what was happening um but instead i decided to educate myself on issues such as such as systemic racism racially inequalities and one of one thing that really impacted my passion was white privilege white privilege is a live and present thing and seeing the advantages that advantages i have as a white person changed my whole view on this matter instead of using this to my own personal advantage i am trying to use it to help voice these issues and be an ally to the black community the days following the death of george floyd i

017could have stayed home and let the protests and riots pass and acknowledge and not acknowledge anything but instead i went out and protested and began speaking out on social media it was definitely uncomfortable for the first time because i never vo spoke out about anything on social media or voiced my opinion um but these conversations about racism and inequalities aren't easy topics but if we want to see change in the world we must have these hard discussions the initiative started by ali is definitely something that should be talked about having these hard conversations with a group of people you feel comfortable comfortable around is definitely something very influential it had a significant impact on me and all my teammates and we are definitely going to continue this initiative next year hi i'm martin fullerton and

018these conversations meant a lot to me also because i was a person who was really looking for some way to contribute more because i knew that racism was an issue and i was looking for ways to expand my knowledge and my group of people that i could talk to about and it was really comfortable for me to be able to talk in a setting a basketball setting where i trusted everyone i think it's really important especially in edina where we're wealthy and mostly white i think it's really important that we have these conversations since most of us will never some of us may never recognize our privilege and it's important that we do regarding the future of our conversations about race more specifically we um our partnership with hopkins will continue in a meeting of

019our two teams this summer we look forward to utilizing our mentors and cindy murphy and troy stein who connect us with important speakers and opportunities finally we hope to continue building our profile for group activism and management for college applications we want to continue to provide ourselves and our team members with tools to combat everyday racism and white privilege as well as education on systemic race issues that is the end do any people have questions do any board members have questions or comments julie yeah hi i don't have any questions i just wanted to commend um you ladies for coming on and sharing your experience and sharing the work that you did um it is really hard to be intentional with your work and things that you choose to do and just as hard to

020have such an important impact and you guys manage to do both so i just want to thank you for showing us the adults the way here um because um that's what you've done tonight explaining this and all the work that you've done in the continued work so i just wanted to say thank you thank you julie anyone else john i will add that having this presentation on this day just gives me great help of the uh the consciousness as well as the conscience that these young people have brought forward and i'm very proud to be part of the dyna community that uh is modeling this so i want to thank you for bringing this forward on another day in our culture where we are um mourning the loss of a member of our community thank

021you superintendent schultz erica can i just add to sorry i couldn't get to my raised dancing um that one of the things that struck me that you guys were talking about is that i think martin i think you said it that you were you felt like you were in a setting with trusted people and i'm just wondering if you know if there's advice that you can offer maybe through troy or through coaches to help other students find those safe spaces to have conversations like this where you're thinking kind of above and beyond your own self and educating yourself on stuff so that was just a maybe a suggestion that you kind of think about that and share that experience um i just wanted to wrap up by thanking you for coming here to present this

022i think it takes a lot of courage to engage in these conversations in general um but to bring it to our board and to do it publicly um in front of the edina community takes a special kind of courage and to do it um as eloquently as you guys did um i i i didn't quite frankly know exactly what you guys were presenting so in my opening when i talked about um that we're preparing the leaders of today if you guys demonstrated that it looked like i prepared for that but i didn't so thank you you you guys uh really set me up well with that you guys are just outstanding clearly outstanding leaders and um you're lucky to have these ladies on your team coach garb so um so thank you for coming tonight

023i appreciate it well thank you for having us it's a true honor to come and present to you guys i think lenny and troy have something to say i'm sorry i totally missed that yeah apparently this raised hand function doesn't work for you erica that's why janie just spoke out but i i don't have a question but i am really impressed with the presentation and i'm really impressed with the initiative that you took in sort of starting this and to me it is courageous to go out and say here's what i want to do and to go public with it i'm very impressed i think it's great so thank you troy rumor has it you have your hand hand up so i would like to call on you thank you chair allen berger i appreciate

024it and i want to echo a couple of the thoughts uh that were said and and and just say that you know one of the one of the things when we were um meeting with coaches over the summer we talked about equity and inclusion one of the things that coach said uh in in in one of our meetings was we are missing the boat as coaches if we don't give um authorship an opportunity for our students right now to continue to talk about these issues and um use extracurriculars as that platform for them to continue to advocate so i want to applaud our girls basketball coaching staff for continuing to work um with these fine ladies and and they did a tremendous job i want to echo those thoughts and we will continue to grow

025in in this area and i appreciate everybody's efforts so thanks again thank you an excellent excellent leadership as well from you troy and coach gard and the i mean just all around i'm really proud of everyone in the community right now so thank you you guys are welcome to sit through the rest of the board meeting but i highly recommend that you exit so so thank you for coming tonight and joining us thank you guys thank you thanks for having us thank you thank you thanks bye thanks um we're now moving on to hearings from a member of the members of the public and obviously we're planning on being able to have people from the public come tonight to be able to make comments so i just wanted to apologize if people were planning on

026doing that and weren't able to make it hopefully next month we'll be able to meet in person um we do have three emails for director tope to read and so i will pass it along to um director tope to read those um emails that were sent to us good evening trey allen bergen members of the board can you hear me okay the first commenter begins with members of the board thank you for your service during this extraordinary time it is appreciated i am writing today about the secondary science curriculum proposals and asking for clarification on commitment to scheduling students on different pathways in the agenda documents for the april 12th meeting it was not clear what science class options will be available to the ninth grade students of 2223 that are in the compacted science

027pathway and completed the new earth science requirements in eighth grade can you be specific on what science class will be guaranteed to be available scheduled in ninth grade for these students can it be assumed that a version of the enriched physics curriculum utilizing math at or above algebra 2 level will be available and guaranteed to these students in ninth grade in the recent past if classes were not part of the standard pathway for a grade there was no guarantee and very little likelihood of a student being able to successfully get the class on their schedule it is one thing to say there will be a pathway for students it is another to say that the administration will guarantee to schedule the pathway or at a minimum put in writing the rules around priority for scheduling

028and then have transparency on how those rules have been applied equitably as shared by parents who currently work in stem during the project lead the way advisory council meetings completion of ap physics is a key element in being successful within a college engineering curriculum we need to be extremely clear about what options are available to a student who wants to take regular slash enriched physics in ninth tenth or eleventh grade in order to support taking ap physics in a later grade may i suggest there be a defined pathway where physics can be taken concurrently with either earth science in ninth or chemistry intent where the administration will commit to the physics class being scheduled i know there are many moving pieces right now and the science curriculum changes are just one more thing but i

029am concerned we will be doing all future students interested in stem careers a disservice if we do not ensure a pathway to advanced physics courses thank you heather pete's parent of edina 7th and 10th grade students the next letter begins with good evening school board members four years since my first visit to the school board and i do not see urgency as edina schools plod through a literary process literacy process excuse me personally i am panicked that as many as 65 percent of edina students are not receiving appropriate reading instruction next month when the proposed literacy plan comes before the board i ask for the board's due diligence in examining the proposed plan will it address the needs of all students will it continue edina's weight to fail method where children fall three or more

030years behind their peers before there is enough concern to try to help them does the new plan continue to knowingly allow 25 percent of our students to move through high school and graduate even though test scores show they are not proficient in reading minnesota's focus on balanced literacy is failing our students while edina's 25 of students lacking proficiency is far better than state average nobody wants to be the one in four who graduate without the most basic skill of proficient reading a large percentage of our students need more than what our schools are providing for many edina families that means private schools private tutors and reading summer camps it means expensive privatized for other edina families it means a lifelong struggle because students needs are never identified or addressed does the new literacy plan provide

031the necessary code-based explicit systematic sequential and diagnostic instruction that helps all students learn to read does the new literacy plan move away from the guess and skip methods of guided reading and balanced literacy will our first grade students still have to cover the pictures of the leveled readers while they guess and skip words that they don't know or will they work with decodable readers and learn the needed foundational skills that they are currently missing where are teachers with the new literacy plan are they receiving and engaged in letrs training if not how do they develop expertise that can be shared with students are all district teachers knowledgeable about best practices in literacy instruction if not how will they embed literacy into instruction as current standards require reading is equity in the foundation of education and

032kids know they know when they are not reading at the level of their peers they know when teachers don't know how to help them the kids know but they believe they don't receive the help they need because they are too stupid to learn by not appropriately supporting these students the lack of reading creates equity and mental health issues fix this make sure udina's new literacy plan is not simply a repeat of the old literacy plan this board is the last stop before another 20 years of failed literacy in edina that was sarah hermana the uh last comment comment uh letter begins with edina school board members thank you for this opportunity to address you tonight our names are karen gabler twee eying fox eleni glarum sherry rosen and nikki williams and we are writing tonight

033representing vote yes eps vote yes eps is a community group formed around supporting the yes vote on this spring's referendum of renewing the technology levy and approving the facilities bond we want to thank the edina public schools school board members who have already shown their support behind renewing the levy and approving the bond we know that you understand the importance of continuing the basic and critical technology infrastructure needed to serve our students over the next 10 years and investing in facility improvements that will make a difference for students family and staff the renewal of the technology levy is important because without this six and a half million dollars will need to be cut from the budget in the first year alone that will impact every school this technology levy supports things like media specialists educational

034hardware software and information systems technology infrastructure like network bandwidth firewalls cyber security and phone systems and provides funding for maintaining school security systems cameras and alarms these are essential items our schools need in order to prepare students for the world they are encountering today and into the future bond issue provides additional capital for some unmet safety and transportation needs anyone who has spent time around countryside creek valley and valley view schools knows that there are traffic flow issues that pose safety concerns for pedestrians vehicles and buses in addition this one-time issued bond paid over 20 years will allow us to bring our special education busing in-house resulting in annual cost savings for the district for any community members watching tonight we encourage you to learn more about the vote and how you can support our

035students at our website voteyseps.com and follow us at our vote yes eps facebook page you're also welcome to contact any of us with questions we are a community that values our youth and realizes the power of a quality education we look forward to the opportunity to reinvest in edina public schools the gift of a quality education is something that will serve our children well today and for the rest of their lives we know that when a school district is strong it can be a great indicator of a strong community we trust that the people of edina will stand with vote yes eps and get out and vote yes for renewing the technology levy and approving the bond issue early voting is open now and you can cast your vote anytime on or before may 11th

036let's come together to show our support for edina public schools and our students thank you karen gabler twee eying fox eleni glarum sherry rosen and nikki williams thank you very much um john and i just wanted to remind um the public that um hopefully we'll be back um in person next month um just a reminder that our room capacity is limited to around 15 people but you are if you would like to address us publicly you can come and address us publicly we will continue to read all emails sent to the board and you can also email us and we will read your email um if it's sent to us by noon the day of the board meeting and if you have any questions please call the superintendent's office we're going to move on to

037our consent agenda um is there anything anyone would like removed from the consent agenda um do i have a motion to approve the consent agenda it's removed to approve the consent agenda ellenberg hi fox hi green hi jones hi michelson hi shawla hi roland friedman hi the consent agenda is approved uh we now have a presentation on the may referendum i'm superintendent schultz and director of district media and technology services steve buettner are going to present some information on the may referendum yes we thought we'd take the opportunity to share our webcast that we put together to provide the information about the may 11th referendum which has two two parts to it one is the uh renewal of the technology um levy and the second one is asking for uh a bond uh to accelerate

038some of the construction work at uh at uh actually three schools which will all be in the webcast to describe what those projects are we had a successful presentation at the league of women voters last week um lots of great questions and that was a successful presentation we have about 50 groups that we've identified some of those groups were invited to the league and women voters being that we are in covid we weren't able to go to many of the senior communities to do the presentation so we combined those groups and invited them to that league and women voters and that is a ligament voters will post that uh webcast uh as well as we will too as information so steve i know if you want to add anything more as far as background and

039maybe uh launch the webcast no just uh again thank you for giving us the opportunity to present the information about the technology levy and the bond i'll start the video hello this is superintendent john schultz i'm here with steve buettner director of media and technology services we want to welcome you to the informational screencast about the 2021 edina public schools technology levy and bond issue from time to time the school district appeals to residents for funding in support of continued academic excellence for edina students taxpayers living within school district boundaries have a long history of supporting the schools which means they have invested in facilities infrastructure and most importantly our learners we take seriously our stewardship of the community's investment in dyna public schools and in sustaining all that we have built together this spring

040will be we will bring two funding questions to the community for a vote on tuesday may 11 2021 we will be asking for a 7 million 10-year technology levy and a 7 million dollar 20-year bond issue both will support edina students directly and also in indirect ways by supporting the overall school system and both will maintain stewardship of the community's investment in edina public schools today we want to provide you with more information about each of these funding requests i'm going to turn it over to steve buettner to talk about the technology levy thanks john again my name is steve buettner and i'm the director of media and technology for indiana public schools we are fortunate to have an exceptional foundation of technology tools and know-how in our district this foundation has been built and

041sustained over many years through a technology levy the current technology levy generates 6.5 million dollars each year it is a 10-year levy that will expire at the end of the next school year in june 2022 this spring we will ask to renew the expiring levy and increase the amount by 500 000 annually this new 7 million tech levy is also a 10-year levy and would be in place through june of 2032. technology provides an important classroom tools that enhance learning and offers engaging ways for students to interact with learning technology also gives students platforms where they can authentically and creatively express themselves the district is committed to the use of technological tools in the classroom when they are the right tools to use the technology levy also supports key staff positions including media specialists dinah

042public schools is one of the few districts that has a media specialist in each and every school technology is also crucial in the operation of all district systems and facilities the tech levy funds the phone system information systems for students and employees an important safety and security systems for physical facilities and for cyber security the levy also funds learning platforms including schoology and seesaw that our students families and teachers use every day tech levy also supports systems operations that you probably don't realize for instance over the past several seven years improvements have been made to the air handling systems at every school site these now operate via digital technology and make it easier to fine-tune airflow in buildings which has been an important mitigation strategy during the pandemic and recently all buildings receive new automated

043external defibrillators known as aeds that connect with the building's wi-fi to monitor the battery life and functionality of these emergency devices district technology provides the foundation all of these operational systems rely on over the past year our district's strong foundation of technology has played a critical role in our response to the covid pandemic technology provides an important conduit for learning it enabled us to maintain continuity of education for edina students when we were in crisis mode last spring it continues to support flexibility as we work to meet the learning needs of all students it is an important tool in connecting students with teachers and one another technology is not just about hardware our district's amazing technology staff have literally supported thousands of people including students teachers and parents as everyone adjusted to learning models that

044relied on having dependable technology resources as we look to the future we want to ensure that adidas students have the technology they need to learn and that our teachers have the technology they need to teach if you own a laptop or a cell phone or any other type of technology you know that it needs to be replaced and upgraded from time to time likewise we want our students and staff equipped with the best technology to use when it is the best tool for learning there is also an increasing need for assistive technology which is key to educational access for special education students and technology also provides the curricular resources needed for most subjects more and more curricular companies provide digital textbooks in addition to their paper versions again we won't be getting rid of our

045paper versions but as digital textbooks become more common there is an added cost for software and licensing let's talk about the funding for the technology levy and how it is spent you can see that more than half is spent on staffing and professional development again many districts have to share media specialists between schools but in edina we have nine media specialists in the district one assigned to each school media specialists are an important part of the student's experience in our schools and we are pleased that the tech levy is able to partially fund this position in every school professional development in the area of technology is also important for our teachers to be sure they know how and when to leverage the technology tools that they have to enrich the learning experience additionally all of

046our media specialists and our schools are certified by common sense education the nation's leading non-profit organization dedicated to helping schools and families make smart and responsible choices in their use of technology the next highest expenditures are hardware and software both areas are related to making sure students and teachers have the devices they need to maximize the learning experience when compared to neighboring districts technology investment adina's current levy is in the mid-range even with the proposed renewal and increase we are asked seeking edit public schools remain in the mid-level of this comparison the tax impact of a tech levy is based on property value this graph shows the additional 10 tax impact in purple if the proposed renewal of the tech levy with an additional 500 thousand dollars is passed by voters for example the estimated

047annual tax impact of a four hundred thousand dollar home would be fifteen dollars in addition to the two hundred twenty three dollars which is the amount of the renewal of the current levy now we'll hand it back to john who will share information about the bond issue thanks steve the district's appeal for seven million dollar bond issues to fund specific facilities improvement these improvements will enable us to better serve families and enhance safety at three schools about 200 edina students qualify for special education transportation services special education buses have seat belts some have car seats and all have wheelchair lifts these buses need to be stored in climate-controlled spaces to ensure lift equipment works properly of the 26 special education routes we currently have 14 routes are served through contracts the district has with outside

048transportation providers these contracted routes are more expensive than if the district serviced the routes ourselves over time we plan to purchase or lease additional buses so that the district will be able to provide all special education transportation this would represent a savings of the district of 140 to 280 000 per year when fully implemented and most importantly would allow us to provide better service to students with special needs as the bus fleet grows we will need additional bays in the garage for new vehicles and additional heated areas within the current garage the bond would also fund needed improvements to the bus loop and parking areas at creek valley and countryside elementary schools currently those areas are shared by a mix of traffic including buses parent drivers staff parking as well as bike riders and pedestrians

049the goal is to create dedicated zones for each that will alleviate congestion and improve safety for all the bond will also fund traffic flow improvements at valley view middle school where the parking lot entry will be realigned and physical deterioration of the lot will be addressed the tax impact of the bond issue is like the levy based on property value unlike the levy it is a one-time bond issue and cannot be renewed with an annual tax impact for the life of the 20-year bond for example the estimated tax impact on a four hundred thousand dollar home would be six dollars annually on the six hundred thousand dollar home the estimated tax impact would be ten dollars annually so thank you for taking the time to learn more about the 2021 technology levy and bond issue

050early voting is now available you will find information about early voting and election day polling locations as well as well as more information about the levy and bond issue on the district web page on your screen as always we are grateful for your ongoing support of the students families and employees of edina public schools thank you [Music] so uh like any referendum any diner there are a lot of people to thank um and uh i want to thank steve and john tope and randy and the whole lead team and mary whitey especially for bringing us all together to uh put the facts out there for for the referendum and of course uh the citizens who continue to ask us questions to um uh refine our information so with that chair allenberg is the presentation great

051thank you um we're going to move on to our three discussion items the first is the 2021 positive barn review and comments um director tope i believe you're up on this one yes uh good evening sir ellenberg again and members of the board superintendent schultz uh one statute 123 b 71 requires a district upon uh reviewing comments submission letter from mde to at least discuss the letter in a regular board meeting so this is that board meeting i've provided the md positive review and comment letter it's a three page letter we will be publishing in the district legal newspaper just the first page of that three-page letter that's also a requirement and i did supply the uh the board with the actual review and comment that was submitted i know that board members have all

052already seen that before so at that point i'll stop and see if there's any questions and any discussion the board wants to have on that yeah do any board members have questions or comments about the bond review this is matt real quick with a quick comment thanks john wanted to get this back in front of the board so there's no questions about full disclosure and discussion this was approved last year by the full board so we're just bringing this back because now we're getting to the action phase of going out to bid for this director fox i think you're talking about maybe the next item on the ltf m bonds though this is the the the bond that we're voting on yep i thought you jumped to the next agenda i am wrong sorry anything

053on this this one no okay um we'll move move to the l um the lt fm bond now remember what i just said john tope do you have anything to say before matt jumps in yes just a few uh framing remarks around this the board did approve uh an intent resolution on august 10th this is part of our 10-year facilities plan so this is the next phase of bonds issued for our long-term facilities maintenance program that we have in the district that will run for the summers of 22 and 23 these bonds they are also backstopped by local pay as you go taxpayer levy dollars for long-term facility maintenance projects as well so i'll leave that to mr fox for any other remarks and then uh turn it over to jody zesva from ellers and

054associates to just go over briefly the bond issuance hi jody please go ahead good to see you good evening good to see all of you um the district has a 10-year plan for your facilities maintenance projects and that is required to be approved on an annual basis each summer by the board and then by the minnesota department of education the projects in the facilities maintenance plan are financed with a combination of annual pay-as-you-go levies and then on a bi-annual basis from bond proceeds and we determined that mix of financing for the annual levies and bonds based to try to maintain a nice level tax rate for both your capital and debt service levies last summer when you approved the 10-year plan you also approved that resolution of a tent that was referred to to issue

055bonds at amount not to exceed 13 million 755 000 was actually the amount included in the resolution last summer now that we're closer to the bond sale date just like we did your 2019 facilities maintenance bond issue which was the most recent one we're updating our assumptions and our financial schedules and those are included in the pre-sale report that you have for before you tonight and we're now estimating a bond amount of 10 million and seventy thousand dollars with a nice low true interest cost rate of one point four five percent so at this point in time we also have a resolution before you now that we're closer to the date that sets the parameters for awarding sale and we're recommending that you leave that bond amount at the amount that you approved last summer

056just to give yourselves maximum flexibility and we're including a true interest cost rate not to exceed 2.5 percent just in case market conditions change between now and the sale date so um the facilities maintenance bonds of course were taken into consideration when the board was moving forward with its plans for the school building bond referendum this uh this winter and then we also as you'll see on our pre-sale schedules have included the possibility of the school building bonds as part of your long-term financing plan too so we are working in coordination on both of those bond issues as we move forward the next steps in the process then after the board considers the res the parameters resolution tonight is that we will move forward with preparing the official statement we'll have our conference call with

057the rating agency again and then we plan to receive the proposals and have the designated officials award the sale of bonds on may 5th the board would then ratify the award of the sale at your meeting on may 10th and we plan to close on may 27th so that you have the financing for your fiscal year 22 and fiscal year 23 projects as john mentioned so those are the comments that i have and i don't know if you are interested in taking questions now or if you want to wait till you get to the action part of the agenda i think either one is fine a matt did you have a comment that you wanted to make no i think i made it prematurely i think we're good well you're welcome to reiterate it do

058board members have questions they wanted to ask no i think we're okay jody so great thank you thank you very much thanks jody um we're going to move on to our physical earth science course designing curriculum and we have um gavin mclean who is a sec our secondary science lead excuse me katrina stern secondary science professional development and course design support and um director d st who is the director of teaching and learning here to review on the recommendation for the course design and curriculum for physical earth science so welcome thank you chair ellenberg superintendent schultz school board members uh colleagues and community members um thank you chair ellenberg for introducing gavin mclean and katrina stern i'd also like to welcome and introduce deb richards um all three have been a team and working with

059this uh science design team and leading the work that has been going on for science in the past recently and will be into the future so the discussion tonight is about the 9th grade physical earth science the report shared with you highlights the process that was used for evaluating curriculum resources using the minnesota standards the materials that we are recommending to purchase for our 9th grade physical earth science and the course design that we are proposing to move forward with this is a although this is a ninth grade course there are eighth graders that will be accessing the course next year who are in the compacted science pathway right now we will have mrs stern highlight what the students experience will be with the proposed resource materials and then mr mclean will then briefly speak

060to the course opportunities that will occur for students specifically taking this class as eighth graders when they enter into ninth grade into the high school and when he is done the team will listen to feedback and do our best to answer questions so i'll turn it over to miss stern at this point for the presentation point and the highlights about what the the materials will look like directly for students thank you jody and good evening members of the board um so i have um just a brief presentation that i'll present to you on my screen here um because i the as jody said the um the um information in the report that we shared with you kind of highlights the curriculu the process that we use to analyze materials and arrive at this conclusion that

061we would like to use these materials um for the course this edc earth science materials but you know just reading about it on paper is um you know not inclusive of being able to understand what the experience will be for for our students and so um i'm going to talk a little bit about the water unit which is one of the units that encompasses many of our standards in earth science and the purpose of my presentation is to preview for you activities and kind of show you the kinds of things that students will do in a typical unit in this course um and demonstrate some of the ways that the learning experience is in the course and the concrete parts of this curriculum align with our edina science guiding principles which have been kind of

062adapted from the ngss and and um this guiding principles document that was linked in the report um sort of highlights the the big picture of what we would like to provide for our students as we're aligning our curriculum to these new standards so at the beginning of this unit and at the beginning of really every unit the students engage in some kind of brainstorm where their the teacher would ask them to discuss some questions with with a partner be prepared to share um this you know it explicitly says don't worry if you don't know all the answers and this is really important in trying to align curriculum to these new standards because we're accessing students prior knowledge and engaging them in in some critical thinking before they're you know ever introduced to vocabulary or or

063any concept so some of the examples in the water unit of the brainstorm questions that are in this curriculum um it asks them how do you think it's possible that water could become scarce for communities list all the ways that you use water in a typical day week or year save this you'll use it later and based on your current knowledge where do you think your water comes from and students would be asked to draw and label a diagram starting with their sink and tracing the water as far back as they go it explicitly says don't worry if you're wrong so in in all of these kinds of activities students are engaging in what we call the science practices you know they're they're trying to construct explanations about how do we think water could become

064scarce they're creating a model of you know a diagram of um the water system in their you know in their community and their world and kind of thinking about how their local context of their house and their life fits into the global system at the beginning of the unit students would also be asked to generate some driving questions around an essential question like this you know a really thought-provoking question that'll engage them in big ideas and they're engaged in asking questions and thinking about what kinds of things we need to figure out in order to understand this big question so as students then learn move through the unit i'd like to illustrate for you the kinds of of ways that students would get engaged in learning about concepts in with these curricular materials um so

065in this particular unit around water the very first uh activity in the unit is about students calculating their personal water use using some data that's provided to them you know they're connecting that with that brainstorming question that they were originally asked right out the gate they're thinking about data they're using mathematics to analyze that data and but thinking about it in a way that's connected to their lives this is one of the one of the highlights that really sets this curriculum apart from other curricula that we reviewed is that it is filled with data um and it's explicit in the introduction to the the textbook that this was part of the author's goal was to build a curriculum around real earth science data that um you know from real sources like nasa and um you

066know other sources like that that students can access so after students do this activity you know thinking about their personal water use comparing that with other regions of the world so they're also kind of you know thinking of there's sort of an interdisciplinary aspect to it there they also analyze data to think about the parts of their water use that they might not normally think of you know industrial water use and agricultural water use you can see again here in in these pictures taken from the from the curriculum that there's maps more data different kinds of graphs so students are going to be engaged in using those data analysis skills graph analysis skills um they're going to be asked you know find where you live on this map compare where you live with somewhere else

067so it's again connecting it with their lives and getting them to think about um think about important ideas um and using science skills and developing science skills along the way um in some activities where you know they're as they start to kind of develop their ideas of concepts so you know in a unit about water students are going to learn about the water cycle but the activity that's in here is students kind of actively engage in learning about the water cycle by using these reservoir cards and travel cards to to learn about some of the ways that water moves around in the earth system and then they apply that to a scenario you can see the scenarios here so like for example um scenario seven says how could a water molecule get from a finch

068in the galapagos to a wolf in siberia so we're seeing application and higher level thinking skills we're seeing collaborative learning that we know is really good for learning to stick with students um and and good for right you know diverse learners um and so you know in a typical rather than having a typical experience where the teacher might just tell the students about the water cycle and they would just memorize the vocabulary we're kind of seeing a more integrated um experience for them of learning and talk you know critically thinking talking with their peers about these ideas applying them engaging in higher level thinking this unit also in has some hands-on lab activities which we know is really important for students to learn how to design investigations and engage in inquiry so for example they

069investigate surface water processes by using this plastic watershed table but the activity really tells them you know build build a watershed and then test it out drip water down different sides of it using a pipette collect your data what do you notice you know so there's there's kind of an open-endedness to the investigations in this curriculum um where there's there's guidance and and students know why they're engaging in that investigation but they're not just going through a list of steps they're they are making some decisions for themselves which is what we want as in our as in the implementation of our new standards another example is that students design an experiment to learn how groundwater filtrates through different kinds of earth materials different kinds of rocks and soil and they're given the opportunity to sort

070of design a microcosm using different kinds of earth materials and they're allowed to design it the way they want to and test it the way they want to so again we have that open-endedness that is really giving students the opportunity to act and behave like scientists which is really important um in our new standards and was a really important part of our selection criteria in the summative assessment for this unit students are asked to learn a little bit more about their local water supply so now they're bringing all of this back to their local context and understanding it in a way that's relevant to them they're asked to create a flowchart representing where local water comes from and how it's distributed so you might remember they thought they were asked to think about that at

071the beginning of the unit and then in the summative assessment it comes full circle and they're asked to apply what they've learned in order to show how their their understanding of that has deepened which is really important was a really important part of our selection criteria and is really important um in the vision of what we want to provide to our students they're asked to analyze past and future threats kind of construct an argument around what kinds of things could threaten the water supply how is your local community um dealing with those things um you know what kind of they are asked to do a little research about the kinds of ways that they've protected their water supply and so this kind of arc of learning is really um that's not unique to this unit

072this is sort of the the general experience in all the units um having students you know accessing prior knowledge thinking about something that's important an important phenomenon that's relevant and interesting to them and then engaging in all different kinds of activities along the way to deepen their understanding of those core ideas um in the report that we um that we put forth um the we had kind of narrowed it down to this curriculum edc earth science and uh another curriculum is an open source curriculum um called the new visions curriculum and so just to summarize kind of why um this is the curriculum that we're recommending um the unique strengths that were not shared by the new visions because they did have a lot in common in terms of the um you know the structure

073of uh activities and units being involving students and sense making being centered around phenomena um the edc earth science curriculum connects concepts to students local context and their personal interests much more strongly than the new visions curriculum does and that was a criteria in the equip rubric that nuvision scored quite low on um and the easier earth signs scored very high the other piece is that students in edc earth science are analyzing those robust rich sources of real world data that come from real scientific sources like nasa and noaa um that are just there in the curriculum things that would be very difficult i think for um for teachers to to create themselves or find themselves those are all all these sources of data are in this curriculum and all of the activities are really

074aligned with our 912 earth and space science benchmarks in minnesota whereas the new visions curriculum um touched on some high school level concepts but also some middle school science concepts and we felt that it would require more from the more work from the teachers to really create units from scratch whereas in this curriculum it's more just going to be kind of modifying and adapting in the way that is best needed to suit the minnesota benchmarks so thank you very much i'll turn it over to gavin um we'll talk about the um the kind of course sequencing and um scheduling things that jody mentioned thank you yeah good evening uh members of the board uh thank you for giving us some of your time as we try and update you where we're at uh i did

075sign in a little later so i apologize for that but i did remember here a member of the community raise a question about what is next in the sequence so hopefully i can try and address some of those questions as we kind of go here so do be aware that what i'm sharing right now is kind of uh our proposal at sequence and we're trying to and build and and it's still a work in progress so we're still building this so uh kudos and thanks to the community members that are raising these questions uh do know we are working on it and do know that these are awesome questions so please keep them coming um the question is well what happens afterwards or what is the sequence well just to refresh your memory uh we

076have some students choosing the seventh grade science uh going into eighth grade science uh they would then come into the high school uh taking this physical earth course as a ninth grader we also have some students that are on that compacted or accelerated program so they're condensing those three years down to two years so we call in that pathway two so we have some students that are currently in sixth grade that are on that pathway too we currently have some students in seventh grade that are on this pathway too what are they going to do in the fall of 21 so what are they going to do this fall they're going to access this physical science that you saw katrina sharing some of the kind of student work that they're doing so what would they

077do when they get to the high school well obviously they've done their requirement they've done their earth science requirements so they kind of done their graduation requirements for ensuring that they've met those standards so they don't need to do that course at the high school they've kind of accessed it a year early so what would they be doing i'll wait would be going in the fall of 22 uh so that's a year away they would actually go into chemistry um traditionally that's currently our 10th grade cannas course sequence that's usually a 10th grade course uh they're just going to be accessing chemistry a year early if you like from there from there it's the building blocks for many things it's the building blocks or the premise or the basics for going into biology so they

078might be accessing biology uh as then into 10th grade uh it's also the building blocks for ap chemistry ap biology so if we've got students that wanting to access ap chemistry they may have done chemistry as a ninth grader they may then be choosing to do ap chemistry as a 10th grader uh by that point they should have a year of chemistry and they should have the foundations to be successful or they might choose to do ap biology and choosing that early so we're kind of seeing the two kind of pathways can emerge uh they're all going to go through this physical earth course it's just a matter of when they're going to be doing it are they going to do it at eighth grade uh and accessing at the middle school which is going

079to be some students in the fall of this year or whether it's going to be the the rest of the that particular grade level they're going to be accessing as a ninth grader so hopefully that addresses maybe one of the questions and concerns by a member of the community what course would they do next it would actually be chemistry and from there they should be able to kind of build that so we are actually building some of this we're building the sequence we're trying to ensure that all students have the capacity and opportunity of getting to all the courses within their kind of four years of the high school we're also aligning those with the math uh because i think that was a question that come up before how does the math sequence play into

080this and so we're kind of working with kudos to mark carlson for working with us to ensure that whatever class that we put students in uh they're not compounded by a skill set that they don't have at that point but they also have the foundation knowledge to kind of build on um and then we're also trying to tie that with some of our stem electives our other electives our current offerings in science in the electives as well as the the project lead the ways at what point would they do that and what point would they kind of build that so we're hoping that this would then kind of look like a mosaic at some point and students would follow that sequence now do know that this is a recommended sequence for the majority of students

081but where but we fully understand that this would not be a one-size-fits-all right uh there isn't one pathway it's going to solve it for 650 students so what are we going to have to do we're going to provide flexibility so this is our recommended pathway but we will not have those prerequisites there which does mean that a student that wants to kind of access this course maybe not in a non-traditional uh sequence then absolutely they can totally do that that also does mean that some of our courses would be not necessarily specific so take this physical earth we're going to have some students have completed that in eighth grade we're going to have some students complete that in eighth grade and the same is going to be true for chemistry we're going to have a

082large number of sophomores in there 10th grade but we are going to have some students in there that have already done physical earth that are now doing it kind of a year earlier and they're going to be accessing chemistry kind of a year early so they so chemistry blend or a mix of 9th and 10th grade accessing that course so hopefully that might have addressed some of the questions i'll uh turn it over to members of the board because i'm sure between katrina's presentation and myself you may have some questions so if there's a is any members of the board that have any questions please let us know uh what questions do we have from board members randy you're not a board member but i'll let you go ahead okay thank you i think the

083question that was proposed by the um one of the community members was around physics and particularly like enrich physics kind of that physics pathway gavin can you speak to how physics fits in with this pathway you mentioned chemistry you mentioned biology can you speak to physics a little bit yeah absolutely so traditionally we've always had physics as a ninth grade course uh and we've kind of framed it that that's where a lot of students are going to get those uh laws that govern science it's also a building block or give some context for ap physics that might come later uh we currently uh are talking about making that we're still going to be offering physics we're still going to be doing physics but it's not going to be the same kind of current 9th grade

084course of what we're doing uh and so what we're doing is looking for what type of courses are we going to need and we've already established that we're still going to need the ap physics that kind of does ap physics c and we're kind of looking at like what things we're going to offer but we're also looking at other things too uh we're looking at physics one this would be kind of a rigorous course an opportunity for students to kind of build or to take that course maybe as they go into ap physics or it might be a case that many students just want physics on their transcript uh because they wanted to cut four-year college bound and they want that physics on there to kind of recognize a a kind of broad spectrum of

085science so therefore we're going to do it so what we are currently doing is looking at what type of physics offerings that we're going to do um would they be grade specific like would they have to do it in 12th grade no it'd be probably more based on your math level and and you know kind of more based on uh what's appropriate timing for you to access that course but traditionally we're we're still defaulting to that course maybe a senior course for some students just because they either want it on a transcript uh they want those building blocks uh to ever cause science across the board so we we have not made a final recommendation for the board at this time of what we're going to do for physics what we're hopeful to do is

086we're hopeful to do that in the fall uh and propose kind of what this sequence kind of looks like so after chemistry's biology and what those offerings are we're hoping to do that in the fall have a lot of those discussions which they call the groups and then make board uh recommendations uh then by december to what course offerings that we're actually going to do so we're still in discussions at this point uh we we recognize that there is still need there is a need for physics and we will be offering that uh we also recognize that there's a need to build onto ap physics and we need to ensure that students can access that uh i think the community member also raised the concern about trying to ensure that you can do that in

087a schedule right so we we are very cognizant to the fact that students need to pack this into their schedule you know they need to be able to do it in such a way that they can actually pack this in with all the other things that students are trying to access so we are still in the design phase uh we will be offering those we're hoping to have a kind of a fall come back to stakeholder groups of the course offerings and from that then we're hoping by december we'll be making recommendations of what courses we would be offering so um correct me if i'm wrong the this class is going to be launched for eighth grade next year but ninth grade for the following year is that right yes jeremy yep so this would

088maybe this is approximately 125 i think it's actually 127 but approximately 125 students that have accessed the pathway to um the are going to be taking this course a year early the remaining students which is about will be accessing this as a ninth grader and okay so that i guess that's where my question is and maybe you guys have not made any decisions on that but i was wondering um from an acceleration perspective for for the students that are accessing physical earth in eighth grade their families made a decision to accelerate them in science in sixth grade correct so they correct compact science um which um impacted their decision to get them to have earth science in eighth grade which then is getting them domino effective uh where it is yeah so the same concern

089has been raised and so and we have to be cognizant of uh we're gonna have new students at the high school so if we were to ever get new students at ninth grade did they somehow uh miss the vote right did they somehow miss the opportunity um and so that's a very that's the very topic that we're discussing right now um the science design team we're discussing the just because a family or a student may have made their decision at the end of fifth grade going into sixth grade does that mean that they're eliminated or narrowed their options by you know by junior year uh we didn't like that as a system so we are currently looking at ways that there's off ramps and on ramps that students can still get back on kind of

090kind of get on this track or still be able to pack it in and i fully empathize and and i think that the community members raised an awesome point uh that you can't actually physically fit it right so if you are if you're wanting to do ap physics you want to do how how do you package that in such a way that it's accessible to all so we are trying we are currently discussing as a science design team the possible on-ramps as a ninth grader or as a tenth grader uh that you can still do these classes still get the graduation requirements and still have access to those upper-level sciences so a family has not kind of missed an opportunity just because they didn't decide to take that that was appropriate for them as a

091sick okay that was my basic question which is no we decided yep no we haven't been recognized the concern yep okay all right and when will the board or when will that discussion be um um available for the board to see what if any like designs or decisions are made from that i would have loved to tell you cherylenberg that we were going to be doing this last year uh that would be what i'd love to tell you the reality is though unfortunately we did take a hiatus there for kind of almost a year and so the science design team uh pretty much the last meeting they had was january 20 they didn't get going until january 21 it's almost been literally a year before we've kind of got that going so unfortunately we are

092a little bit uh behind where we would have been discussing some of these things so uh please be patient with us but we fully understand that there's a timeline that's why i'm saying i would love to do this as a fall um as a as kind of a concept idea uh to flush out some of those problems look at those pros and cons minimize those cons or find solutions to those cons to be to be able to be in a position that we're making a bullet presentation by december that we've already flushed out we've already kind of minimized those issues those concerns and we kind of feel comfortable with it uh as of right now the science design team is a bunch of teachers that range from middle school to high school they're all voluntary

093giving up their own time uh giving up their afternoons their mornings and making asynchronous lessons at home to kind of compensate so kudos to them for giving up their time to do so and we're trying to find those three hours you know uh to try and do this so that's why i'm unfortunately i would love to say that we could go a little quicker the reality is that maybe four before we're kind of coming back saying hey uh these are the types of uh on-ramps off-ramps these are the types of physics courses that we we were hoping to that would solve a lot of these uh kind of problems that many students are going to be identified with and then we can kind of also embed a lot of those math cross-curricular and as well

094as this engineering so i'm hopeful for fall we can start those initial conversations and i fully appreciate the the workload that our teachers have been under and i just appreciate you setting an expectation because i think now that we have an expectation when we can see things i think that's all that i'm looking for and board members can look for but i i absolutely appreciate all the work that you guys have been doing so i don't want you to think i was asking to no not at all not at all we get it uh we fully understand it was just my way of appreciating the science design team that's given up a lot there on time so uh it was my way of recognizing them as much as anything else nope okay um i uh

095ellen and i ellen and then had some questions and i think owen did so ellen so ellen you're muted i know you're worried again i can't see her so i don't know i wasn't sure thank you did it again sorry i wanted i just wanted to mention thank you for all the work you're doing on this it's i know it's a lot and um so i wanted to just uh mention that i totally agree that there should be on and off ramps for getting kids into physical earth in eighth grade and just because someone made a decision in fifth grade to do a compacted course doesn't mean or not take one doesn't mean that they should be not have that opportunity to take this course in eighth grade so i i would like to see

096on-ramps to this um course um and the other thing is that i just want to mention um that this is going to be on the on the trans on 8th grade science is going to be on the high school transcript right normally that has happened in the past with courses like this is that true uh yeah yes to answer your question yes now that how that's actually done it may be a manual entering to ensure that that on their thing but to answer your question yes yeah and um i know that in the past we've always offered a regular science class an enriched science class and an ap science class in all of our core required sciences and it does not appear that we are offering an enriched physical earth science course is that true

097uh that is true for eighth grade only we're not actually making any recommendations or any proposals at all for the ninth grade course at this point um so if you're asking me are we having an enriched or regular eighth grade physical earth no we're not oh we're not recommending that but we have not actually got to the point of making the recommendation for ninth grade yet right um and i i would just urge you to reconsider that thought that i believe that these are kids that are are they're the high flyers they're the ones that are able to handle a year and a half of science in a year and um and from what i'm i'm hearing it would this is this is taught at a regular science pace which is quite a bit different

098than what they have had um and what perhaps their capabilities are so i would encourage you to design that enriched course so then it's done you can offer it um in the next year so maybe that we come back with some of those discussions and it may be that we come back with levels um about that would be a fall conversation uh not a now conversation the now conversation is just about the eighth grade science ellen i'm confused are you saying that for eighth graders we should offer an honors earth science because have they're being accelerated an entire year so them being in ninth grade science is the acceleration so that would be it would be a double acceleration double acceleration so you're saying so you're saying we should have four different levels of science

099for our eighth graders i'm saying that that we would just offer you would offer an enriched science for the eighth graders we do offer enriched science we offer regular science for eighth graders we offer enriched science for eighth graders and then we're offering ninth grade science or as creators for those that are are basically double accelerated so then you're saying so erica you should also note that that that the curriculum that's being recommended is and one of the things we talked about in teaching and learning is that that curriculum is act technically written at a 10th grade level so 8th graders by default are kind of already getting an additional step up and one of the other reasons that it was being recommended is because it offered kind of those you know i'll use a

100middle school term the depths of knowledge opportunities that deb has talked about before that kind of can differentiate individual students pathways and how broad or how deep that they go and uh you know i just wanted to make sure i understood that ellen that you are asking for an accelerated of the acceleration no i'm just i'm i'm going to be um it's it's and already it it will be the next grade level up but what i'm talking about is the class itself physical earth science when when normally when an enriched class is offered it it offers different content at different at a higher level than the regular course and so what i'm just saying is for those students who are ready for the physical earth science and that are are going to be signing up

101if if they were in the regular progression they would have the option of a regular class or an enriched class these students would have been the students that would have taken the enriched class and i'm only suggesting that we offer one physical science physical earth science course in eighth grade and that be the enriched one good question thanks for remember jones we'll we'll certainly uh we're fully aware of that and that might be part of the on-ramp and off-ramp conversation for ninth grade um and so that that is something we haven't actually finalized yet that's something we're still discussing at this point um and so for tonight's purposes though we were just talking about the eighth grade rather than ninth grade um but surely i'm hopeful that we have those answers for you in the

102fall uh when you're pretending about the students on the on the traditional pathway lenny right and and that's why i'm bringing it up now because this is going to impact those students and as we're doing as we're talking about how that it's impacting of course we'll be surveying them early i hope in the year to make sure that this class is taught at the appropriate challenge level for them yeah yeah and i can ask you no we do know we're fully aware of that and that's something at least we've started so i can ask deb richards step in a second if you don't mind but this is something we've been talking about with the talent framework so for the last couple of months uh dev's been facilitating some of those conversations about extended learning about

103enrichment classes uh and what those could look like um we're still not at a point where we're proposing any ideas though we're literally just going through and evaluating them and trying to figure out what what some of the the pros are what some of the cons are with some of these models um but yeah we recognize your conversation we recognize your comments and yes it will be something as part of the ninth grade of science but there is going to add please and and i want to say the science department has done a great job with and with handling these three levels at um at the high school level um the other thing that i'm going to mention lenny wants to talk about so i just want to make clear your question ellen for tonight

104only pertains to having an enriched earth science in eighth grade for those who accelerated correct right okay that's what i thought we are discussing ninth grade earth science and so as we are on the on the agenda is ninth grade earth science and so i don't see a an enriched option in that proposal i'm just mentioning that i was asking questions about it and you're talking about for the people who will be in eighth grade next year correct right right right and we have talked about this before and my recollection was that there are less minutes of instruction at the middle school level for science then there are minutes of instruction at the high school level so by definition it is an accelerated class because they will have less class time than the high school

105and we have talked about this at prior work session and prior board meetings right thank you for bringing that up i did look into it and um it looks as though from the the materials from lab aids that there are plenty of hours that we're being that we're we're using um that we currently teach in our middle school to handle this curriculum yes so i think everyone supports having earth science for our eighth graders i don't think anyone's disputing that right so the last so the last the last thing that i was going to i don't think ellen deb wanted to comment on this as well so if you can just hold on so i think ellen what if i hear what you're saying you're really saying we've got kids that are used to going

106at a much faster pace and so they're now going to come to 8th grade earth science and your concern is if they're just doing a regular 8th grade or science is that going to be rigorous enough and i think we're gonna have to let our teachers get through this curriculum with these students and kind of make a determination if in future years they'll they they'll have the time to do compacting or if they need to do some more extended learning but i think next year in eighth grade the teachers will just need to get through that curriculum and maybe they'll get through it a lot quicker um so i think what you're driving is we need to pay attention to that student engagement and the pacing yeah thank you yeah that's uh that's my major

107concern and um and it's not just for them because we know that currently there's a whole lot of students that are wanting to challenge themselves in science which is which is fabulous and so i just wanted to make sure that we had those opportunities for giving the enriched courses to the students that are interested in them my last my well one of my last comments is with respect to our board graduation requirements and the state graduation requirements and how this uh when we talk about the sequencing and we talk about adding another course to our program currently edina requires three years of science one year of biology and one year of either chemistry or physics and one year of optional when we add earth science into the very beginning of the of our sequence at

108edina high that then kind of creates a no flexibility for those students this is this is the the concern that the people that are not as interested in life sciences and are more interested in engineering that's their concern and i would reiterate that concern and suggest that you flip bio with chemistry so that you can give students the ability to go on their career ready path after handling all of the core curriculum in the first two years of their high school career i would i would suggest that you consider that as another option and and i know that this is our our high school requirements mirror what the state's graduation requirements are and it just creates a um you know for those students that want to do engineering careers in and looking at that at

109the second year chemistry requirement they would prefer to take physics maybe you just give them that option um instead of flipping the the two but i'm just mentioning that as it's it is a real concern it's um and as a board we may want to discuss um our our requirements for science since it seems um times have changed we're i we're acknowledging that engineering is a science and that life science isn't the only um thing that we need to take but that does that does deal with the ngss standards that you're i know you're trying to put into um this class um and then can i just ask why why we're not calling it um earth and space or something and recognizing that i i just don't you know you're just saying earth and yeah

110good question um there was actually discussion about whether we could call it environmental science um there was a lot a bit about earth and space or just space there were there was a bit of discussion there and i've had the same conversation with multiple districts um and uh there was kind of a hybrid morph the reason for physical earth is to put some tangibility that earth and space uh doesn't always necessarily align with what people think it is whereas there's some kind of conception in people's head about a physical science and what that actually means and there was some sort of raw understanding that if it's a physical science it's kind of the world around us a little bit um or and as much as it is in spaces but the difference was there was

111a conception about what type of things would make up that course and we're trying to make it so these courses kind of do build on each other we are purposefully trying to say we want all students to kind of do some of these things and we're trying to elicit that these are not separate entities they do build on each other so by kind of phrasing it as a physical earth there's some connection that it builds onto physical sciences such as the chemistry the physics the biology and that we're trying to purposely word it so they they connect to each other as opposed to being completely separate entities which is what some people kind of perceived it as um but the the actual title uh it wasn't a huge it wasn't a huge decision it wasn't

112like this is so heavily weighted it was just trying to honor um a little bit of what we've traditionally done we've been a physics first school it's trying to honor the connections of how people relate to the course when they haven't seen it before and trying to establish that it's one that would actually build and you're going to cycle back to it so when you're doing a unit in chemistry you can go oh oh i i kind of understand the acid rain i see how that connected to that ninth grade course of that eighth grade cost and so we're hoping that those students are going to make those natural connections in time okay thank you erica may i jump in with a question erica lost her uh computer feet so go ahead on with your

113question oh and you're with me and julie oh thanks lenny um i have a couple of questions of fact that my may lead on to a substantive question so what we have right now is 9th grade is physics chemistry is 10th grade biology is 11th and 12th is is at the discretion of the student what we're talking about here is keeping chemistry intent in biology and 11th but adding physical science in ninth grade is is that my understanding well physical earth but yes physical or okay so that's and so this will displace physics and so then we're thinking about putting physics at 12th grade okay um so that means we're requiring one more class is this this is then going to reduce the number of electives available to our students is that correct uh yes

114and no um potentially because some students will take all four sciences but there will be some students that are not going to take physics as a senior so therefore there is going to be some students not doing that there will also be some students that jump to ap biology and don't do regular biology before doing it there'll be some students that do it so will it put pressure though on the you know that a lot of students might feel that they need those four core sciences on their transcript will they put pressure on those electives yes it will and will we see a slight decline maybe in some of those electives because of that possibly so to try and offset that or to try and remedy that or to try and do that i've been

115very cognizant of like how what sort of years are students doing right now we average about 3.8 years so the average student comes in and does 3.8 years of science yet we only require three years so we actually have already pretty close to small students doing four years already we're hoping with those on-ramps and off-ramps that would allow students to still access and still be able to take some of those courses but yes for your concern is there a potential that a student that's accessing multiple courses throughout the entire high school that may not be able to necessarily fit into every single course they would love potentially yes but some of this is puranas by the state and some of this is not a part of something we can control okay so gavin you phrased

116it well that's what i just wanted to confirm that yes it is putting a little pressure on the student's schedule and then the second point i wanted to confirm is that the reason we're adding this class in ninth grade is because of the new state standards absent that we would not be doing this is that correct uh absence of that we wouldn't do it on this time frame absent to that but we potentially would have done because we had probably seen a growth in the ngs standards we have probably seen a growth in more of environmental issues so is it possible that we would have still been you know doing this in the future that's hard to kind of maybe for me to say one way or another but would we have done it with

117this fidelity probably not okay um so our hand is being forced by the state standards but we may have moved into it anyway given what you just yeah yeah and so i feel like if you look at some and the reason why i say that if you look at some of our courses such as ap environmental science you look at courses such as environmental studies uh you are seeing a growth and you've seen a continued need for some of that if you look at some of the student populations of groups and some of the green uh communities that are starting to build within uh within our high school you've seen a you see an uptick of that so i think that's possible we may have ended up there anyway uh but it's difficult to maybe

118answer in a parallel universe if that would have happened exactly the way i think sure i think so this is the the uh the substantive question i have then so we are adding a new class because of the standards um and it is putting a little pressure on the discretion of the student for taking some other classes have we entertained the possibility of answering the state standards by embedding that material in existing classes and so we wouldn't have to add a new class because i know that sometimes we weave state stan we weave in the state standards in other classes and so we don't have to have a standalone class has that idea been entertained yeah we have um and to do an integrated science so could we take the earth science standards uh and

119kind of make it maybe a semester and embed those others or take the whole course and then uh kind of put a little bit in biology where they're going to do it a little bit in chemistry where some students yeah totally uh to kind of help answer that question or frame it i've often shown this um so forgive me if some people have seen it before uh but what this is is the science standards that have been basically cut up and they've been organized into those discipline areas they've been organized into the earth standards and so on um and i show people this raw picture and i said look well this is to answer that question and help frame that a little bit look at these now look at all these standards now obviously not

120every standard is exactly equally weighted so one you might do longer than others so i recognize that but just to help kind of uh build a picture a little bit these columns if i didn't label them and asked you which one is which a lot of people tend to think that the physics or the chemistry is the long list and they think the earth standards is the short list um it's actually the opposite uh there's actually a lot of standards and if you kind of look at the kind of list here and look at them you're talking nearly double the amount now obviously it's not double the amount in time but it helps maybe frame the it's not an easy thing to have in bed so if i kind of say hey why do we

121take all these standards and try and put them into biology try and put them into chemistry uh it was kind of taking a square peg and putting a round hole we couldn't make it fit but it was entertained it was discussed uh we looked at different permutations of could students do it in a cert you know if you do if you do this certain uh combination of electives or do this combination of courses could you still require it uh we found that too difficult to kind of plug and it became pretty apparent pretty quickly um that you can't package this into a semester or embed it elsewhere or ignore it it came pretty quickly that you're gonna have to do this with fidelity and it's a year-long course um and that's pretty much the conclusion

122that pretty much every other school district around us has done which is quite a shift um because traditionally in this state uh we've not had a standards of the high school or those people that are old enough can i say wasn't that 20 30 years ago um but that's kind of where our is so it hopefully illustrates that you can't integrate these as well but to answer your question yes we did look at it and it is a good idea and we we did try and see if we could do it and we we ultimately landed with we can't and that's why we landed with this uh when it was state required to graduate it wasn't something that we can kind of pretend we do or ignore that we do it was something that we

123needed to do and do be aware that it's going to come up in the mca's in the 23 24 maybe down to the 24 25 period so whether whether we pretend to do this or not uh they are going to be probably recognized in the mcas in the future and to add to that as well we've compared the um the standards that we have in minnesota with the benchmarks that are in ngss because minnesota is not an ngss adopting state our standards are adapted from ngss but kind of tweaked and added to in different ways um and minnesota the minnesota standards do have more earth science benchmarks than ngss does um like a good handful of additional earth science benchmarks so it is as gavin pointed out a long list of earth science benchmarks that

124students those standards that you showed gavin are minnesota standards not the ngos okay correct and and that becomes effective for us uh 20 22 23. uh yeah they just pushed that back it was supposed to be gonna be the 23 school year but they're just pushing their back due to covet but ultimately uh after discussing with all the school districts today uh in our neighboring areas um everyone's in the same position and we're we're still going ahead with these changes even though they're pushing it back um so they are saying that some of these questions are going to appear i think it was even last year they were asking for people is anyone interested in writing some of these questions right so uh they're definitely uh building that way so it is a good question

125um we we did look at it we we had exactly the same thoughts as uh many of you comments tonight uh but the more that we we we got into the weeds of it we recognize that that wasn't something we can't ignore it uh we can't just sort of make it disappear um i was also i did talk to the u of m and i said you know what's that going to do because it's a little strange how the state is requiring earth science biology and chem all physics but you as a you as a you know an entity as you as a separate college you're going to be looking for physics as well so you're kind of looking for three the state's looking for three but they're not the same and it's creating a

126situation where we're we're having to ensure that all students do four um or have the capacity to do four um and you know they were they were very clear and their answers are what they'd be looking for but they also said how they would change and so it is likely that about eight years ten years colleges are going to be looking for earth science for students coming from minnesota as much as what they currently are for looking for physics now that's for the non-science students right that may be passing that way but that gives you an indication of where and thinking it's probably going to look in the future even though that seems alien to me right now when i didn't necessarily always think of a science as something i did right that takes a

127little bit of a shift so i totally understand the community that um feel that way because i i've had the same thoughts and concerns myself okay thank you julie thank you um thank you both so much that presentation was really helpful and i just appreciate all the work that's gone into thinking through and bringing this um bringing the science to where it is so i have two questions one is i have are you guys concerned about at all about if we move with physics being moved to potentially 12th grade that there's any um impact on any parallel coursework with other subjects so for example you've got a student who i know a lot of times a double someone who would be double accelerated in math would come in as a ninth grader doing ap statistics

128and it always appeared i as i understand it paired well with physics or ap physics and that kind of supported that class have you are you concerned about that or are you thinking through that or no there was no yes i have been thinking of that and no i'm not concerned just to delineate what those two answers were um yeah no we're totally a cognizant to that we're we're trying to engage in a lot of conversations and katrina's been the fundamental part of that too we're trying to engage in conversations from special ed ml as well as math sequence right so we do talk to uh mark carlson who's our math curriculum coordinator we also talk with math teachers in our building and say what type of curriculum are you doing what what is the

129norms if you like that students have come in with so to give you an idea of like ap stats um no i don't think that you need to do physics think concurrently or before ap stats for ap stats be successful um but the ep teacher might make reference to something he may be kind of like hey there's uh you know you understand vectors we're gonna we're gonna do this calculation with vectors uh but is it is it uh is it important that they actually knew that to be successful in that no no they can still be successful in ap stats that's different though and much more of a serious conversation when it comes to a course like chemistry that's where we we are concerned we've got to make sure that students have the algebra skills

130to be successful in chemistry so we are having those conversations uh we are wanting to ensure that students that enter in a science class are going to be successful and they're not compounded because they're in the wrong class or because there was an assumption made before um and so i feel like it's katrina and i uh jordi's job to ensure that we communicate effectively with multiple departments to ensure that we tell them the change is coming so they make those modifications over the next year so by the time that we actually have implemented those changes it's seamless and the average student would not even know or recognize that something has been different or changed so i'm not concerned and yes we are having those conversations great great thank you um and then my other question

131is is there with the state standards that come out i know it's it's one standard class but is there additional teaching that would go on between like pre-k and seventh eighth grade that support that curriculum changed for when they get to eighth and ninth grade i mean i know we do i'm sure we do i know we do physical earth um you know uh i'm trying to blank on what i'm trying to say topic that's not the right thing um lessons i think i think i can speak to this a little bit at least in terms of the middle school what the middle school standards are and this the just immediate experience students are going to have right before entering this course but um in our new standards there's earth science standards at the earth

132earth and space science standards at the sixth grade level life science at the seventh grade level in physical science at the um eighth grade level and um we are you know working to coordinate with those uh with that sixth grade curriculum to make sure that what um is going into this physical earth science course is not redundant with the sixth grade benchmarks that it's substantively different and really addressing her science at a high school level which is new um but we are making you know working on that as well as um you know students are going to be coming out of the 8th grade curriculum which for these pathway 2 students they've accessed the physical science eighth grade benchmarks in seventh grade then as they come into eighth grade they have a physical science foundation

133with just some foundational ideas of matter and energy which is part of also why we've titled the course physical earth science because there's an undercurrent and kind of a theme of understanding matter and energy and so we would expect them to have some background that's the appropriate background coming out of middle school to access this curriculum and that this curriculum um and this this physical or science course will be building thoughtfully on what they experienced in the sixth through eighth grade standards great great that's great um that's it those are my questions thanks for answering them and again thanks for your work lenny so i just want to follow briefly on the letter from the community member about physics and how it fits in on a four-year track if they are not accelerated so it

134seems to me i mean what that community asked for was a guarantee of a slot but it seems to me that if a student wants to take earth science and physics in ninth grade they should be given the opportunity to sign up and again it depends upon availability but at some point if they sign up in ninth grade and there's not a slot and they sign up in 10th grade there's not a slot then they're guaranteed a spot in the 11th grade so they can take ap physics so i think that we should create some sort of a hierarchy that says that if you want to take ap physics and you want to take physics first because you don't have to then there is going to be an avenue that you can do so and

135i think that's one of the things her letter addresses the other thing is people students can who are accelerated do physics on their own and simply jump into ap physics it's a small group of students and i think that one of the things that we need to get better at is to let students know that you don't have to take chem to take ap camp you don't have to take physics to take ap physics it's a small group of kids but there are kids who consistently do that at our high school we just don't tell people about that pathway so i think that we need to a tell people about the accelerated pathway that people can do independently and b create for those who don't have that an avenue where they can take physics in

136either 9th 10th or 11th so they can get into ap physics and i don't need an answer i just want you to give that some thought no absolutely and thanks for your feedback and yes we uh have had conversations about credit by assessment we've also looked at uh some you know we're currently talking about summer courses either summer courses that can prepare students to go into uh ap cam or summer courses we currently have and thanks to our ap bio teachers that currently have like a a schoology course that students can independently do during the summer that helps them jump into ap biology as their first year kind of course so uh we are we already do some of those things and yes we're looking at some of those things and that might be part

137of that conversation in the fall about the on-ramps and off-ramps and yes if a student was ever signed up for uh physics one and wanted to not wait until their senior year they want to do their junior or sophomore ninth grade yeah absolutely we do it we will always run classes for enrollment um so i think it's highly likely that we would actually deny anyone doing it just because they can 9th grade it's more likely because they just can't fit into their own schedule you know they're trying to add so many classes or they've gone beyond their seven but we will happily take them inside ellen yeah um one last thing i we we're all just trying to figure out a way to um maybe embed some of these science courses into other courses and

138i i was wondering have you looked at the engineering courses so that you could do physics you know a physics class but it be part of a project lead the way or likewise a project lead the way that has a bioengineering kind of tilt as well as uh yes as well as dual credit classes you know so are there going to be ones where you can do a science and get a science as well as an engineering kind of uh toggle uh or is it possibly ones that are not engineering there's ones that are actually science and art right and so therefore for those students too so yes that has been part of the conversation i would say that that's probably later after the core right now we are prioritizing towards students that are currently

139in eighth grade uh but we are having that doesn't mean we're ignoring those conversations about the other things we're we're talking about the core but yes electives um the growth of electives and possibly new electives um as uh one of the board members already pointed out i think it was uh michaelson that pointed out we might put pressure on some of those electives it might be that some of those electives might have to change or modify because we're now doing this new physical earth course we currently have some overlap with some of our electives so it might be that they get retooled a region or in fact is a gaps um and so if you remember that kind of hexagon kind of the hornet nest looking thing a sequence other those gaps are there going

140to be electives that maybe we should be offering in 9th grade or 10th grade that we currently don't right now most of our electives are mostly for juniors and seniors so is it possible that we might need to start adding some of those and some of those would include engineering too so yeah we are congressman and thanks for your comments uh lenny did you have another comment okay no okay i think that's all thank you very much for uh presenting this and answering all the questions um and so we'll i believe that we will see information again probably you said late fall gavin would be my guess okay yeah so we're currently trying to follow that out so i'm hoping that late fall we can do that in that way at least it provides a

141a timeline of conversation rather than anything that feels rushed to any any stakeholder group so hopefully late fall we can circle back with those on ramp on ramps and we will have those many and it will also answer a lot of questions about the pathways and and fitting it in as well as those elections later and specific to the course design and the materials that we um presented in the report tonight um that is coming back up for the action soon action next month great so wait i just wanted to clarify something does that mean that students that are currently in seventh grade would not have an uh we're not going to be proposing an on-ramp for them i you know i can insert that i do and i can follow up more on this

142ellen and and board members but i do know that our middle schools um have designed some um tests and some opportunities for kids to inquire about changing their pathway right so if they didn't access this and in going into sixth grade there are opportunities for them to inquire about it within registration in seventh grade so we need to look at that and get more tight about that communication and have a more consistent plan but um i do know that our middle school is cognizant of trying to provide on-ramps even currently right now okay great thank you thank you jody and please share with the whole science team our appreciation for the work that they've done yeah thank you very much to kevin katrina and deb and we will pass that on to the rest of

143the science team so thank you all thank you very much okay we're going to move on to our action items um do i have a motion to prove the ltfm bond so move to is there a second second um director tope is there anything that you wanted to speak to on this uh nothing more to add other than what jody zesbaugh members went through with the board sale may 5th approval by the board may 10th are there any questions from board members okay we'll now vote by roll call to approve the ltfm bond can i confirm that it was lenny who made the motion and janie who seconded no i sneaked it julie thank you valenbird hi hi green hi jones hi michaelson hi shaw hi roland friedman hi the ltfm bond is approved do

144i have a motion to approve the purchase of buses so moved is there a second okay second oh who got in on the second was that owen was owen okay it was a quicker draw uh yeah um uh director tope yes chair allen bergen members of the board uh each year the district uh budgets an amount in our operating capital fund for replacing aged buses uh we had a budget amount this year of 450 000 i had david white uh receive some quotes on the state contract pricing through hoagland bus and he is recommending the purchase of four new buses for 477 passenger new buses and we didn't purchase the extended warranties for the five new 77 passenger buses that we bought last year and he is recommending those five extended warranties be bought uh

145this year as well as the extended warranties for the four new buses that we will be purchasing so the total price with the extended warranties uh which includes tax but the title and license is extra is four hundred thirty thousand seven hundred and twenty four dollars uh finance committee has looked this over and approved it and the finance committee also had a initial discussion about electric buses that we'll continue with in the future thank you any questions for more members we will now vote by roll call to approve the bus purchase ellenberg hi fox hi green hi jones hi michaelson hi shaw the purchase of buses is approved do i have a motion to approve the equity consortium proposal well i'll second it okay we'll have genie be the moving party all second um i'll

146just give a little background information um this equity consortium proposal grew out of the board's equity goal for the year and having four different equity meetings with our fourth meeting being about sharing best practices with other school districts the governor's committee wants to propose inviting districts to share quarterly best practices across multiple areas of equity and to share where there have been measurable tangible gains on the achievement gap and or opportunity gap so districts can learn from each other and help implement programs that have been shown to be successful elsewhere the idea is to have a pilot meeting at our may 18th work session and build from there we have um reached out to a few different districts and have a few ideas of who we'd like to invite for the may 18th meeting one

147is a district from texas to talk to us about dyslexia and reading interventions and best practices one is a district to come talk to us about recruiting and retention practices for teachers of color and the last thing i want to note is that this idea is conceptual in nature and a starting point so if we feel that we need to limit the scope after a meeting or two we'll do that that that this is an evolutionary process it's a starting point but we felt this was a good place to start um for us as a district to um again learn best practices from other districts i'll just ask lenny and janie if they have anything they'd like to add before turning it over to other board members for questions or comments so i'll just note

148that what the board originally approved going forward with is a meeting with another school district that has shown success in reducing the opportunity gap and so this is an alternative to that because basically if we look around the country we can't really say here's a school district that is similar to us that has been successful and instead the goal is to take pieces from various districts and opportunities that districts have [Music] encountered and been successful at so it doesn't really change what we're doing other than increasing the number of districts that would be involved so that's kind of the way i look at it and i will wait to make comments based upon what other people say jane need a general anything to add no any questions or comments from fellow board members [Music] yeah

149ellen yeah i um i raised some some comments at the earlier meeting and i just wanted to you know um i understand now um from the way that you've described this um lenny and um erica that what you're seeing is you would like to talk to um other districts that have proven through um objective measures that the what they're doing is effective is that what i'm hearing correct okay and um and at the earlier meeting we talked about what the objective was i wanted to just make sure that i clarified that as well that one of the objectives is to make sure that we're working toward minimizing our achievement gap that's right correct and then i wasn't clear on what the other objective was and if you could explain that to me that would be

150helpful is to ensure that we're reducing an opportunity gap that if we see that there are ways that we have limited opportunities for our students um that we are limiting that as well because there are academic achievement gaps but like we were talking about earlier from a social and emotional perspective that we have also seen evidence that students of color or students that are for example in special education have inclusion issues have um belonging issues and that's more of an opportunity gap as i suppose as opposed to an achievement gap and so if we see evidence that there are opportunity gaps in our district there might be other districts that have had success from an inclusion perspective from extracurricular perspective um ensuring that we're providing the opportunity for all our students at the same from

151this at the same rate okay that's um and that's a little different than my understanding of what an opportunity gap is but if that's the going um definition that's fine um and um and so i get that my concern is that what i'd i'd like to do is make sure that our board is working efficiently and effectively with all of our committees being on honoring the staff time and making sure that there is no redundancy of mission and so when i i hear both of those things those are those are the types of things that the world best workforce does and i am hoping that we could bring in and make that committee a part of this process of looking into best practices for closing the achievement gap which is exactly what that committee is

152is tasked to do so i am happy to talk to the world's best workforce i think that what we do from a board perspective and a board committee perspective and how we approach how we guide the district from a board perspective is separate from the world best workforce committee and i think they need to work in conjunction with each other and i think they clearly should not duplicate effort but this committee is not an administrative committee this is a board committee so board members can learn information so board members can understand what other boards are doing so board members can learn best practices from other people and i 100 agree with you that this should align closely with world's best workforce but i'm not concerned that it's a duplication of effort okay and what i'm

153hearing um so are you proposing a new committee to handle this initiative well i think ellen we we don't i think what we talked about was that we don't know exactly right we'd like to pilot it to see not only what makes sense for our district but what makes sense for the other districts that are involved so right now we're just looking to pilot this to have an initial conversation to see who we can get to be a part of this and and go forward but i think as erica mentioned we don't have a recommendation on the final results of the structure just yet because this is new and right now the governor's committee owns this so this is this is the governor's committee owning this and the process and the work so jamie lenny

154and i are absorbing all the work for this okay so so what i understand is um then that this vote is going to uh approve this initiative from the governance committee is that what what we're doing yeah it's just basically letting janie lenny and i set up the these meetings and that's all and that's right and that's fine and i and i but what i'm i just wanted to make sure that i understood what we're setting out because there are a lot of things on our plates and this is important work um and i wanted to make sure that it's not um that our the com the community members that are stepping forward saying yes we want to work on this are are their voices are going to be heard and so um there are

155there aren't at this point any community members administrators anyone working on this other than jamie lenny and myself right so but i'm saying moving forward that's why i would it's actually the world's best that's why that's that's why i'm saying it yeah um actually i think that the world's best workforce is a committee that is underutilized and i think that we need to strengthen it and this isn't one opportunity that i think that could be used in order to both educate ourselves and bring in the community members voices in that and speaking of which i actually am very excited about the proposal if that's what this is going to be what it's about i have always always brought up how we are are doing our job and tried to make sure that we look at

156the best practices of other school districts and i tend to do that quite a bit because i think we can always learn from other districts so yes of course i would think this is a great idea i am concerned however that um i'm seeing for the first time this holistic approach with an equity framework and i would be much more comfortable not including something that looks that the board has not discussed as a draft and or brought our stakeholders to discuss whether or not this is the type of equity framework that we would like to use going forward i actually haven't really looked at it i it might be it might be great i don't know but we just saw it and and did not discuss it at the work session and now we're being

157asked to vote and i don't know i don't think that i'm i'm um the board has the board or um we are um prepared to vote on a framework i would vote ellen maybe the maybe it's the fact maybe it's the wording maybe it's the the framework wording that is the problem because all of these subjects on this wheel are all parts of our strategic plan they're all parts of what has been identified by reimagine minnesota as being the components to components that we prioritize and focus on in order to achieve that lessening of the achievement gap right like these there's nothing here that's not a part of our strategic plan right it's just that they're laid out in this way so maybe it's just the fact that that it's labeled as framework i mean

158these are just components that we've identified to say these are the issues that we want to have conversations with and gain perspective from other districts does that matter and maybe maybe if it was presented as these are our strategic initiatives that deal with equity that would be much easier for me to you know that would i could see it and we have many we have a whole initiative on equity and i have a great deal of of desire to tackle those but to put it and put it into different type of wording i'm just a little uncomfortable with that so um that's what i would say and then the the other point is to label it a consortium means it um is a little different than how this was described just now i'm just wondering

159why are you proposing that we will be inviting speakers in to talk about their best practices or we're going to as as it was um um i'm not really sure what the what the consortium like is it going to be a set group of schools and and can we just eric sorry i'm not dylan it's very simple it's like you did with lac i did with testing committee we're just setting up a committee to go look at something and talk to other groups right it's that simple we have there's no vote there's no money being spent there's no expenditure of rules there's no there's no framework being instilled there's no world's best workforce being disenfranchised it's literally having three board members go look at something it's that simple right that's what we're trying to do

160okay that's it it it's not it's not wordsmithing consortium there's no speaker list coming in it's just literally three people going to say what's best practices and saying can we go do this it shouldn't be a half hour conversation it just shouldn't oh i'm so sorry matt i i tend to get you so frustrated okay no no i'm just saying he he did he was frustrated by my questions and i i wanted to i'm not hustling he's not using anybody's time at this point i'm just saying we should move on and endorse the three people to go look at it or not i just don't think we should keep talking about how you champion this forever but you don't want to do it let's just as a board decide it's running late it's running late

161i want to do it but i want to bring in the world's best workforce that's that's what i'm trying to say okay so if the scope moves to a point that it makes sense to bring a world-best workforce i don't think that's an issue i don't think that we know enough to know if that makes sense at this point ellen i i just don't i i can't answer that i agree and it may be that we end up finding districts who have something if there are other minnesota districts that are going to have similar committees if they're out of state districts we want to make sure that that that the conversations are happening on a somewhat level playing ground before we decide that we're going to invite this other large group into it so i

162i agree i think what we're trying to say ellen is we're trying to figure out what the best practice is to do and we can't answer all these questions right now that this is a starting point that we are trying to it's it's harder to lead and to come up with things than to follow and so we're trying to take a leadership role and to come up with something where not only we can learn but we can help other districts learn and we do not know all the answers right now but we're trying to get somewhere so erica can i ask a question which is we already agreed as a board to invite another district to come in and work with us and we didn't talk about doing it through world's best workforce we agreed

163as a board we were going to go meet with one other district at least one other we should we i don't remember i don't remember the one other district conversation i remember saying that we would look at best practices for equity no we we at the beginning of the year set up four meetings on the last one round invite other districts in to share best practices so we already have agreed to that as a board so at the moment we decided to move beyond that scope and say maybe this should be a set of meetings we decided to bring this back to the board so the only thing that we really are asking for approval on is having this as opposed to being one meeting to be a set of meetings that if if the

164board thinks it's valuable and board members don't even have to attend because it would be an open meeting is that we want to establish a set of meetings so we're not just talking about equity once we're talking about in a series of meetings that's basically all this is and that i probably shouldn't have made the equity thing into a colorful wheel because then it makes it look more permanent than it really is but all it is it's a reiteration of our equity goals our strategic planning academic goals and two other things from reimagine in minnesota that's all that is and i put it on a colorful wheel so i'm going to move on to julie and owen to be respectful of our other board members julie thank you um i just have a couple comments

165one thank you um i think i want to thank you guys for the work to put it this that you put together you know you look back at our strategic plan the priorities that we gave superintendent schultz the priorities of our board and um this work that you guys have done is been at the at the top of that um at the top of those lists it's bubbled up and we've talked about that all year and so you know if you think about our students that came on earlier tonight at the start of this board meeting and the work that they're doing um in terms of equity and moving a lot of million pieces to make a difference and have impact i am i just really appreciate the work so i want to say that

166the second thing is i think that this approach um to have a set of meetings is really organized and i see it as taking our strategic plan in practice and so i just really appreciate that thoughtfulness because i think as we are launching this five-year plan it will it it really sets us up to have this on potentially a really strong ongoing partnerships with other districts to really um have an impact for at the you know for our students which is why we're all here so that's all i'm very much in support of it and i just want to thank you guys for work thank you oh and did you have your hand raised yes this time i did wait i'm going to tie myself i'm going to try to do this in one minute

167um i think there's tons of good intentions with this and um all who are advocating for this can take a bow and patch yourselves on the back because it your high intentions i'm reluctant to endorse this for a couple of reasons one of which is i think it's a diversion i think we've got structures in place right now world's best workforce we're working up a literacy plan and i think we ought to execute on what we already have equity as it has the topic itself as it has been defined over the years by the district does not have a good track record with me i have found it to be divisive and not very effective and if we are to talk about good practice my confidence would go up a good bit if we involve

168voices like bob woods and carol swain and kendall quayles who are african-americans who have a pretty different perspective on equity as i have understood the district to define it so those are my comments and i got it in in one minute 10 seconds thank you i appreciate that my only thing that i would say um is i i you don't know maybe a district is using them and they would come to us as a best practice and say we used so and so and it was a best practice those are the things that we're trying to learn from this so um but i'm going to turn it over to matt thanks yeah i'll also be succinct um when you have a board that's knowledgeable on a topic and successful that's their goal to drive something

169with excellence right if we don't know how to close the achievement gap the smartest thing we can do is ask other people what they've done a cozy achievement gap the presentation we had two sessions ago on this topic where there were 40 slides but on slide like 24 i remember from two years ago they showed that by allowing mcas or some final exams to replace the standardized test to replace the final exam by putting an incentive in place we saw much better scores and some of the minority populations is historically not done as well so that was a that was a tactic or an operation that otherwise i'm not sure as a board would have recommended but the administration thought it was a good idea here so i understand this just to be three people

170on the board willing to take more of their own free time looking for a little bit of empowerment to say we're a subcommittee reaching out to say do you guys want to have brainstorming sessions so if that's what i'm understanding this to be i don't understand other than grateful the only diversion of resources or conflating of priorities would be if suddenly we were pulling in 20 community members and putting a budget behind it and bringing in speakers and pulling students out of class i mean i almost i understand we have to have votes to set up people putting their time into something up there representing the broader board so it's a process but i'm grateful that any three people want to look into this and spend time on it so um thanks for doing this

171and i think it's really straightforward thanks matt julie yeah the only thing i want to say is i i think i would just like to have a reset for our board because i feel like at some point we need to get past talking about whether or not equity is important to this board into our district and the conversations seem to come back time and time again where we're having to discuss whether or not equity is a priority we as a board have voted that the equity work is important in our district it's important for our students and our student success and we we go back to that so i just i want to say that um to the board here because we we keep going back to those same conversations so we have all decided

172we voted on a strategic plan that includes this as a priority we voted on superintendent goals that included equity work as a priority it's important for our students so i i just wanted to say that again because i feel like we just keep going back to have those same discussions when we've already decided that this is something important so that's it thanks julie owen i must not have lowered my hand no i don't have another comment oh okay sorry all righty i think we can move to vote um we'll now vote by roll call to approve the equity consortium lindbergh i fox hi greene hi jones hi michaelson name shaw hi welland friedman hi the equity consortium is approved um we will um get back with you guys as soon as we know um people

173coming in may um and any next steps thank you um leadership updates lenny would you please provide um the board and community with the latest on the superintendent search sure uh so the governance committee has been meeting weekly with school exec connect to just sort of touch base uh based on those meetings we've gotten feedback that they're they are continuing to recruit and that they have had a number of applicants for the superintendent position one of the changes we requested for process is what people have noticed which is that we have added a meeting on april 22nd and so initially school exec connect was planning on doing a training session on the 26th for our first meeting on the 27th and we requested instead that the training get pushed to the 22nd so on april

17422nd at five o'clock we have a board meeting and the purpose of that meeting is twofold one is to provide training to the school board in terms of the interview process and how to run an interview of superintendent candidates and two to agree upon the questions that we'll ask in that first set of interviews and by doing it on the 22nd it just gives us a few more days to reflect before we jump into the interviews on tuesday the 27th on the 26th we will meet and school exec connect will provide us with a slate of five or six candidates they will provide some basic background information without having names assigned to the background once we approve the slate that will then provide us with the names of the candidates that match up with the

175slate they just gave us as well as some additional background information that becomes monday april 26th the 27th and 28th are interviews of that initial slate of five to six candidates so we'll have either three and three interviews on the 27th and 28th or three and two depending upon the size of the slate on the 28th after we finish our interviews of the slated candidates we will then narrow it to two or three finalists and so we will stay on the evening of the 28th a little bit later we will discuss it there is a process that a school exec connect will work through us with and on that 28th we'll pick our finalists that will then be interviewed on may 3rd 4th and 5th so we will have there will be actually full day

176interviews for the candidates on the third fourth and the fifth but only some of that will involve the school board then on the evening of the fifth after the third interview we will meet and decide upon who will move forward as the final candidate for the superintendent when i say final candidate will essentially be picking the superintendent on the fifth and it'll be subject to contract negotiations and i think that that's the quick overview this is stuff that's been provided before but i just wanted to make sure everybody kind of had it still on their radar and that's it did i miss anything jamie or erica no julie did you have a question yeah just two quick things when does the april 20th is the date that it closes is that correct oh yeah that's

177correct and then my other question is when we get down to the two to three candidates you said full day interviews is that members of the community and are members of the community interviewing is there they will have this month to meet with the candidate yes okay it's towards the end of the day if i remember correctly from ken saying and that the board members can also be present for that too so to hear the community questions that's our opportunity to hear the community questions to the candidates okay since we don't have conversations with the community members about it right owen lenny thank you i've been wondering about that would you be so kind as to put that into an email and send it to us i would love to actually get that in my

178calendar and prepare for it so actually if you go back to the february meeting these dates other than april 22nd are outlined in that meeting but i can i can shoot you there's a page from that meeting so the only thing new is april 22nd and owen um i know other board members are have been having trouble actually getting these on their calendar because of some glitch in the computer system and so they should be auto populated on your calendar but if they're not um there has been an issue with on the scheduling of the of the meetings and them getting on your calendar and so you might want to sarah or nathaniel i was actually just going to mention that to see if sarah could put them on the calendar but if they're already

179on there that means i'm not seeing them they are but i know under it julian yes the writers have had trouble actually seeing them but they are actually on the calendar but i know support some board members they're not showing up for board members i i think owen was looking for the topics for each meeting the calendar that the dates are on the calendar but i don't have the subjects for each of them okay we'll make sure you get those sarah well put sir that's that was my question i have the cameras calendar entries okay matt did you have a question no he didn't put his hand down from before i don't know how to use that thing sorry down okay um the only update i had was that lenny already went over this uh

180superintendent search meetings we have a work session coming up on april 20th and we're going to be talking about the student staff and parent survey results um a student summit and then a learning model update on the 20th so that is our board meeting that we have coming up and i'm going to turn it over to john to give a superintendent update [Music] you're on mute sorry about that i think the only update i'll give is uh related to the learning model our incident command team will be meeting tomorrow um the i talked to nick kelly uh before this meeting um our um our case rates are are are higher than they have been um hennepin counties at 33.46 which is a about an eight point increase um edina is at 52.9 and um and

181the if you use the cdc numbers forty point two per hundred thousand the others are uh those cases per ten thousand so uh areas around us are increasing and they believe this is due to the variant i also want to say that our principals and our health office and nurses have working a lot with doing a lot of contact tracing as we're experiencing a high positivity rate within our secondary schools i want to thank the parents for helping us with keeping their kids home after spring break i think that helped in the high school increase in positive cases prior to spring break so we will be monitoring these numbers we do we'll talk about talk about all this tomorrow the incident command team but i really want us to continue to use the mitigation strategies

182i want to encourage students and parents to continue to use those mitigation the school district and partnership with united health group is testing high school on tuesdays and thursdays are we're testing the middle schools and all that information can be found on the website the only change this week is that we're going to be testing at the high school on wednesday but otherwise it's tuesday and thursday and that testing really does a great job of informing what's happening with the virus among our student group continue masking we want to continue to ask for social distancing and just to monitor kids activities outside of school to ensure we're not bringing in the virus so we're monitoring that also there's been some questions on the quarantine we do follow the quarantine decision tree that the minnesota department

183of health provides us and i'll post that to the information section of this board meeting and uh we'll also put that in the frequently asked questions um in the covent section of the website so i just want to give that update did you have a question yeah um john yep i was just wondering if you could give us a quick update on the testing program um how many people how many students are are being tested um julie do you have those numbers uh so the i so that we set what did we do 70 middle school last week we did yeah we did about there were about 70 students last week um which and then the week before spring break we did around 50 and we have though we have a close i think over

184500 students registered so um it's just been rolling it out before spring break it's been a little bit of a stop start in terms of students coming in so um we're working on strategies of getting the students to test and um but yeah but it it in all the tests all the pool so far have been negative um which is fantastic so it was good it's good to know that we had you know 60 students at a middle school that were negative it's good information for teachers to know in the principal right and as a percentage of students who are attending school actually i mean because this is the time that we were asking students not to attend right so exactly exactly so it's really hard to know what that number is right it's almost

185impossible but um but yeah hopefully if students are coming back um you know as they come back is as john said the high school will test on wednesday this week and then middle school both middle schools will test on thursday and it's really a fast process so the volunteers have been outstanding so great thanks that's all i have charlenburg thank you i think that's it um we will adjourn for the night um and everyone have a