##VIDEO ID:4AlnBOGmrZk## he was in Wilmer all weekend you know yeah we landed and everything very happy oh that's right I was that and then I was like no I'm gonna get better I don't want this this is draft that we start the convers you know if you like say come to um and I apologize we can definitely look at Tuesdays or that's okay I just like I said it doesn't revolve all around me but yeah peek at this and see what if you have any you know thoughts or whatever shoot it high away don't different so like these are holidays yeah back here we took in you know a couple things here yeah no I don't want to see that well and put those St can move you know just like St and stuff but it's a starting point for that group yeah it's good to have a place to look and see what yeah anyone else won come this is just you cont yeah I'll take a peek and place to start thank you yeah there was one gosh it was last who I think like there was so many girls out on the bars like sick there was like six girls was one of them yeah yeah they've been through it oh man Jason was sick J house has been sick yeah I think yeah right whatever you're doing is working right just stay in your ho no Jason like Chelsea was telling me that she thought Jason had like pneumonia and didn't in and so I was talking to him at the hockey game the other day and he was still coughing and like God that sounds terrible I I wonder if he didn't yeah and maybe just yeah he was he was mad at her for even suggesting well it's going around it is totally yeah okay right didn't even see you come in Amanda you were stealthy oh that's me I said I didn't even hear her come in she's stealthy how you doing I heard uh Val's been through it with sickness too yeah we had there was a day last week where we had 160 kids out or 500 out of 500 I didn't even turn mine on e e e 4.0 is to approve the agenda as presented in boardbook so moved second any questions or discussions all right all those in favor of approving the agenda say I I any appol motion carries 5.0 Communications and reports superintendent okay um couple things first of all because I keep forgetting to put out kind of in my weekly update we want to update the picture for the school board can we set next meeting and and I guess I'm asking the last one the only one I've ever looked at you in EGF kind of attire do you want that do you want more of a dressed up do you want um what's the date it's the 10th of February I'll be gone then we should probably look at the one after that because I mean we we want to try and do it um so maybe the last um and I I will be honest there are a couple shirts in our office if someone didn't have something is that what we want to do again I don't know it's up to you guys I'm ask that works for me unless we go in the morning because I have I have basketball game that night we can all meet in the morning if it's good with everyone else we can talk about it later yeah or no we can talk about it now does morning work for you if we do like a 7 a.m. meeting um if I have to I can make it work yeah okay well I mean just for the picture we don't have to mean Josh may miss the I mean I don't know if there's going to be anything drastic I mean I mean do is it urgent no it's not we can wait till the next month that's fine yeah so that date would be the yeah 24th yep and I'll try and remind in week nice I just keep forgetting do we want to do EGF gear I know I don't know like or do you want do we need to clothe our new our new people with here because we all got it at you know at one point from I guess I don't know what's been done we can surely um that's been done in the past yeah want to take a picture of okay I'll be honest I I went to uh won over across the tracks going south that's where I got a couple shirts I don't know if that's what's been done um that's where I got mine like full and yeah Po and a quarter zip or something that we had yeah that gave us but that was a while ago we don't have to do EGF gear we can you can do just nice just dress nice let's just dress yeah okay perfect okay and I'll put a reminder for try 24th dress nice um couple things just giveing me heads up um things coming up uh February 5th and February 18th um February 5th is UND February 18th is uh I just went mind blocked uh Mayville they both have job fairs and so um n and I are possibly um myself and someone else are going to go to those um the UND one I don't think costs anything um other than our time Mayville cost 75 bucks because you get lunch for two people um but the Mayville one is well both of them are are Mayville is only education you know students the other one um is education along with some others but we think at least at this point we have a sped that we never filled we have an elementary position we're going to have or we have the um Steph larsson's the academy position um you know and whatever else Community Ed technically we're going to at some point post you know long term so just so you're or you're aware or someone sees it um we're going to take care of that or um uh participate in those let's put it that way um I do encourage approval of the community contract today um just so you're aware it's it's a similar contract less one day um and like say as we mentioned last time you you um save on TR for this point um but that's that's the only difference in that contract um pay Equity report if you saw in here just if anyone's not aware we have to we have to do that and it's reporting it's a it's a state report that we put in you know number of employees in different categories um that's not what they make and it's trying to look I'm going to say so that we're not biased towards like males paying them a lot more than we would and this that I don't foresee any problems but um for the most part the board asked to approve and um we'll get it our business office Carla will'll get it sent in and we'll make sure we're on the up and up um and again can ask more questions I just wanted to give a heads up um still working on the survey just haven't had a lot of time in the last two weeks to to move too much further on that so that'll be coming um our plan is to have an updated budget at the next board meeting um get just throwing that out there and then we will start the say um process for um Staffing and enrollment and everything else but um you know the majority comes from our staff and so we want to make sure what we have is correct and and we're about there Carl is about there I should say I'm not going to take credit um you know for that um I did um I did want to throw out and I I think I'm mention but I don't remember we we set committees last time um msba does have a negotiation training um there it's in person on February 25th which is a Tuesday it's an all day deal but they do also have and it just I didn't see this before and I don't know why they do have virtual sessions and they're coming up and they say it's something came across that we can still add people so I'm just throwing out it's this Thursday and the following Thursday if if anyone wants to participate at 6 to 9:00 um and again um it's not a requirement or anything like that but we have to register and again not saying it just has to be that committee um you know or people that's on there now so if anyone's interested let me know um we'd be probably pushing it to get the materials for this week but again you don't need them they would be herea it's all supporting so G to throw that out there where's the inperson the inperson is at ersin and I'd be more than happy to attend I'll be honest I've never done MSB um if someone wanted to go um that was the Fe was February it's Tuesday February 25th from 9: to 4 okay um someone's interested same thing or or anyone else be more than happy um we have to register you through the office and we would you know get you there so to speak but um yeah let me know uh MRA um Minnesota rural education associate is something we belong to um Darren I think you say straw doll um is the last uh was in and stop by and just anyone wants to take this and look through it they do um they have an email list serve um again if you look for the M um website we you can get enrolled the other one I was going to mention is msba too if if you haven't there's different offerings whether you want to be on their email list of everything um it's getting signed up you know we don't enroll you in any of those I mean I can help by any means but if anyone wants to take and look through this you know it just has some more explanation again this is for Rural schools in which they support and the majority of rural schools belong I I mean I'm not sure I guess I didn't look at it guessing there's a map in here it was down to very few that didn't at one time not too many years ago um and the last last call and I mentioned this last time if anyone wants to it's due by February 1st put your name in the Hat for this Northwest Regional development Commission to be on their board they meet four Tuesdays I think it was four Tuesdays quarterly um I just throw it out there so um I think that's all that's all I have unless anyone has any questions right now any questions thank you I don't think we have principles here to talk but we do have the preschool here to talk tonight you want me to grow why don't I just you guys can all say there we go all right so back I don't know if it was November or December um we had talked about that preschool is doing letters training letters for early childhood and so we just wanted to kind of give you a little update as to what letters is and the work we're doing um so um letters um for preschool and it's it we are the only one doing letters training and Pam Sorenson from title is also doing it with us um she's done it previously but doing a refresher well she did the elementary now she's doing the Early Child part so she's sitting in with us as well so we just wanted to share some information with you and let you know what letters is all about it went away back to your where it go in your Google where' my Google go touched it touched it I'm sorry Nicole shared it with me though so I don't know [Music] no the letters go okay sorry about that there we go okay so letters is not so a lot of people were kind of confused on the point letters is not a curriculum it's actually just a program for us a while I think it was a couple maybe two years ago they decided to go back to the science of reading which is kind of the old school way of teaching reading they went away from guided reading to this and it's kind of a new way for all us teachers to learn a lot of us didn't learn this way when we went to school and even in college a lot of us didn't get this science of reading um so it's been really nice and I will say a lot of it that we we're only halfway through it but a lot of it we've already started to implement into our classroom and the cool thing about it is they talked about like the main thing with it they said with Early Childhood it's hard to teach reading like reading isn't huge in early childhood but you can teach alphabet knowledge how to read a book A lot of times kids at home aren't getting that stuff we think that they will but they don't come to us with a lot of that stuff the other big things were phonemic awareness so those are like letter sounds those are something a lot of times we didn't even think of really teaching because we want to yeah this early this early but actually letter sounds and auditory learning is a lot more important than visual yep and then the last thing was executive functioning and that's just like how kids listen to an instruction given to them and take it and do what they're supposed to be doing so those three things have kind of really helped us letters um I know some think you're just learning about self but which it isn't it's an acronym it stands for language Essentials for teachers of reading and science um it like we said it's kind of our part of the read act even though we weren't mandated to do that this young it we don't want to meet just the bare minimum requirement we want to go over and above we have such a big preschool program um that we can support these children young knowing that birth through five is most um important years you know for deel development so um science of reading being that this this process is based off of scientific findings it's not just Educators it was in the field of everything psychology um and looking into understanding I guess this kind of is an AA moment for a lot of people when I talk about this because I like talking about this thing um reading's not natural actually speaking is natural your brain is wired for that you will catch on as an infant to babbling and making sounds and speaking that's normal that's how you um created but reading is not it's not normal you have to be taught how to read it will not just come if you put words in front of your face these lines and curves when you teach them they mean something are connected to spoken language and this is what a lot of letters is based around at our level um what you say I was going to say they kind of talked about when we were going through the first initial part of the program too like that's a big aha moment for parents too because all the things before that come naturally you think about like speaking walking all the things eating kind of comes naturally because you're watching other people doing it and they said even if you sat there and put a kid in front of somebody who read to them every every single day or even like watched they're still not going to learn they need to be explicitly taught how to and it actually does begin with preschool a lot of people don't think that that it's just preschool is babysitting right because you're just with young kids and you're playing but it's intentional that's what we do and that's what letters is um teaching us intentionally teaching these reading early reading skills so I'm really excited about it I think as a team we all were excited there professional development that was geared to preschool teachers we weren't taking Elementary professional development and watering it down for us or taking the bits and pieces that worked for us and see if it worked or didn't work it was made for us so that's kind of rare unfortunately but we're really excited about it we still have a ways to go do but learning a lot um doing these every other Wednesday outs that's when we meet and um work on it there's at home work that we have to do and also um studies with our specific students we had to pick three students and we do specific things with them and watching their um their growth and their assessments so it's been fun to see that already just from the fall to winter now and we still have Happ to go but one of the things we really wanted to stress to was and I know you hear this from every group of teachers but the importance of the Wednesday time um because we're in three different locations getting together if we were to meet after the school day what our last preschool class gets out at 3:15 so by the time that we all got to the same location it'd be 3:20 so then you'd have about 20 minutes to work together as a team but what these early out Wednesdays allow us to do is be together for a good hour and a half of quality time working together talking about what's working in our classroom what's not working in our classroom and how how this is all going to fit the science of reading into our daily curriculum so it really has for for the preschool portion especially been um super useful and time well spent yeah I will yeah I think it's hard to leave on Wednesdays truthfully for all of us we end up staying there after hours even and just because you finally get that time we don't get lunch together because we're in different buildings we don't get recess time together to catch up or brainstorm or bounce ideas off each other so this Wednesday time has been really helpful for us and has yeah yeah so this letter science of reading that we're doing it it it is like she said it's been impactful for everyone we're rethinking how we teach kids and um how we structure our classrooms and things we put in and out of our classrooms all have a purpose yeah and a function so and it's yeah it's been super nice to all be at the same building and just doing the same thing because when you're at three separate buildings it's hard to even you know stay on the same track at every building because over there they might be the two of them might be doing something and Ashley might be jumping off of New Heights or something and then there's the three of us so it has been really nice to follow the same kind of procedure and stuff and see how it's working in the classroom yeah but we just wanted to give you a little update and let you know that we're working hard on to like kindergarten uplo to like that Elementary age as because if we start now then it just keeps progressing later on as they learning and growing with reading yeah help me out and I apologize I think I know the three of you but just so I I'm Nicole Pekka Ashley McMahon I'm the super 3K at new and Christian thank you I apologize I just okay so is the science of reading like sounding it out like or is that guided reading because I I'm I'm really just curious because so like the main thing behind the sign like the main takeway that I'm getting like behind the SS of reading is like piecing it out like before we're guided reading you do like Separate Tables of different things well now like you have to make sure that they get all to the point of knowing all the letters and knowing all those sounds and even like I could ask you guys what does q say this one's fun this one is fun what what sound does q make so now we're learning it it's C because it's q and you together so like a lot of the letter sounds have even changed and that's like stuff that we're we're learning through this and that the science of reading kind of has figured out from from different people well and just kind of trickling down from K and above you know they have maybe heard some of these specific things and the new heights team has been really good at trickling things to me but then doesn't always get to all the other buildings so trying to get everyone on the same page um so they are all they're more successful when they get up to new heights and on their reading levels so but science reading really is just the it's comprehensive understanding of the reading process based up of scientific findings that's what it is it's just not Educators saying in one way this is how we should learn and it's scientifically been and it's all the components together so see the sound theic Yeahs yeah yeah we're hoping we can give them a slight Edge yeah any other questions thank you thank you thank you thanks all right any committee reports I don't have other than we have a calendar committee coming up in a week or so and that don't think I have anything right now okay thank you 6.0 is the consent agenda I'll move to approve the consent agenda as presented I get a second a second okay any questions or discussion on the consent I don't know why I can't say that consent agenda tonight anything pulled hey all those in favor of approving the consent agenda please say I I oppose consent agenda is approved moving on to 7.0 for opportunities for citizens to speak none okay 8.0 is District business the 8.1 is to approve the 2025 pay Equity report as presented and attached in board book so moved second any questions or discussions okay all those in favor of approving the pay Equity Reports say I I any oppos motion carries 8.2 is to accept Dons to the school district okay all right it's really small hang on all right I will move to accept the following donations um a donation from East Grand Forks arts and crafts to Senior High music for risers and lightboard in the amount of $1,493 144 a donation from Mary Hendrickson to South Point for student needs in the amount of $50 sorry I'm just trying to read what this second line saying I don't know um and then a donation from East Forks boosters to Senior High music and CMS music for CMS lightboard French horn a tuba and a lightboard in the amount of $94.99 total donations tonight are two $2,955 3 that motion right that was a motion I'll second any questions or discussion all those in favor of accepting the donation say I I I any oppose motion carries 9.0 is payment of claims and accounts I'll make the motion to approve the payment of the K12 bills 128 662 through 28762 in the amount of 17922 197 I'll second any questions or discussion all those in favor of paying claims in accounts say I I any oppose motion Carries On The Board member comments Amanda we'll start with you um I learned a lot at the msba conference um one of the things that I learned that I thought was really interesting was um grow your own for special ed excuse me for special ed um which is where you take Paras from inside the school and help train them to doed and then you can actually get a whole bunch of federal grants to pay for their schooling and to pay for their comp time which is really cool um I mean you'd have to have extra pairs if you were going to solely take them for the Special Ed training um but that was one of the highlights that I learned from that you have like the information from that yeah I can give it to you yeah um other than that I don't have anything one caveat to that um the the state had a program or has programs going on we had three apply and they all got turned down I mean they they had more applications I guess than money we do have a par that is enrolled and taking classes I talked to him today there may be more than one I mean it's one I'm aware of but I mean I guess I was very hopeful when I didn't realize they'd run out of money you know type deal and how they select it I have no idea but yeah I mean it's it's been proven to be effective on anything whether it's admin whether it's you know right now the state only does um the special ed like MSU is the one who does it okay and right now they only have special ad but they're hoping to get like other training things set up you have to join I'll send you the information it's a lot of words that I've never used before so I don't remember all of them exactly great ol thank you guys for presenting letters is a really awesome training and I'm excited to see how it pans out in our district um um I don't have anything tonight short meeting yeah Matt um I I did get a chance to go through a lot of the comments that you sent out regarding the um the survey that we talked about last time um one of the questions for students was what name two things you like about our schools and the vast majority of students their responses were the teachers here so I just want to kind of tip my hat to the teachers um seeing all those comments about that and and then uh yeah thank you preschooler teachers for coming and presenting um I'm excited I have a preschooler next year so I'm excited to um see it in person uh I just want to give a big shout out I mean we have a lot of sick kids sick staff and everyone that's stepping up and doing extra things to help out to make sure that our schools are still running and still being able to somehow run fluently thank you to everybody that's stepping up and helping with in those situations well said well said yeah I don't have anything knock on would the state reported today they think we've turned the turned the over the I mean exactly locally and this and that I don't know I talked to chrisy last yes I'm talking to everybody it's everywhere everywhere no I appreciate you guys coming in as well I had no idea what that was about like letters before you explained it so I mean I trusted but I appreciate knowing more about it um and I agree a shout out to the teachers they do a phenomenal job in this district and yes thank you for sending our sick kids home and and uh the msba conference was good otherwi I mean good good and I don't have anything else for for this meeting so the next um meeting for the Board of Education will be February 10th 2025 at 5:30 p.m. Josh will be gone if anybody else is gone please let me know because we want to proceed with a quorum but I'll take a motion to adjourn the regular meeting I'll make a motion second any questions or discussion on inuring all those in favor say I I I any opposed motion carries thank you everybody