Don't need to be. >> We'll call the workshop to order. Uh Julie, is anyone signed up for public input? Thank you. I promise I'll be quick. Um, so I just wanted to come to you just to say that we've been doing community conversations
this year. Several of you have been to those. Our first one was Mr. Gross doing state of the district. He's going to do another one uh second semester, a 2.0 version. We also had one on attendance uh and we had Ross resources come in and
do a presentation and it was great. Um I think did we also have the county attorney, Mr. Gross? Is that who was there? Um the last one that we did was on high stakes assessments. So we talked about MCAs and we talked about star testing. We did all of that. All of those are also recorded from ICTV uh and
then posted on our website when they're available. So our next one that we're doing, our second to last of this series is on reading, the science of reading. And you'll note the title, Readiness, Resilience, and Reading. Um, we're curious kids become confident readers
because reading isn't magic, it's science, love, and a great community. So, this one is next Wednesday, and um, our new PR person in the community education department is great, Emily Libby, and she said, "Well, why aren't
people coming?" We do have people coming, but we don't have them in droves like I thought they would come. Um I thought if we put it it like Field of Dreams if we build it they will come and that didn't happen. Um but we have had a lot of people that have been there and so she said is it because there's no
child care and I didn't think about that and so we have child care next week both during the daytime session and nighttime and we're advertising that. Um and she said do you have snacks? Well we can have snacks. Um and then um there's
books that will be available for that one too. It's just really important. And so that one is next Wednesday. Um in the morning session, it's at the middle school in the library and the nighttime session is at West in the servery. So I just wanted you um to invite you
personally. You've been invited to all of them, but I wanted this is really important. Um not that the other ones weren't, but reading is really really important. Um yeah. Do you have any questions? Okay. >> Oh, thanks, Carol. >> Thank you.
Uh, next item on the agenda, transportation indicator report. Greg Olsen. Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Just so anybody that doesn't know me, my name is Greg Olsen, transportation director. Just a real quick background with me. I
came to the district in 2006 as a mechanic. I then uh in 2018 I had a chance to take the the director's position and uh I had
followed served under two directors previous to that. So I thought well you know what being a little bit critical of them their decisions and movements I thought or put my mouth where yeah you know the word but anyway so never would have guessed that I would be
in such a situation short time budget restrictions none of those guys knew anything about that uh COVID bam also just the simple fact that it's a lot easier to manage a machine than it is a bunch of people So,
so yeah, that's a little short place there. But I will say that in my time, I did have the privilege to put some great people in the right places, which is second to none.
So, I'm going to start with just a brief narrative. Uh, third largest district by area in the state. And I'll tell you, it used to be where people didn't live in these outliers, but they're starting
to move into into God's country. We've got a couple people out. They are like a quarter of a mile from the northwest corner of Itasa or northeast corner of Itasa County. Long bus ride, but it's all they're just starting to move in all
these little areas that we didn't used to have to serve. Uh yeah, we've got Big Fort Cohassid East, Grand Rapids High School, Ryms, ALC West, three nonpublic schools.
We are down to 44 bus routes, which is due to the driver shortage for one. Uh that adds to rider time and it also puts more miles on buses. That's one thing that I want to see us change. We need to get a few more bus
routes. Last year we did 936,799 miles and that doesn't include our or the the athletic trips that we farmed out to, you know, contracts and stuff like that. Currently, we have 61 or 68 people in
our in our department broken out like that. Right now we are short. We have two open routes and and we're also short uh onbus ESP. So a connection to the district strate
strategic tr strategic direction equitable equitable access and outcomes. We collaborate with special services and you know all the other departments to transport students to life skills,
trust and engagement. We we gain that by being the first first person for the district the students see and the last person they see by being on time by providing that you know that support. Hey, how you doing this morning? Evidence-based practices and and student
centered learning. We communicate with families and schools to help students succeed. That includes like like uh behavior referrals. You know, it's not just three strikes, you're out where we try to work with families, try to figure out what can we do with schools, what
can we do to help this child succeed, clear and consistent communications. Uh our new My Ride K12, I always get that wrong. My ride K12 app has helped tremendously with our communication. I was touching on that a little bit this morning. It used to be where our our busing
information sent out at the first part of the year was was inaccurate before it slid to the end of the table just because we were adding students where now it's real time stewardship of re resources. Our resources are people,
our buses, our hardware. Uh yeah, we're doing our best. our mechanics take good care of our aging fleet to safely transfer our students. Our office staff worked dig digit diligently on our to implement our our Tyler drive product which is directly
related to the families their tool student impact. Right now, we currently have 2,988 students set up to ride the bus every day. I did the numbers on that and it's like 80 bus 80 kids per bus. So, thankfully they don't ride all ride
every day. Potentially, we could, you know, impact every student that's that's here, you know, between sporting trips and activities and uh field trips
and stuff like that. evidence of success. Our routes were all filled at the start of school. At the start of school, no open routes. Good feeling. Good feeling. The startup also went very well. It was
the the best one I've witnessed since 2006. And there was a lot that was going on. Uh, the My Ride K12 app has been world changing, department changing, barriers to success. Uh, I've said this
a few different times, but we need to try we need to try to target a different driver group. You know, right now we've have people that are retired and they're looking to retire again. uh people that can only make so much
money, certain things like that, people that can't make it on a part-time part-time job. But I think that's across the board, everybody's in that spot. Our transportation office positions are
very demanding and often used as a stepping stone. You'll see down there a little bit further. Since 2018 when I took in took over the director's position, we've actually had eight different uh routing routing specialists
in that time. It's pretty hard to serve the community at that rate. Right now, we have a good group, experienced people. when when any certain person's gone, the other person can just pick up and and
hold the reinss. Another barrier to success is the student behaviors. I've got K12 down here. Not a target at you, Sean, by no means. 59% of our of our student
behaviors out of a two months in we had 191 student behavior referrals written up 191 59 were from west 44 were from east 115 were elementary level across the
board 37 were high school and 39 were middle middle school >> I believe it >> also vaping vaping is a huge huge issue on our buses. All right. Changes that I recommend for
next year. Get back to our bus rotation of purchases, bus purchases. So, right now, out of our 69 buses, 48 have 100,000 miles on them or more.
24 of those have 120,000 or more. And our type 3es are up there, too. But our our fleet is aging. Buses are still good, but we're we're experiencing expenses that we've never witnessed before. I It's sounds
incredible, but we had one bus go down and it cost $27,000 to put injectors in it and then the the exhaust system. And it's like never that usually doesn't happen. First time. First time.
Other things I'd like to see happen is, and we're kind of working on this a little bit, but work on our administrative assistant position. This is a position that's highly demanding. It serves all of the students in the district. It is 12 months out of the year.
She's This position's been held down. I've tried to get that changed for the last four or five years and nothing happens. Our routing specialists, as I had mentioned before, I've I've seen eight different routing specialists since 2018.
I'd like to see that changed. that is something that is along with the administrative assistant directly the they're the liaison between the district and and transportation and the
families. So we've trained several routing specialists and and it's a lot of time, a lot of money and they're really it takes a takes a year before they're they're good at what they do. But at that time they're ready to jump jump to
a what is it the building now building job? Yeah. Retaining high quality people is the key to success. So uh I know I spit a lot out there real quick. You guys have any questions for me?
>> I do. Greg, what's the process that we as a district use to support your staff when we have disciplinary referrals and issues like that? What is, you know, they're getting written up on the bus and then what happens? Who does that go to next?
>> Goes to the parents, teachers. Yeah. >> Okay. Is there are students given so many chances or is it immediately like these are the rules you've been written up now you don't get to come back and use the bus system? >> Yeah, they get a lot of chances. I've
this year well I guess it is only two months into the year but I've I have kicked off six kids for the remainder of the year because their second offense vaping. >> Okay. Not not behavioral or I should say
I mean with the little guys we're pretty flexible. Yeah. But the problem is is that >> I mean nine times out of 10 there's a victim. >> You know someone's getting hit, someone's getting spit on whatever, >> you know. But that's where it is. It's it's me and Sean having a lot of visits
and Clayton and uh Jill and you know the the high school principles as well. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. So is it is it similar to then what would be happening at the school? They get so many writeups and then there's like a detention or a suspension for a day. >> Yep. >> Okay.
>> Okay. >> And usually the drivers, they don't like to write kids up. No. So there's like 10 warnings. >> Okay. I'm going to write you up. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Anybody else? >> Sounds like we had uh we bought two buses last year, correct?
>> We bought more than that, Cara. Right. I think we bought four. >> Yeah. >> What's the When you said go back to the rotation, what is typical or what was it in the past? Well, in the years past, I I'll use a money figure. I used uh it would be 675,000 a year. And then what
we would do is we would just get buses out of that. At that time, they were 89,000 to 90,000, 100,000 maybe. So, it's gone up a lot. So, at that time, it would be eight per year that we would buy, seven to eight. And our buses, when we trade them off, would have
approximately 100,000 miles on them. highly soughtafter across the whole state of Minnesota. I mean, they were our our dealer would just say, "Hey, I'll take them and there they go." We'd get, you know, sometimes $20,000 for a
bus. So, that's kind of how it is. But now, obviously with buses at $150,000 or more now, and just the fact that they're really, really hard to come by, you know, that complicates things. But
>> um I recently uh was talking to the sheriff's office and it sounds like they lease all of their vehicles. Have we explored that? >> I'm I'm asking out of ignorance. >> You know what? I haven't. >> Okay. >> I never have. I I would never lease a vehicle myself.
>> Sure. >> So I guess that's the way I look at it. But >> if you want to follow me out to the parking lot, you can see what I'm driving. That's why. A to B. A to B. >> Right. Right. Okay. Thanks. Um, Greg, sorry, just one more question. You had mentioned that there's currently
44 bus routes. >> Yeah. Is >> that correct? And we're still short. >> Still short drivers. Yeah. >> How many how many extra routes would that give us if we had the amount of drivers that you would realistically be comfortable with having?
>> If if we had five more routes, we could cut down ride time considerably. >> Okay. >> Yeah. What what is our longest ride time? >> I I think it's 610. Children get on the on
the bus in the morning. Yeah. And it's up at uh Hartley Lake. >> Yeah. >> And what time are they getting getting back home? >> They're getting home a little quicker. I
want to say probably 4:30. See, the the getting home time changes often because it all depends on how many kids are on the bus. >> Yeah. >> You know, so >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Greg, can you talk um that put that 44 in perspective of how many routes we had
10 years ago, 15 years ago? >> Yeah. Uh Big Fork had seven routes. Now they've got four, you know. Actually, they had two routes in Squal Lake, you know, that would come across, you know. So, but uh we also had these little sub
spots that they would grab kids, come to a rendevous point, then disperse. >> But uh even those are getting hard to fill >> right now. Currently, I've got a six-hour route in Big Forks that I can't fill. So, we're running it out of Grand Rapids, and it's eight hours a day.
Yeah. Four hours in the morning, four hours in the afternoon. >> Wow. This driver gets here at 5:15 in the morning, grabs their keys, heads up to the northeast corner of Itasa County, picks up two young children, and migrates their way across Highway One to Big Fork, then drives an hour back to
Grand Rapids. Does the same thing in the afternoon. Our buses are back here by 5:30, which is good. They're not leaving until, you know, she leaves at 5:30. That one does. But >> yeah, >> roads are good too right now.
>> That's true. >> Yeah, >> I think that's, you know, one of the challenges too with the the question of 4 day week has come up. >> Yes. >> Numerous times and there's no way to mitigate what Greg's talking about. Someone that
lives 60 miles as the crow flies >> from here. I mean, and there's no straight roads to get there. I I drove most of the way up there. uh for about a week during CO. Um it's just a long way there. There's no
way to get around it. Uh so, you know, St. Louis County is doing 4 day week, but I I think because they have more schools there, that changes that busing dynamic too. >> Yeah. >> They have more schools than us.
>> Yeah. But I mean, when when I look at Lake where Northwood services, they go up to Crane Lake, virtually the Canadian So they >> but I know they don't have any kids out at 610. Reggie said it this I talked to her this week. I mean they don't >> they don't have any of that.
>> Open a school in Bolum. >> Reopening, >> right? >> Greg, can you say uh a bit more about vaping? You said it's a big problem. >> Yeah, it's a big problem on the bus. They and in the schools. Yeah, people get it. And
>> is that middle school and high school or just >> elementary school? middle school, high school. >> Really? >> Yeah. >> We I I believe in the bathrooms in schools we have detection for that. Do we do we have that type of thing in the bus or how I mean it's just for the bus
driver to be noticing it or I mean >> Yeah, that's all it is. You know, I'm I'm going to work on uh getting some signs that say you don't have to put up with this vaping. Vaping, don't put up with it. Report it. you know, because I've I've in my time I've watched kids
be exposed to things and it's just a spiral, you know, drugs on the bus, vaping. Yep. >> It's it's, you know, with smoking, it was a lot harder to be discreet about it. >> There was a cloud that kind of flew up
in the air and >> Yeah. you know, yeah, with this and the, you know, the the the seats on the bus are designed like a box to keep kids safe if something happened. And that same design makes it tough for the driver to see if they just bend over.
So it's >> it's tricky. I was watching the the video you shared with me. It's like, man man. >> Yeah. Yeah. A lot of times they'll I mean, I I can see it from a mile away. I can tell what they're doing. you know, they either got their sleeve pulled up and they're blowing it back into their
sleeve or under their shirt or Yeah. But but it's getting used to behavior that you notice more so than >> Yeah. Yeah. >> And a lot of them, some of them are just dumb. They look right up at the camera. >> But that's
that's going to be noticed after, right? after it's >> not like a bus driver I hope he's not looking at the camera, you know. >> So, it's kind of one of those you're >> you're kind of already behind on it for lack of a better term. >> Yeah. Usually what happens in a
situation like that is it's reported to the driver by someone back there, you know, because there most of them are so aromatic that it just >> and so you use it to confirm almost always. Yeah. It's not like >> you have the manpower to sit there and review
>> tape. That's what it takes. That's what it takes to discipline. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Because I can't just say all six kids in the back of the bus, you're done. >> The old COVID days when they were within four feet of each other or whatever, they were all out. But no, not now.
>> It is one of the behaviors, and Greg hinted on this earlier, those kids are breaking the law. Yeah. They're not just breaking the rules of the bus. It's not like horsing around and throwing food where you're breaking the rules on the bus. they're breaking the law when they're doing that on our
bus. And so there's not a lot of grace given in those cases. Those kids are they get a warning and they're done for the year um because they broke the law twice on a bus. So, um, and parents aren't necessarily always happy about that, of course, because they have to
rearrange their whole life sometimes to get their kid to school, but, um, it's just very different than throwing food and horse play. They're breaking the law. Um, you you mentioned the the software,
right? The >> Yep. the uh my ride, I believe it's referred to as whatever. Um, how how many years have we had that now? >> This is the second year that we've used it in full force and >> and it sounds like it's getting even better
now for you, right? >> You know, we were touching on that a little bit early, too. But, uh, yeah, it's been a lot better. Our cell service up here isn't the best, you know. So, when you're this driver's cutting across one up there, it's kind of spotty. Uh
the other issues that we have is I had a driver log in as bus 34. Oh, he wasn't bus 34. He was 24. So that kind of threw things back and forth and but >> you then you had two 34s out there.
>> Yeah. Two. One's over on Sunny Beach and one's down on >> Yeah. >> So that that was kind of a fun thing, but the call volume has dropped to to nothing. Now, are we >> you know, are we pretty much utilizing
all its capabilities at this point or are there some features that were still, you know, anytime I've brought on a software, right? You want to kind of take it in steps because there's usually a lot of stuff that just takes time for people to learn. Are we pretty much fully implementing it? Do you think at
this point? >> We're not yet. Uh there's a lot of stuff that we can do. Timekeeping stuff like that that I don't even want to explore. Pre-trips, drivers doing their pre-trips. It's the last thing I want is them carrying a tablet around out there on their bus. Uh the the scan on cards.
That was one thing that that we want to get going. >> But what we did this year is in our letter, we put it out to the parents. If you want it, we'll give you one. And we've we've either got 22 parents or 22 or 22 kids or 26 kids that need to have
a card. >> Okay. >> You know, so that's where we are. The the want is not nearly as high as I thought it was going to be. >> Not when you talk about 3K you talked about earlier, right? Yeah. Potential bus students there. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Um does, you know, you've talked
about routing being a challenging position, right? Does this does this software actually have some interfaces with routing an ability to help on that or you know I'm just looking at that job satisfaction or or trying to get the
requirements of that job potentially down. Is there something that we could potentially implement or look at helping you implement sooner that might help that position? >> So it it provides turnbyturn navigation for the drivers. Okay. Okay. And then
the routing specialists build the route. >> Y >> what we run into is as a routing specialist, you know, there's just a lot of hurry up and get this done. Oh, we can't do that. And then they argue with parents at times because, well, we can't give you three different spots to drop
your kids off, you know? I mean, so there's there's a lot there in that side of things. Also, just the training, you know, like I said, you go through this software and this this training process and training and training and then they realize that uh you know what, I think I'm going to go to something that's a
little bit less stressful. >> When when we lose people from those positions, where are we losing them to typically? Is it to another busing service or are they just going outside to other industries?
>> Some of them go some of them go internal. >> Okay. Okay. >> Known to different openings, >> you just are tired of the stress of this position. It's not worth the pay for that little bit of >> Okay. >> And and just to to look back, uh when I
became the transportation director, I had a revolving door of mechanics for a small period. And I'll go back even further. When I was hired in 2006, I had the same because I was I was offered a position by Itasa County, Grand Rapids
Area Schools, and then there was another one too that I was really interested in. I forget which one it was, but anyways, they were all the same. They were all the same. Few years down the road, that changed >> as far as pay or benefit. As far as
paying pay and benefits, yeah, county and and and Grand Rapids schools was the same. So, I I lobbyed to get that lifted up. >> Got four great mechanics. Haven't lost a one since then. >> Okay, >> that's the thing. I've always been under
the impression that you get a bunch of money, you're going to spend it, and you're not going to be happy. You know, a raise isn't going to do it, but that's just worked for the mechanics perfectly. And if you know if I could have my office staff compensated a little better, I'd sleep a lot better at night.
>> Okay. Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> Anybody else? >> Thank you. >> All right. Thank you for the opportunity. >> We're going to adjourn the workshop at this point and we'll come back into session in about two minutes for the
regular school board meeting. Hello. >> Good to see you today. People got nervous when we first started that K12 ride app because they thought we were following the kids around.
>> They thought we were tracking their individual kid. >> Which that's what the badge does. >> Sure. Oh, yeah. >> But it was just No, no, no. We're just tracking the bus that your kid is supposed to be on, >> right? >> Yeah. People got really nervous. Tin
foil hat sort of like Let me know when you're ready, Julie. >> Yeah. Isn't it like a fleet service? >> Yeah. >> We're going to call the meeting to order. >> Please stand for the pledge. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. First item on the agenda is to approve the agenda with the addition of item
7FX. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >> Moved by Ashley. Second. >> Second. >> Second by Dave. Discussion. >> Julie, we need a roll call vote. >> Yes, please.
>> All right. Well, Tom Gustiffson, >> yes. >> David Marty, >> yes. >> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cowen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes. >> And Melissa Bar, >> yes. Thank you. >> The agenda is approved.
>> Can I ask one question? Um Melissa's attending remotely. Melissa, do you have camera available today? >> I do. I just pulled up so I'm just going to go into my house. I've been in the car. >> Okay. Thank you.
>> Yep. >> Next item on the agenda. Approve field trip request from Big Fork School to Washington DC March 2026. Michelle Hill. >> Yes, I'm right here.
>> Can you tell us just a little bit about your trip? >> Yes. I'd like to take the school board I mean the school council members to Washington DC and it would be approved I would be using the um all the costs
would be handled through fundraising and it's just going to be the student council kids and being future leaders themselves I think it's important for them to learn how to represent others and I'll be going through explorica which is a school approved organization
Thank you. Do I have a motion to approve the field trip request from Big Fork? >> So moved. >> Moved by Ashley. Second. >> Second. David. >> Second by David. Discussion. Hearing none. Julie, can we have a roll
call vote? >> Start with David Marty. >> Yes. >> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cowen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes. Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> And Tom Gustoson, >> yes. >> Thank you.
>> Field trip request from Big Fork School to Washington DC is approved. >> Next item on the agenda. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Thank you, Michelle. Approve the field trip request uh from Robert J. Elkington Middle School to
Washington DC and New York. Angie Carile. >> Hello. My name is Angie Carile and I have had the privilege of taking 297 people to Washington DC over the last five years. Um so first I just I just
returned from my last trip in October. I had 76 people with us and Julie I have just a quick video if you want to show that now. Does that will it work? Just a quick summary of some of our pictures and a little bit of what we did. It's pretty It's a pretty amazing trip.
and sitt long. Hey hey hey. So, just a quick overview. Like I said, it's it's a pretty amazing trip. It's very fast-paced. Um, we leave at well, the last couple years we left about 1:30 in the morning and we get on a plane in
Minneapolis at about 7. We hit the ground running at well, we get there about 10 o'clock and we go till 10 every night. Um we have a group of wonderful staff chaprons different group each year. I have had the pleasure of having to be able to take 24 different staff
members to to Washington DC for the first time which is pretty amazing that I'm able to bring different people each time, different staff members who can then bring that experience back to their students, whatever grade level it is. Um we've had grandparents go with us and aunts and uncles and um it's it's just
an amazing trip. So I would like to ask for approval to go again next year. um October se October October 7th through the 11th and um and I guess we'll start signing kids up as soon as I can get started. It's a pretty popular trip and
um last year we had some we were able to give scholarships to eight different students for different amounts. We do fundraising. Uh we had a wonderful donor last year that helped us a ton so we didn't have to charge for the bus cost and that helped with the scholarships and we do a lot of
fundraising. selling a lot of chocolate and a lot of Laffy Taffy. >> Have a motion to approve the trip. >> So moved. Moved >> by Dave. Second. >> Second. >> Second by Ashley. Discussion or questions? >> I guess I had a couple real quick ones
because this came through as a as an RGEMS activity. What age are are these students? >> We sign them up in seventh grade and then we go October of their eighth grade year. Okay. So, and we do like a because because most of the trips at least that
I've been involved in approval have been a little older kids, right? Group. Do we still kind of It looked like a 10 to one ratio you're trying to do with with students to >> Yep. This 10 to one. We have about nine groups with >> And this is the same age group you've been doing historically. Okay. No, I was
just kind of curious. I in my mind I thought with younger kids you might want a little >> Well, >> different ratio, right? Yeah. Yeah. We stick with the 9 to1. Um the chaprons are on pretty heavy duty starting at uh 7 in the morning waking the students up and um eating meals with them and and
checking them into bed every night at 10:30. Yeah, it's >> can imagine >> it's intense. >> Okay, that that was my only question. >> Any other questions or discussion? I appreciate that this is happening uh during the uh uh school break so
students are not missing uh educational time in the classroom. >> Actually, we go right before MEA and then we get back the Monday of MEA. Well, Monday morning at about 5 in the morning, so they do miss two days of school. >> Okay. Thank you.
Like I went on this trip when I was in seventh grade and it was a really great experience and I learned a lot um while I was there. Yeah. >> And and you choose to participate in the at the council here now. So Huh. Okay.
>> Julie, could we have a roll call vote? >> Certainly. Mark Schroeder. >> Yes. >> Dave Cowen. >> Yes. >> Ashley Goodman. >> Yes. Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Tom Gustoson, >> yes. >> And David Marty, >> yes.
>> Field trip request uh to Washington DC, New York is approved. >> Have fun, Angie. >> Thank you. >> Next item on the agenda, principal report, West Elementary, Sean Martinson.
Good evening. Thanks for letting me come. Uh, just so you don't ask later on, I hit my head on one of the trucks at the firehouse. >> You don't have here. You can't really cover it up. Um, so I've been asked to present about West Elementary School tonight. Greg was here earlier. Uh, I did not bring any visuals to start with,
but I would like to end, and it's about eight minutes, but it's gold. So now you're going to anticipate that a video with some questions that I prompted to the students at our school. I'll tell you kind of afterwards why I asked the questions that I asked, but I can tell you that it was uh not super planned
out. It was very much the kids that were available, they were not prompted. So, now that you're waiting for that, I'm going to talk about a bunch of other stuff. So, for those of you that don't remember, West uh West West Rapids Elementary School is one of the newer buildings that was built whenever it was built, but we started in 2020 2021. Uh I
did run this by Clayton because I had in my head that we'd been there three years before we made our first switch, but it was four. So the first year that we were at West, we became a K5 school. Uh and that was when Murphy closed, Forest Lake closed, Southwest closed. Uh right during uh not necessarily like during
the pandemic, but a lot of the pandemic era things were happening and going on. So that group of kids going through, it's hard to say if they're truly a tough group, but I do remember that fifth grade group from the first first year was a really tough group and they've been a really tough group overall. You kind of get your reputation
as you go through, but it's not really fair to them in the sense of what was going on at the time period. They were asked to do a lot. They had come from other schools. They had joined. We had mixed staff. We had mixed parents. We had missed we had mixed all sorts of different things. That group in K through five, if you looked at them today, those are our fifth through 10th
graders that came to West. But keep in mind, we had two mirror image K5 schools. So I had half and then the other building had the other half. We went through year two and year three with no quote unquote changes. But then in year four there were no quote unquote changes. But we then knew that we were
going to go to a K through2 building. So then 2024 25 that's when we switched to a K2 building. So for kindergarteners it was nothing new but it was new for families again. It was another mix. It was mix of staff students in first and second grade
if they were already at west they were already at west. If they came from east or other buildings they came in. So there was another uh change there. I won't really call it out later. So I'll just say it now. Part of why I bring this up is stability is a really big thing for kids. And it's not just kids but it's for adult for adults just that
common understanding expectations and to know what's coming. So for me, because often we'll be asked like, "What could you do to help us?" Stability. Like that's the one of the biggest things, create relationships with kids and have the stability with them. Switching to a K through2 building, the nice thing selfishly is that rather than a six-year
grade spread of worrying about, it's a three-year grade spread. Um the the flip side of that coin is now I don't get kids for six years. So all those things that I really loved, I get for three years. For all those things I really don't like, I get for three years. So there's kind of a give and take. We're
in year two now. Um, and I don't want to take any credit away from anybody. That, um, consistency is probably one of the biggest things that I noticed this year. And I'll cover a few things that either changed, were tweaked, or are just year two. Um, one of the things I
remember when we were talking about the new schools was the concern about kids in transitioning schools. I want to honor that it that it can be a struggle for kids, but the flip side is that's a really that's a really surface level view. for kids that have a good support system in place that they have a good
district that's supporting them and their family. I just want to share that there's more to that. So, for example, my own kids, and granted for kindergarten it was a choice because they went with their mother at Cohasset. But my high schooler now, he started at Cohasset, went to Murphy, went to West,
went to the middle school, went to the high school. Of those five transitions, and he's now in was it ninth grade? He's now in ninth grade. Of those five transitions, only one was a choice. The rest he had to do. I'd like to think that he's doing really well, but again, when we say that a transition is hard
for a kid, that's real surface level look. I think he has a good support system. He has friends. I think the staff have been great with him. My son Gino, the same thing. He started at Cohasset by choice and then he came to West and East and the middle school. So, he's one of those kids that's now going
through seeing multiple transitions. When we talked about what these transitions might be like, dirty little secret, I didn't grow up in Grand Rapids. People think I came with the building like I have been here forever now but the district that I grew
up in we were a K4 56 78 912 so I went through four transitions and I think I turned out reasonably well or at least I can't blame the schools for any issues that I have. But the point being there I hope that you don't hear um negatives or
complaints in the sense of a K2 building. I've seen a lot of really good benefits. Kindergarteners, they are seeing older students still model behavior. They're second graders now rather than fifth graders. And for somebody who's worked my entire career in the K12, there's a big difference between a K and a fifth and a high
school kids. High school kids are great, but you bring a whole different set of problems when you get to be older. So, um, Greg did talk a little bit earlier about vaping. Thankfully, not as much. I'm not going to be plead ignorance, but really not as much at the K2 level. So, just a reminder, we are a K through2
building now. Um, we had a really strong start. We've already had a full year under our belt. A lot of the transitions and systems we had in place. If we didn't change anything, if you were a West family, it wasn't a it wasn't a huge transitional change for some of our process. If you came from East or a new
school, it could have it could have been really difficult at first to kind of figure out what we did and why. Now, it's kind of it's the west way. Well, this is what we do at West. This is what we do at East. This is what we do at the middle school. Our systems are definitely more consistent. Our routines are stronger. Um staff have been
together for a full year now. So families, our work last year really did lay what I believe to be a good foundation starting off in our district. A couple things that we did change this year is we added an Americanore rep. So this would be a staff member that works
specifically with K through2 students and really started the year off with our kindergarten students that were fresh to the building. And that would be could be doing different things like um problem solving regulation connection building, different small group work or even onetoone check and connect check
how a kids doing check at the end of the day. We also moved recess before lunch. This is something that we had done at Murphy when I was there as well. I could spend a whole session talking to you about the benefits of recess before lunch. Kids go outside, they come in, they're ready to eat, they've ran off all their energy. We also switched this
year to have the entire grade level together. In the past, our schedule kind of made us have to mix the grades. I'll just tell you, the whole grade level together works much much better. Uh recess, we also switched to the entire grade level going out at the same time. Spoiler alert, you will hear some of the
kids talk. I did not prompt them. That is one of the favorite things of the kids. I get to go outside and see my friends. We also have half of our staff. So, the half the kindergarten teachers go out to recess, half of them go to lunch, and then they swap. What you then see is, so
the kids say things like, "I get to see all my friends." The teachers say things like, "I get to see all the kids." So all of a sudden, the kindergarten teacher gets to see kids from all the classes at both recess and lunch. Um, it wasn't by accident. It was a very
concerted effort by our staff and our leadership team to look at what would be good for kids. It does work out good in our schedule, which we have to do and we have to work on, but we did make some really good decisions that were for the kids. I ask them what their favorite part of the day is. If I were to ask you what your favorite part of school was in
elementary, do you know what you'd say? Joke all you want. It's the same now. Times have not changed. What would you say? >> Gym. Recess. >> Lunch. Recess. Gym. And if you were like super super nerdy, you probably said like science or you'd have something else. But that just to give it away
later on, you're going to you'll hear it again. I didn't prompt it. It's the same things even with a different generation. We're into our second year with Wit and Wisdom. We're focusing on pacing, scaffolding, shared planning. Think of year two like, okay, you've gotten everything out of the box. You've done
what you thought was the best you could. You're into year two, you're looking back and go, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know that." Now, year two, much more efficient. Again, didn't prompt the kids. The question is something like, "What's your favorite part of Wit and Wisdom?" All the answers are theirs, but it's interesting what the kids shared.
At the same time, we're in year year one of UFly foundational tra or sorry, instruction with staff and students. I did ask them a question, too. What's your favorite part of UFly? It's exciting to see staff invest in new learning training partnership working with students. Uh operational
improvements, some stuff behind the scenes. Dropoff was moved 15 minutes earlier this year. I really wasn't a fan of that. I I would tell parents the same thing. Like, it wasn't a you thing. it was that being able to staff that time is really
difficult because a majority of my staff isn't on until 8, our staff, my staff until 8. What we found out was that I was wrong. Switching to 7:50, adding 15 minutes from last year was just like a breath. Uh families could come earlier, they had more time to stagger, and we
actually were able to staff. And part of that goes back to the business office and the superintendent supporting us saying, "If we're going to do this, I've got to get that staffed." And this year, thankfully, we have we had a really consistent group of pair of professionals. Um, we made some adjustments to our pickup procedures. I
won't bore you with the details, but the hope was to get our line that was the slowest a little bit faster and our line that was the fastest take a little bit longer and kind of meet in the middle. What we had happen is this. They both went back. We're getting done at approximately 3:00 to 3:05, which again
bores you in my world. That means contractually every day I now have staff that can work partner team until 3:30. When parent pickup takes longer, I have less time to work with staff. They have less time to work with their colleagues. They have less time to plan. And the
reality is their time is extremely um it's really important. I'll just say that. I won't try to color it in any other way. So being able to tighten that up has been amazing. Um, a lot of that goes to the staff and the change and families just following those procedures and just trusting and believing us like
we know what we're doing much much faster. That reclaimed time, I can't stress enough collaboration and planning. Staff can now come in. One of our first staff meetings that we had this year, typically we'd be like, "Okay, when are we going to start when kindergarten comes in?" Because they
were the slowest line. This year they came in before the other line and they thought the meeting was canceled because they had now beat the other line which was great. So it is a race some days. What am I most proud of? A positive collaborative environment of staff
working. I'm not going to come to the board and say it's 100%. Like I don't have seven of seven or 10 of 10 on every team perfect. But what I do have is a majority at every team, every department, every level looking at our strategic directions. like I don't have to necessarily tell them, but they're
living it. Proud papa moment. Um, if you wouldn't mind playing that video, uh, Julie, and then I'll point out a couple things afterwards. I won't tell you my favorite kit is. I'm not supposed to have favorites, but one of them's in there.
It is about eight minutes. I'm completely biased. I think it's a great eight minutes. What do you like most about your school day? Um Reese's and the to snack and and um which
lunch. >> Math. >> Math. >> Probably music. >> Music. >> Oh my god. >> Okay. So, my favorite part is um recess cuz you get to see my friends. >> Get to see your friends. Do you get to see just your class or you get to see all the kids?
>> School. >> Recess. >> Recess. >> Recess. >> Lunch. Lunch. Recess. And gym. >> Sometimes sometimes I chase some of the boys that I >> Did you catch them? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Tell me what you like about gym.
>> Um, we get to play fun games together. >> Yeah. Really fun games. >> Who's your teacher in gym? >> Mrs. Last year was Mrs. Don. >> What do you like about all lunch? Um, you eat a lot of candy. >> And uh um every Friday Bristol and Arya
and me get to eat with Mrs. Fan. That's why I like it. >> Yeah. >> And it is Friday. >> Mrs. Fan spoils everyone. >> What's something you've learned this year that you're proud of? >> Uh counting to 100. That was wrong. And
I'm also proud of counting to 100. >> I don't know. getting better at reading and reading chapter books. >> I know one. >> What's one? >> Math. >> Math. What are you learning in math? >> Um, >> equals
>> equals >> math. Math. >> Math. >> Math. >> One time when I was at math group, I got 100%. >> Nice. >> You guys all went with math really fast. >> Yeah. >> Wow. Um, >> the whole elephant.
>> The whole alphabet. >> Whole alphabet. >> The vowels. >> The vowels. >> My name. >> Your name. Do you write it? Spell it. Do you? >> Yeah. I know how to spell my name, but not my middle name.
>> It's okay. >> I know how to spell my last name. >> You know how to spell your last name now? Holy cow. >> I know how to spell my last name and my first name. I know how to spell my last name. >> One more. Let's do our triangle. Ready?
>> Go. >> Yes. Good job. >> Nice job. Your turn. Here. >> Oh, no. Thank you. Who helps you at school and how do they help you?
>> Um, my teacher, she helps me do you fly chickens and and you fly. >> Who's your teacher? >> Mrs. Jagger. >> Mrs. Jagger. What do you >> The teacher helps us. >> Teacher, how does the teacher help you?
by helping us learn >> and by figuring stuff out. >> Yeah. Do >> I remember correctly? >> Mom, >> your mom see mom. >> My mom. >> Your mom. >> Teacher. >> Your teacher. >> My teacher. >> Your teacher. >> Oh, I from last year. Sometimes my
brothers help me at home and then I remember it in my head and then I bring it with me to school. >> Your mom or your teachers help you at school? >> Uh, she help you at lunch. helps you at lunch. That's right. Your teacher goes to lunch with you sometimes, doesn't
she? >> Every day now. >> Every day. Now, how do you like that? >> Pretty good. Pretty good. >> My mama goes to lunch with me. >> And you get >> some of our friends help us. Help. Mrs. Brown. >> Mrs. Fanny.
>> Mrs. Fanny. Mrs. My teachers. >> How do they help you? >> By teaching us. >> Teaching. >> Mrs. Homework. by learning by by helping by helping people
>> by helping us learn. >> What What do you like about lunch and recess? >> Lunch is like so good because I can because I can eat even on the bus. I can eat too. Finally.
>> Do you eat hot lunch or cold lunch? >> This time I'm eating hot lunch. If I get picked up oi oi, I get food from McDonald's. If I don't, I get ice cream. >> At lunch, I like talking with my
friends. >> At least I don't know. >> At recess, I like playing soccer. And lunch, I like talking. Um,
I like having hot lunch. >> Hot lunch. School lunch is really good, isn't it? >> Yeah, it's amazing. >> The cheese pizza. I love it. >> I love cheese pizza. >> Um, >> at recess, um, the only reason why I really like recess is because I get to
see all my preschool friends. >> What do you guys like about lunch and recess? >> Um, I get to play with friends and I they get to talk to friends. >> Play with friends. Talk with friends. It's yummy food. >> Me and Bristol sometimes play tag outside. >> Tag outside.
>> One time I tried to eat my sleeve off before. >> In Witt and Wisdom, what's a story or topic you really like learning about? >> Tomas and the library lady. >> What did you learn about Tomas and the library lady?
>> I learned using your imagination about books is super helpful. I think the Biblio Burrow. >> Yeah, the Biblio was a really good one. >> It's Biblio Burrow means a library movie
and there's some donkeys carrying books to different places. >> Words. Do you remember the last story you guys read? >> Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. >> Chicka Boom Boom. What did you guys learn doing Chicka Chicka Boom Boom? >> Letters. >> Letters. >> Letters. >> Words. >> Words.
>> Did you do any writing at all? Yes. >> What kind of writing did you do? >> Uh, >> we waited tick boom boom. >> Was there enough room? >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> Oh, that me.
>> Green eggs and ham. >> Oh, Tomas in a library. >> Yeah. >> And then >> what was the library one, Millie? >> Tomas library. >> What's that book about? >> Waiting for the biblio one, too. >> Yeah. >> Biblio. >> My library needs a camel. Oh, and the
ABC book. >> Not no I went to >> What was the Biblio burrow? >> The Biblio Burrow is like he's on a donkey and he brings the books >> and a girl is waiting for him and he never came back >> until the end
>> until the end >> until the end of December. I don't know the year. >> All right. How about >> um Rock Top Top >> Cha Cha Boom Boo Cha Boom Boo. It's about when you wear tap shoes and and
it's all about a person dancing in the streets. >> It's about a person damping in It's about a dancing in the street. >> It's about um >> It's kind of like last time on Market School. >> Last one. What do you like about you fly
time? >> Um um I like about real fries because I can learn some couple new words every couple weeks.
>> Drawing. >> Done. >> Do you remember? Do you know what? Do you know what you're writing? Do you know what your UFly time is? >> Letters. Drawing letters. >> Letters. Drawing letters. >> It's It's pretty much right before snack too. >> It's right before.
>> The teacher always starves us out. >> Yeah, she starves us out. thinking of stuff >> that we get to write, >> right? >> We get to um put magnetic letters and make words out of it.
>> I like >> doing the sounds. >> I like doing >> I like the blending board. >> I like doing the board on the TV. >> The blending board >> on the TV. >> Oh, >> I like the paper stuck under the TV that
has words. Oh, like on the under the camera. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> So, there's a considerable amount of things our kids don't worry about. But some things that if you didn't notice it, some things that I did notice is they talked a lot about friendship, seeing all their friends. Uh they were
excited. They were genuinely excited when I asked them things like wit and wisdom. So, even, you know, when I was a kid, if you asked me my favorite parts, I would have said all the same things. The stuff that Greg talked about the bus, I would have said a lot and done a lot of the same things. What I wouldn't have said and I wouldn't have been excited about was like the wit and
wisdom question. I would not have been excited as a kid. I was excited when I was left to read my own materials. Um those were different classes. So for example, you heard biblio bureau more than once. Those were different classrooms covering the same content, the same
concepts, and the same high quality literature. Some things that they're proud about. Um, you heard math that they jumped to right away, which is which it was reassuring to hear kids say, things like that. What's my favorite? Music. We still have music. The kids love it. Who helps you at
school? I asked that purposefully because I wanted to hear what the kids would say. Like the one girl, the teacher. Like, yeah, the teacher. But you did hear other names in there. You heard little girl talk about her brothers, which she does have nice brothers. What do you like about lunch and recess? The kids hit on the things that we thought, but then you know, you
ask them like, "What do you like about I get to talk to my friends? If you didn't know it, you wouldn't know it." Like, yeah, it's normal to have different classes and friends. With the entire grade level, you see that group of kids coming together that I get to see my preschool friends. Yep. You get to see them. The reality with our time right
now is kids are expected to work as hard as the adults do. Like, they work hard when they go to recess. They're the kids aren't kidding. I get to run around. I get to play. I get to chase the boys. And I did ask her, "Did you catch them?" And the reason I asked that is because when I was a kid, I got in trouble for chasing the girls and catching them. And
my principal asked me, "Are you going to do it again?" And my answer was, "Yes." Like I was confused like, "What do you mean? Of course, I'm going to chase them tomorrow." But even in the UFly, if you saw kids saying, "We get to write." And they didn't just say we get to write, they were excited. and we're seeing
my formal and informal walkthroughs. The the considerable amount of time kids are spent engaged in their work is really exciting. So, I thank you for letting me share those. Um, there were a couple things that I could have made it shorter, but you needed to hear things like the child's teacher was starving
them out. So, for anybody watching, taking out of context, the teacher does not starve them. They have to work right before snack and then they get snack. So, I don't know if you have any questions for me, but I hope you appreciated the kids as much as I did. That was probably the best part of my week last week, having them come down
and interview them. >> Questions or comments? >> I I got few I guess com comment. I love the video. Thank Thank you. Um especially here, we look at numbers and we deal with a lot of things that aren't necessarily fun, right? Um, and it's
great to see those students have that interchange with with you and what's going on there that I really appreciate that myself. That's part I don't get to see very often. Right. Um Um, you know, you mentioned the stability,
right? That that's been a real concern for me when we've kind of looked at separating those that K through two and the and the >> older students. um you know just having that I know I know for my my grandson
I've looked and and we've looked at his his classes and it's like feels like he doesn't have a friend in a class every day. Um, I really appreciated the fact of what you talked about bringing those students together at noon or whatever, anytime you can so that you know when
those classes get separated like that, kids get separated, they do have that time to interchange at, right, and get that stability. I think that's a that's a big thing. Um, it's it's a unique situation for me because I grew up in, you know, I was in the same school
building from the time I was in kindergarten to 12th grade, right? So to see to come to a district this size and see that you've got all these buildings and kids moving around that that's a different different animal like you're saying and and I'm I appreciate the fact
that you're looking at that and thinking about that and one of the other concerns I've really had with it is here again uh that mentorship that you get within the students right that you know when we talk about K through five being in the same building and you have kids of kids
in the same family, fifth grader can help that kindergartener out, right? And can we get that second grader to do it? And I and I was really glad to hear you talking about that, right? I I mean, I don't know that there's an answer to
doing that, right? There's no substitute for that age difference, right? But but if we're if we're looking at it, it's important and I appreciate that. So that's all I have. Oh, I also you fly to hear you fly and
to hear wit and wisdom that the kids knew exactly what you were talking about when you use those acronyms. I thought that was impressive myself. I you know they clearly there's a consistent program going on because they knew exactly what you were talking about when
you when you brought those up. But >> anybody else >> David? >> Uh yes. Thank you. the uh the uh uh the energy in uh West is really pretty exciting. Uh and it's really clear when
you uh have your students speaking uh clearly that's that's strong. A little bit earlier this evening before we heard from you, we heard from Greg Olsen uh who said uh for transportation issues uh
the biggest challenge that he had was the weittles the uh uh K1 and two uh do you have a perspective on that? >> Yes, I do. I was talking in one of our so in the middle of our day we have
probably a rotating group of about three to five bus drivers that come and help us with lunch. The reality is we don't have enough staff and to have enough staff to help in the middle of the day. They need to be pulled from somewhere else. We don't have general education pairs anymore which is at the beginning
of my time but every pair of professional in that building has a job plus 10. Like they're busy. So, we have transportation drivers come over and I'd ask one of the drivers how he likes it. And he smiled right away and I said because I've driven bus before and I I
I'm a firefighter. I like to do all these different things. Driving bus is one of the most stressful things I have ever done. Raised four kids, work in public education, superintendent, pandemic, fire department, like all that stuff. Driving bus is a stressful
position. But it was interesting to hear him say how much he likes it because he can come and he can spend more time. They have such a short window to make a connection with kids when they get on the bus, when they get off the bus. Um I mentioned I've driven before. I've driven the activity routes. I've filled
in a couple times when the routes are short in town. Um but I think to your questions like what do we do? The hard part and the like the brutally honest truth is the last thing I want to do in my day is take on all the behavior referrals from the transportation department. But the reality is they're
my kids or our kids. So what I've done and it's kind of hit or miss depending on how tied up I am. I'll take all the referrals that I get or because I can see the referrals just like the parents can. >> Sure. >> Um I'll look at the referrals and bring kids in and we'll either talk about or watch safety videos or I'll make them do
an activity. Usually it's about three to five kids that have to come in. It's usually on a Friday. It's usually during a portion of their only time available during the day where I'm not pulling them from an activity, which is usually their recess. Um, now I don't I don't take all of it, but the reality is like
that is the like lunch and recess. There is no other time that you can pull a kid. So if you ever hear somebody say, you know, they're pulling my kid during class at the elementary and it's not an important time, that doesn't exist, folks. Like every minute of that day is accounted for.
So, I mean, the best thing is a is not only a relationship with the kids for Greg, but it's a relationship with the building and the parents. Um, most kids are not repeating. What we run into is we just the sheer quantity of kindergarteners, for example, when you have seven sections at my building and
two at Cohasset and one up at Big Fork. When you have two to 300 5-year-olds, they're going to do something stupid. And I probably should say it differently here, like they're going to do something that's developmentally appropriate for their age level >> because they're going to do it, but I'm
I'm like an old-timer now where that kids will do like when you're your age now, you should do things that are responsible. Like you're getting older, you should have made all those mistakes when you're younger. So part of it is when you hear that the referrals are higher for the younger kids, that's a bummer,
but it's working because as they get older, they should learn not to do it. like you do something dumb when you're young and you get caught, you get in trouble or you hopefully knew from the beginning that it wasn't okay and then you don't do it again. So I I wasn't surprised at the numbers like
>> Thank you. >> Anybody else? >> Yeah, I just have a couple things, Mark. First of all, I was watching you all when that video was on. And I hope you like had some joy there watching things
that go on in school that you don't get to see. You sit here and make decisions that are hard and deal with hard and and all those things. And there's beautiful things happening. And that was eight minutes of it. So, I hope that that hit you the way that I think Sean
>> do it every day. >> Yeah. So, um, take a moment and and I'm glad Tommy mentioned that, too. Second thing I wanted to mention is, uh, there there's a perspective or a narrative that, you know, kindergarten
should be this and that kids can't learn and have fun at the same time. Kids love to learn. It's exciting to be able to write your name. It's fun to be able to see yourself all of a sudden do math that
you couldn't do before. Those kids are simultaneously having the time of their life and they're learning. And so those things can happen at the same time. We just saw a dozen kids uh give evidence of that. Those were happy, excited kids
and they were learning, learning, learning all at the same time. So, um I think it's a good reminder that uh learning is its own reward and we just saw it. So, >> I appreciate you. >> I'm glad you guys enjoyed it because I
did have to cut out quite a bit. >> Not that it just got kind of long and there was two of them at first. It took a long time for them to warm up to realize they weren't in trouble. >> The little ones, they jump past it really quick like, "Oh, this is fun. We're with friends." But the the group of two that was too few. They were like,
"Where are we in trouble?" or something. No. That's why when I asked who's your what who your helpers are, she looked at me kind of like the teachers. >> I know. >> So yeah, thank you. And it's not lost on me that they get to do this every day. So >> thank you.
>> Thank you. >> Thanks for coming, Sean. Next item on the agenda, approve the minutes of the 101625 regular school board meeting. Do I have a motion? >> So moved, David. >> Moved by David. Do I have a second?
Second. >> Second by Dave. Discussion. >> Hearing none. Julie, can we have a roll call? >> Yep. Dave Cowen. >> Uh, yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes. >> Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Tom Gustiffson, >> yes. >> David Marty,
>> yes. >> And Mark Sharter, >> yes. >> Minutes are approved. Next item on the agenda, approve the September 2025 claims in the amount of 7,352,956.31. Do I have a motion?
>> Moved by Dave. Second. >> Second. >> Second by Ashley. Discussion. Hearing none. Julie. Can we have a roll call vote? >> Ashley Goodman. >> Yes. >> Melissa Bar. >> Yes. Tom Gustoson,
>> yes. >> David Marty, >> yes. >> Mark Sharter, >> yes. >> Dave Cowen, >> yes. >> September 2025 claims are approved. Next item on the agenda, approve the October 2025 claims. The amount of
7,671, $35.38. Do I have a motion? So moved by Dave. Do I have a second? >> Second, David. >> Second by David. Discussion. We have a second by Melissa. >> Yes. >> Y
>> discussion. >> I'll call vote. Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Tom Gustiffson, >> yes. >> David Marty, >> yes. >> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cowen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes.
October 25 claims are approved. Next item on the agenda, staffing indicator report. Casey, >> good evening board. Thank you for having me. I know I can't compete with some kindergarteners, but I truly am happy to
be here and I love pulling this data for you guys every year. So, um, I'll get going. So, we're talking about staffing today. See if I can get it to advance. >> Did Mr. >> Thank you.
Um, I'll touch on some highlights of how we're connected to the strategic directions of the district. On the top one there, a culture of trust, engagement, and belonging. One of the things we're really proud of in the human resource team is that we meet with
all of our employees one-on-one to go over all of their human resource um, information as well as their benefits. That's been something that we've added over the last year and a half and it's been really wellreceived
working on communications and making progress there on communicating in different avenues. It's working now, Julie. Okay. Staff information. We have five full-time human resource staff and that
supports the Grand Rapids area schools, the Nshwa, Kiwatan Schools, and Itasca Area Schools Collaborative. The positions are listed there and currently we do have each staff member performing the same duties for all three districts. We felt like that was a good
model because we can really get to be experts in those areas. Although we have considered maybe um looking at some ways to shift that. The student impact, all of the students districtwide are impacted by the staffing that we hire and bring into the
buildings. To start this current year, we had 561 certified employees and 484 casual and substitute employees. And I'll have a breakdown for you on the next slide. One thing that we talk about
a lot is how much our employees make up of our budget. 81% in the last year that we recently completed through an audit is spent on employees in the general fund. Here's a chart of our breakdown. This
although we have been reducing this chart has looked very similar over the years. So out of our 561 employees, 266 are teachers at about 47% ESPs at 105 and going down the list. So you can see
that about 66% of our staff are teachers and ESPs and then the the remaining third is all of those other support areas. Substitutes is an area that you guys as board members ask about a lot. Um, this
chart also has looked pretty consistent over the years. Um, we do have, you can see the number of certified employees and then the number of active subs that we started the year with. So, we have 180 substitutes. I do continue to feel
like we have enough subs in general in most of these areas. We just could use some better um engagement. So having the subs that we do have take more um more jobs in the year would be helpful.
And we do have some concerns moving into the new year with the Minnesota paid leave and how that will impact our subpool and making sure that we can cover those absences. I don't know. It's just tired today.
So this chart here shows you our fill rates over the years. Um unfortunately we don't have any data for last year. We shifted and you'll hear about this in a little bit but we shifted out of frontline for our um substitute system
which was our absence management system. And although we can see who worked, we can't see how many absences were unfilled. And then we no longer have access to IAS as part of that. So, we can't see um um Greenway and Hill City and some of those other districts, but
we did give you some year-to-date information. Our fill rates do look strong so far this year, but I will say that they are normally higher in the fall than once we hit the winter and some of those other seasons. So, it might be a touch misleading, but we are
kind of trending where we have been as far as fill rates. So this is a chart of the teacher subfill rates. You can see we're remaining pretty solid there. Um the one caveat I will say is
when when absences are filled within the building, they are marked as no sub needed. So that it won't show up as unable to fill. So they'll just cover it internally. Um the next thing, this is a new slide. this year. So, one thing you guys also
ask a lot about is vacancies or what positions have been difficult to fill. I will say in general positions go up and down each year. We maybe have some variables, but in general, our hourly positions have been difficult to fill.
Bus drivers, custodial, food service, um, and ESPs, we have struggled consistently with those positions, keeping them full and having them full to start the year. teachers depend on the subject area with special ed being the most difficult to
fill. And then you can see this year we have had some success filling teachers with other districts unfortunately reducing as well. We that helped us out. And then this year we started the year with our custodial and food service positions
filled which I don't remember the last time that's happened. They're not all full anymore, but we did start the year full there. Major concern, um, ESPs and bus drivers. So, we heard from Greg today, our ESP vacancies. We started the year with 11
vacancies. That's never happened in my nine years here. So, that's unfortunate. And that's with with reductions. We have less positions than we've had and we're still having a hard time filling them. So here is just kind of a snapshot of
what happened in the last year kind of in the HR realm. One of the biggest transitions this summer is moving to Red Rover for our substitute management system. We've been working over the years to streamline as many systems as we can
creating efficiencies in the department and also for employees. And unfortunately, as we've moved to Skyward, they don't have a submanagement system or a calling system. So, we looked out to the greater kind of Minnesota HR directors and Red Rover was
the highest recommended. We've been happy with the transition. It has done well for us. Most people that have had, you know, kind of minor concerns as they've been able to come in and meet with us, we've been able to answer all of them. So, there's some
different notifications and different things that um if people can stop into the office and chat with someone, we can usually resolve. Um but as you saw, our fill rates are looking good. So, people are able to get in. They're accessing the system. It's working well.
We held our first in-person subtraining day in a number of years, like since prior to COVID this summer. Part of that was making sure employees and subs felt supported in the transition to Red Rover, that they had their login and everything that they needed to get
going. We also have done surveys over the years of what they need. So part of that training, we were able to bring some of those um needs to them. We talked about deescalation training. Um Deb Miller was gracious to come. She's
one of our special ed teachers. Sean Martinson came and talked about safety and ALS training and then Dan Adams talked about classroom management and expectations for subs. We had 100% of our survey responses
saying that was helpful and um so we're really thankful that we were able to bring that day to them. We're continuing to transition staff. Everybody is clocking in and out electronically, but trying to get every single piece of paper electronic um as
much as we can. So, we're taking those in chunks as we can and then working to get our old personnel files scanned. We have over a thousand of them and that we're just kind of plugging away as we can. We're
well over halfway through. Evidence of success. So we have a very highly educated teaching staff with a high longevity. We have a higher than average um properly licensed staff.
Our HR team is continuing to improve processes and systems. Retirey insurance change. You guys have know a lot about this transition, but this transition to moving approximately 500 retirees into a new plan will save
our community money and will also save those retirees that pay a portion of their premiums money. Here's just a little bit of data on our teacher lensure. This current year we have one tier one teacher, two tier 2 teachers and then 10 out of field
permissions. So we have just under 5% of our teachers that are teaching out of their lensure. And the state average which is almost two years old now is 8.29. I expect that number has increased since then.
We do also have some innovative program permissions happening at IEC and ALC that aren't included there. Here's a snapshot of our teacher education. 68% of our teachers have a master's
degree or higher. 90% have credits beyond a bachelor's. And then our average longevity is 12.36, which is up from under 12 the previous year. Some of the barriers to improvement
budget, you guys know about this. Um we're down 84 staff members from um 1920. Part of that is vacancies as as you heard we had um 11 ESP vacancies,
but a lot of that is is just reductions. The biggest barrier in our office is mandates. Um, we talk about this a lot and you can just see in the last two years what we have been kind of tasked with that has come unfunded and you know
requires new systems in place sometimes new contract language orus a lot of tracking I'm not going to go through all of this but really what we have noticed is a lot of these mandates that are coming from the state don't seem to
understand what it's like to work in a school and have your staff that are only here 9 months or um for example providing sick leave for somebody who is an activity worker and comes in a couple times a year or a substitute whose
entire job is to fill in for someone else who's sick and now you're somehow to provide sick leave. it just doesn't always make a lot of sense and that makes it difficult for us to administer and track and our systems aren't designed to do a lot of that. So
the top four the earn sick and safe time um we have 500 casual staff so that was new trying to get them tracked on there. unemployment is, you know, mostly the resignations. It's a concern on that on that. The union data is just kind of
more more paperwork. Wage theft is a law that requires reporting pay to employees, even those casual employees. And then coming in January, the Minnesota paid leave and the break law changes are the things that we're
currently working through now and making sure that we'll be in compliance in January. Um changes for the upcoming year. Not a lot of changes, just kind of working through what we have going right now. We're working on contract
negotiations and we'll want to get all of those settled. completing the transition of the 65 plus retirees and and dependent to the new plan. Continuing to look for ways to create in efficiencies so we can better support
employees. Backloading our old paper files. Um we're still looking for a new process for our teacher lane changes as a cost-saving method. Um we're trying to get a way get a new um parah educator test instead of the
parah pro which could help some of our ESPs become qualified easier um and also maybe help with some of the cost barrier of getting people to apply for those positions and then the new mandates.
Any questions? >> I got one question but um Casey, you mentioned that the tenure the average tenure at Grand Rapid Schools is 12.36 years for teachers. Do you know that how that compares to the state average? >> I don't I was not able to find that. >> Okay.
>> Any other questions or comments? >> Yeah, I I want um you mentioned mandates, right? And you know, the fact that they've costed us um as a district. Um it looks like we've got a couple
taking effect in January here. Are there any any additional ones that are kind of in the pipeline that you're aware of that might significantly cost for us yet that you know are maybe a year down or
>> Yeah, >> because I mean obviously some of these were brought into a while back and we've kind of they've been working on them for a while. I'm not aware of anything um personnel or staffing related that's coming um with costs.
>> Okay. >> Thank you. >> I hope that we'll get a calm year so we can finish our negotiations. >> Thank you, Casey. >> You're welcome. >> Thank you. >> Next item on the agenda, approve the uh
retirement of Karen Elander. Casey, >> we have one retirement today. Karen Elander, Food and Nutrition Retirement. Karen has served for 10 years. I'm recommending approval. >> A motion to approve. >> So moved.
>> Moved by Ashley. Second. >> Second. David. >> Second by David. Discussion, >> comments. >> We would thank her for her service. Uh, Julie, can we have a roll call? >> Certainly. Tom Gustoson, >> yes.
>> David Marty, >> yes. >> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cowen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes. >> Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Uh, the retirement is approved. Next item on the agenda, approve the
consent agenda. Reminder that uh these are routine items and do not require discussion. Do I have a motion? >> So moved. >> Moved by Ashley. Do I have a second? >> Second. David. >> Second by David.
>> Julie. Can we have a roll call vote? >> David Marty. >> Yes. >> Mark Schroeder. >> Yes. >> Dave Cohen. >> Yes. >> Ashley Goodman. >> Yes. Melissa Bar. >> Yes. >> Tom Gustiffson. >> Yes.
>> Consent agenda is approved. Next item on the agenda. Approve the annual certification of higher threshold in uniform grant guidance policy 721. Cara. >> Yes. Very exciting topic here. Um this
policy is required for our federal federal funds. um it is only related to our federal funds. Um because we um were a low-risisk audi and in the state of Minnesota we could have a higher micro purchase level from 10,000 to 25,000 and
we just have to certify that every year and because we continue to be a low-risk oddity. We just need to certify that and the board has to agree to it. So I'm asking for you to approve that. Do >> have a motion to approve that. Move by
Dave. Second. Second. >> Second by Ashley. Discussion. >> Couple of questions for me, I guess, in my mind. Um, it's a it's a yearly certification. It takes effect September to September or
what's kind of a >> Yeah. Yep. year for um and do do we as a district I mean we've got some staffing changes happening now is there should we be considering this I
guess is what I'm I'm thinking how how how much how will it affect us to not have this >> it will just mean that we have to do a little more um work on purchases between
10,000 and 25,000 for anything purchased with federal funds. So, special ed, food service, um title, those are the the main ones. >> In in your opinion, would that be a lot of extra work for your position or
>> No, it it wouldn't be a lot of extra work. Um staff put in so much due diligence the way it is with every purchase they make. Um, this is just something that is kind of um a nice safety net to have in case we didn't do
that extra step for something between 10 and $25,000. But I'm not worried about staff not doing that. >> Any further discussion or questions? Julie, can we have a roll call vote? >> David Marty, >> yes.
>> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cohen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes. Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Tom Gustiffson, >> yes. >> The annual certification for the higher threshold of uniform grant guidance
policy 721 is approved. Next item on the agenda, approve Minnesota State High School League form a grant application resolutions for Big Fork High School and Grand Rapids High School. Superintendent Gross.
Yeah, I'm bringing this to you on behalf of Dale Christie and Heather Heather Loved Doll. This is an annual and customary grant application that uh we submit to the high school league. Uh form A is just the the uh the part of
the process for this first round of grants essentially. And we use these dollars annually to reduce the um reduce the cost of fees and uh for student activities. So I would recommend approval.
>> Move David. Moved by David. Second. >> Second. >> Second by Ashley. Discussion >> hearing none. Julie, can we have a roll call vote? >> Mark Schroeder, >> yes. >> Dave Cohen, >> yes. >> Ashley Goodman, >> yes.
>> Melissa Bar, >> yes. >> Tom Gustiffson, >> yes. >> And David Marty, >> yes. >> The grant application is approved. Next item on the agenda is for information only.
The truth and taxation public meeting is scheduled for December 8th, 2025 at 6 PM in the ISD 318 ed services center boardroom. Any questions about that? >> Uh Mr. Cherry, is that just going to be
incorporated into the workshop then in that meeting? >> Yes. >> Yeah, they will. They'll go back to back. >> Okay. >> Yep. >> Perfect. Thanks. Next item on the agenda, uh, the Big Fork School Advisory
Committee update. Kayla Scriber. Thank you, Chair Schroeder. Good evening, members of the board. I hope you can hear me. Okay, I am calling in from deer camp, so I'm not going to turn my camera on because I just don't have much signal. Uh, my name is Kayla Scriber. I am
chairing the advisory committee for Big Fork school this year. I submitted a highle little bit of a report and I just want to thank you for including the advisory committee on your agenda. Um very briefly uh we have finalized our
committee members for this school year, the 2526 year and I have provided you with a roster of their names. We have a great group of community members, parent, staff, administration, and of course our schoolboard member representatives. Um, I want to give
those guys a shout out. We really appreciate you coming. Uh, we added some minor tweaks to our charter. So, we're going to have some officer roles and um do a little bit of changing to the selection process for members just so if
we have a whole bunch of interests in the committee, we have a process for that in place. So, those charter revisions will be submitted to you next month. Uh, we're super excited. I just wanted to share if you haven't seen the video, it's amazing. Lakeland PBS did a
um feature on our music program with our new music teacher. And so, I would be happy to share that with you if you haven't seen it. But, um, we're really grateful for, um, the work that the committee has done to advocate to having a music program in Big Fork again. and
um want to thank you for your support of that as well. It's been a huge success and a shout out to Miss A. Want to make sure that you have the invite to our Christmas um concerts this December and would love to see you there. The kids are just making huge progress and we
really appreciate her and everything she's done for our school. And our next priority area that we're focusing on this year, so we did a bunch of strategic planning and we created these buckets of work that we're working on. This year we're focusing on the student experience, which is class offerings, um
the the school building itself, um the culture of the school. And so it's kind of a big category, but we're excited to tackle it. We're also talking a lot about communication and how um the community and families um receive communication and engage communication.
So, we started that off last month with just taking an inventory of all the different ways that uh we hear about things um at Big Fork School and hope to um learn a bit about that and see if we can streamline it and make it easier for
families and uh community members to be engaged and know about all the awesome stuff that's going on at the school. So, um off to a great start the school year. Thank you again for your support and I'm happy to take any questions if you have any. Any questions?
>> Mr. Chair, one quick question. Um, when is the Christmas concert and what what time? >> I don't have it in my head, but I will send a note. >> Okay, that'd be great. Just uh >> if you could notify all board members, that would be great. >> Thank you, Kayla. >> That would be wonderful. Thank you. Yes.
>> Other comments? >> Thank you, Kayla. Thank you. >> Uh, next item on the agenda, community engagement survey results. Superintendent Gross.
>> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Uh, this summer the board um agreed to move forward with a community engagement process and we've been uh working through that. One of the first big items was to get a survey out
and get some data from our community. And so part of our plan was to share those results with you tonight. So um in on Friday, a summary came out, but we'll kind of go through this uh piece by
piece here, assuming we get uh get a go here. Let's see. Let's try this again. Oh, something's happening. Oh, let's see. All right. So, uh we did use thought
exchange for the survey and we had a great number of res uh responses. 833 uh people participated which I thought was a great number. Uh you know we could get into mathematically uh looking at
statistical significance and and things like that. I can tell you anecdotally as I watched the number of participants climb from 100 to 300 to 400 to 700. I could see the responses start to stabilize and kind of land in a
particular place. Right? And so, um, I think we have a good we can get a good handle on where, um, people are at. You can see here 66% of the people that responded were parents or had kids in
our schools. I think that's great that uh, families were active and uh, almost a quarter were current or former employees, which I think also is a voice that we need to make sure and recognize. The survey ran for about two weeks and
was sent out numerous ways. So there was an ad in the paper, pushed out on Facebook a bunch. I know our schools sent out communication in in their communications whether that was through their digital or emails or newsletters.
And then in the district um newsletter that we sent out again that went over to that went out to 9,000 I I believe addresses. So, um, that was when we really saw our participation spike because again it was just so prevalent
out there. Um, I'm going to kind of go through the questions uh uh one by one here. Not quite one by one, but sort of hit the high points of some. I did uh Julie provided you a copy of the questions if you sort of want to refer to what these
looked like um and what the options were. uh you can see that that uh the demographic breakdown of people that live here, how long they have. I think that's interesting to see just the duration that almost a third of the
people that responded have lived here for over 30 years. Um I think that's really unique. Um and also speaks to the, you know, the demographics and the longevity in our community. One of the questions we asked had to do with rating the quality of education and
you can see that 70% rated quality uh as good or excellent. Um, and so that was a I think a good representation and some good information, you know, and a lot of these there's always like a a piece of good information and also room for
growth and and that's how I think we can look at all these, but we'll help as we move through the next eight or 10 months uh learning what we need to to emphasize. this question uh there this wordcloud is a response to you know what do people
like the most about our our schools and our subcommittee will have a chance to take a deeper dive into the qualitative component of this but um if you know how these word clouds work the more often a word shows up the larger the word
appears so you can get a sense of where people where people's minds were same kind of an approach. This one was uh you know, what do you think is the most serious issue facing our school district? And I think um it's
I hesitate to say that it's good because I don't like this is the answer. Um but I think it's good that the the there is awareness in our community that funding is a is a problem. And so I think that's good. Um
I think you know we've done a lot to try to get that message out and uh it's landing. This question got at uh was about how well do we meet the learning needs of students? And while 70% most in all is a
good number, I I as a superintendent, I think there's room to improve here. Uh specifically in that some students category. And so uh you know, as we think about our strategic directions, uh one of those is about equitable access, one of them is about belonging. And and
that's where this uh efforts there need to pay off. activities. People are uh people are grateful for those have high opinions of our activities. Um you know and we had again some qualitative and we get into the other there was an opportunity for
short answer responses there and sometimes that was I'm not aware of what the activities are. Sometimes it was you know seems like we talked too much about activities. Um but uh that data is available too but overall positive response on this question.
This uh this question was a response to uh kind of an open-ended, you know, what phrase comes to mind when you think about our school district. You see community here show up large and then later uh community involvement was highly rated in a different type of
question. So I think that's interesting. Um and uh kind of there's a story there. We get into financial stewardship. Um we have about 43% that agree or strongly agree that uh the board and administration are good financial
stewards. Um on the disagree side, we have a number that's uh real close to the same. in that disagree category. Of course, that's something that um as a superintendent I look at and go, we got to we need to make some improvements there. I think we have um but it's difficult when you're going through a
period of budget reductions for sure to um make that movement. So, still lots of room for improvement in this area as well. Second one has to do with trust. uh similar story I think when you look at the trusted and highly trusted and the
not trusted um that somewhat one I guess you could you could argue which direction that needs to go but there's still room for improvement in this category as well and uh part of the communication that we need to do in the next 10 months I think it's interesting that that last
question about trust and financial stewardship but uh the decision making uh satisfied or very satisfied was 62%. So I think that's an interesting dynamic there and I'm not sure what exploring that would look like but um I do think
that's interesting that there's that big of a difference between those last two questions and this this is the one I mentioned about community involvement. Something that's top of mind for people um something they appreciate, they value
and they're satisfied with it. communications uh 66% satisfied or very satisfied. I think that's much better than it would have been. We don't have baseline data. Um this sort of is baseline data relative to that, but I think 66% satisfied and very satisfied
is a good really good starting place. Um again, not a very big unsatisfied number, but room to improve in that unsatisfied one. This one was uh pretty close to being right down the middle on financial management.
Um ties back to the stewardship question, I'm sure. Um but still some work to do there. This is a question where again I I'm glad to see um you know a large majority
of people recognizing that our schools aren't adequately funded. And you might think about 66% and go well that's 2/3 but you look at the other category that's making up 16%. So if you compare the yeses to the nos um there's quite a significant difference there. a lot of
the other categories in this uh that qualitative data was I don't I don't have enough information to you know comfortably weigh in on this. So that made up a lot of the other uh qualitative data.
Similarly uh very aware if you look at somewhat aware and very aware of the budget reductions to have a number that's 97% uh that's a pretty big pretty big deal. So people know we've had to do what we've had to do. Um and the next
question gets into like you know what what's been the outcome of that. Uh the vast majority of people recognize hey this has been hard on education. This has been hard on learning. So uh 80% in that agree or strongly agree category I
think significant. Again that other category uh qualitatively uh was a lot of them. I'm not aware um specifically and again if you think about demographics and uh if somebody's disconnected from the school district it's possible they just wouldn't they
wouldn't be aware of what's happening. Again this is I think a real positive that uh between someone aware and aware very aware um people recognizing this isn't just a one-time thing. this is going to be something that is uh that we need to
work through in the future as well. So 91% there I think is a really good starting spot uh to begin our work from. This question asked uh what you know what what do you think we need to uh keep safe or um what funding areas are
most important to be saved from future budget reductions if possible? Class sizes you know if you take the word class it was connected to sizes a lot. Um you can see music and art in there and um electives. So a lot of things shared there in that qualitative data
but class sizes uh support for teachers uh definitely came out large in that that question. The the next uh I'll kind of go through these quickly but the next set of questions were about how are you getting information because that drives you know
where do we prioritize? So, community connector, that's our newsletter. Um, you know, and I think I I've got a table at the end that aggregates fours and fives and or threes, fours, and fives. And so, you'll be able to see that in a second. Um, so you kind of have, uh, a
sense of how this scale works. So, Community Connector, um, you see here, if we go to the next one, Herald Review, not a lot of information. Scenic range was really less from a print standpoint.
Rapids Radio, again, one was none of my information comes from here, which is pretty like uh it's different than saying not a lot. This is just saying, you know, none of it. I get none from there. Um so keeping that in mind and then you know four and
five was really a great deal or a lot comes from this this source. So Rapids Radio ICTV on the next one. Um so some of that might be you know how are we letting people know about what's available in places because you know
ICTV is good ICTV is a good example of where a lot of what we do here and in other places is cataloged the community connections um uh series that we are running those are all recorded and
broadcast um so That's a pretty amazing place for people to refer to. So, some of it could be getting the word out about the where they can get information. >> Superintendent Gross, is that when you say Rapids Radio, are we talking about like Kexe, KMFY, those kinds of radio
stations? Yep. >> We're just Okay. >> Yep. School district employees. I think you'll see this in the aggregated table. Uh, a big source of information, 40% and fours and fives. Our website
35% in fours and fives. Our social media 40 43% in fours and fives. Other social media uh 24% in fours and fives. I think that's interesting. So this would be other social media sites
that they're on and and kind of paying attention to. So I think that's interesting. school newsletters 41 in fours and fives. Uh I think that's been picking up as newsletters have kind of been
starting to get pushed out more and more schoolboard members. You know, I don't know if I'd expect this. There's six of you and 10,000 people. So, um or eight, you know, in this case 880ome friends family neighbors.
uh another big one about 40% but you know you look at this three you'll see in a minute that pushes that uh into that 70 category so this is a pretty significant place. So, we look at this table. Um, I organized it really by the top five.
And you, you know, you might see that that school district website and the school newsletter and others a little bit out of order, but if you look at those two categories together, you can kind of see um maybe why I organized them the way I did. Um, along with that social media piece, but uh regardless,
these were the top five. And I put that other one on there at the bottom to show you kind of what the next what the sixth one was. There was a sec like a significant uh batch that were in the top five and then there was the second grouping that
were like in these 40s and 20s and then there was the kind of the third batch that was much much smaller. So I just wanted to demonstrate that gap. But I think this this tells a story too about what approaches we need to think about. Um,
you know, there's been a couple times in the last 20 years where I've done things like this. And both times, even though they were separated by a decade, uh face-to-face
human conversations between people, friends family neighbors school district people consistently have been at the top of that list. So I think you know there's something to learn there. Looking at communications in general,
uh clear and consistent were rated the highest. Uh there's room to improve on accuracy and transparency when you combine that maybe or summarize that last table. uh most of those items that the that we could, you know, push out uh
were digital and so it's something we need to continue to get traction with. Some key challenges uh finding a balance between the constraints and the demands for educational ex excellence and collaboration. That balance between those two things will be something we
have to strike. um our next steps in our process uh in working with our partners at Daylor. Um a few things. One, our schoolboard subcommittee uh getting together and so Julie will be working on scheduling that taking a little bit
deeper dive into this data um and uh making some meaning out of that. We've been working, if you reflect back to that community engagement plan that we looked at previously, getting that task force together and and um in kind of
talking through this with them, we're landing on this idea or this name of forward. Uh what's next for us? And so you'll see that word forward more and more. But we're in the process of uh finalizing the roster of people that
we're going to invite to apply to be a part of this community engagement team. And uh and we'll also cast a wide net and invite anybody that wants to apply because really it's important that this group that this isn't going to be an
advocacy group. They're going to be coming along and looking at this data, looking at school district operations, looking at educational opportunities, and their role really at the end of the day is to bring back recommendations to
you about, you know, what directions should we be looking at here? Is this about continuing to do more with less and less and less, or is this about some other options that the board should consider? Um, we're going to be uh using
thought exchange uh pretty pretty routinely over the next eight to 10 months. That's one of the beautiful things about it is we can keep going out there. It's simple. We use thought exchange in this more of a traditional survey form and you've seen the other
side of thought exchange where it's a response to one question. And so you'll see some of those uh also in the next 12 months. And then also kind of that last one there, it's hard to see on on the slide, but um aligning communications
that we need to do with what we learned from this survey and and some other sources. So um I think our, you know, our I'm been watching our digital feeds. I think that's been good, but we need to make sure that those messages too are
aligned with what it is that we need to get out there. I think that's the last slide questions. I have two quick questions I think. Um the first one is um that's some really
great data but I think the benefit of surveys like that is to measure growth over time and so is there a plan or a possibility to do the same thing in subsequent years so you can measure progress? >> Uh sure that I mean I I I think I agree with you. So I think having some baseline data is really important
because you know we're sort of in a nebulous territory here. What is a 66 mean or what is a 46 mean? Um so yeah I agree with you. >> And then the second question is is there a possibility that if we do that and we go forward can we track the entry point
to the survey so we can see the effectiveness of which way we go about it like the QR code from the paper is tracked that that's the way that they got to the survey. Then we can just judge the effectiveness of where we're spending time from. >> I can ask that question. I don't know what offhand, but I can ask that
question. >> I mean, we could just include it as a question too in the survey, but >> um um but I can I mean whether we have to do it mechanically or we can do it >> technologically. Yeah. >> Okay.
>> I guess I had one question. And um so you know we have been working with an outside third party on this. Correct. Right. Some of the development of these questions was through the consultant. Correct. >> Yeah it was a collaborative it was
collaborative um yeah do do they have uh you know kind of going back to Dave's question in regards to comparisons right? Do they have any statistics from other groups they've worked with on
answers sim to similar questions or maybe the same question from other districts for lack of a better >> I can find I can find that out >> just to kind of again have a >> we stack up right >> yeah where where is it right you know
without a a one time sample is challenging to really >> feel right >> yeah there's there isn't really context for it without something to compare it to. >> I mean, not that I want to compare
myself to others, but um >> it's useful. Yeah, I mean, >> comments or discussion, >> thanks for that data. That's really interesting. Next item on the agenda is board reports.
Uh maybe we can start with Aaron and Eva. >> Okay. So, um we've had a really successful like fall sports season so far. Four, uh fall sports teams have all went to state this year. Um or or going to state. So, football made it to state
section champion or to the section champions. They won those. Then they went won the state quarterfinals and now they play at US Bank Stadium on Friday against Cassie Vanderville. Volleyball made it to state. They beat Princeton, but they did not win the entire state
tournament. Girls soccer made it to state. They won the section final game versus Hermantown and then advanced to the state competition for the first time in program history. They played well, but were knocked out first round. Boys soccer made to section finals, but
they lost to Duth Enfield by one, so they didn't quite make it. Girls swimming and diving had sections last week. 12 swimmers competed at section finals and six are going to state on Thursday. There are two divers and four swimmers. Marching band players played their last
football game October 15th. They have moved into sit down band with students split between concert and symphonic and girls tennis did not advance the state. Winter sports are starting this month. So girls hockey started last week. They played their first game on
Friday against Lakeville North and they lost in overtime 4 to3. Girls basketball starts tonight with their first official practice. Boys basketball, boys swimming, wrestling, and crosscountry skiing don't begin till later this month. We've had a lot of sports events. We've
also had a lot of clubs that have done a lot of really great things in the last month. Um, so last Friday, student council started their everything but the turkey drive. Um, it's a food donation drive designed to provide families with everything they need for the stereotypical Thanksgiving meal except
the turkey. Um, students can bring in shelf stable items that are part of the stereotypical Thanksgiving meal and different items are worth different amount of points which are then awarded to their grade. Um, students can also bring in a just add water dessert to sabotage other grades by taking away a
set amount of points from that other grade. They're also doing hat days on Fridays to raise money um to go towards this fundraiser. Um Key Club um had some students that went to CO to
participate in a blood drive training. Um they learned a bunch of new strategies um and learned about blood drive donations and like how they work and where they go, what they do. Yeah. They were also recognized as the top Northland blood drive um for
collecting 349 units of blood last school year. Um their next blood drive is on o or November 24th. Um FFA recently went to the 98th um national FFA convention in Indianapolis.
Um the horse judging team was in the top third of the nation. Um with one student receiving a gold medal, two receiving a silver, and one receiving a bronze medal or medallion, I think they're called, something like that. Um the forestry team placed in the top 15 teams in the
nation. Um with all four members being in the top 100 students in the nation and two of those being in the top 50. Um the math team had their first meet last Tuesday. Um they started off this season strong being the top team in the Iron
Range division and in our section. >> Thank you. Great report Tom. Um so last week we had the workshop sat in on that. That was really educational for me to be honest. Uh to know our
involvement there and activities. Um the 29th of October, we had met and uh sat down with uh with some um big for community members and talked a little bit about possibility baseball up there and they've got a you know a lot of
activities going on with with the students there and and so we talked about that. Um and then on the 27th we had the mediation that um with the service unit that I sat in that was it. >> Thank you. David.
>> Uh yeah. Uh in brief spent a little time on negotiations. Uh the endowment committee uh met uh and dealt with over $100,000 in requests and was able to grant less
than half of that. Uh but a tip of the hat to Cara on the uh was uh working on the committee and was able to fund nine additional grants. Is that correct? Uh with uh existing funds uh so that um we
were able to uh significantly expand what the endowment committee was able to do and thank you for do that extra effort here. Um student of the month on uh October 31st. It's always incredible to see these students uh and what they
can do. And I'll leave it at that. Thank you Dave. >> Um, I participated in the principal group contract negotiation October 22nd. Um, and then on October 31st, uh, I also attended the student of the month awards at, uh, the high school. I'd encourage,
you know, as many of us that can go there. It's such an incredible event to see these kids being recognized. And the teachers, too. I think it's I think the teachers get a lot out of it, too, from what I have experienced. >> Um, I also we've been working at at the Refe Arts Council. Um, participated in
an RFP, a request for proposal scoring process for a firm that'll assess the rife with a feasibility study regarding potential development of the cultural center and amphitheater. Um, a firm was selected and the study is going to kick off uh in early December.
>> Thank you, Ashley. >> Um, it has been kind of a slow month for me. I um I have let uh my children's activities take over. So they one of my children is a part of that those four
athletes that are going to state for swimming. Um so it's been a lot of running back and forth to different places. Um aside from that at the middle school tomorrow we have our Veterans Day program at 1:30. Our band has been working um just non-stop uh to be able
to perform tomorrow for those veterans. Um we do generally encourage the um community to come and watch and participate in this particular program. It's a wonderful program uh to be able to be a part of. And uh we also have the book fair that lines up with our
conferences that start this week as well for our teachers and our students. Um book fair goes from the 11th through the 8th. Uh it's also a wonderful program to have at the middle school. It provides um we try to our middle school PTSA, the
parent teacher student association um tries to make sure that all students who gather and participate in the book fair um go home with at least one book. And then all of the Scholastic dollars that we are able to raise from past book
fairs, we have our staff come down and they're able to uh choose up to about 10 books. We generally have probably have around 10 staff members that participate in that and they'll they'll take about 10 books, like I said, out for themselves and be able to use in their
personal library. Some of our staff members come in and we'll take uh notebooks or markers or fidget toys or whatever the case is. Sometimes they'll have pens or different toys that they can use for students um just as prizes or just like little things to to
recognize students and their behavior and their hard work and efforts that they have. So, those are some of the things that we have going on at the middle school as well. >> Thank you. Um, I I participated in the base Big Fork Baseball meeting with
Superintendent Gross and Tom. Uh, in addition, I attended the Blue Cross Blue Shield retirey health transition meeting. That was very interesting. It was a good presentation. Uh, of course, we're all very busy with negotiations and I think just seems like
it's uh kind kind of the the middle of the negotiations right now. I also participated in a meet and confer with the teachers unit and a collaboration meeting with the the union leadership of the teachers.
That's all I have. Superintendent Gross. >> Thank you, Mr. Chair. Um just a few things. Uh I don't know that we've had a meeting since the science night at the middle school. Um
but holy cow uh I walked out of the office and saw the commons of the middle school packed. Uh over 300 students is the estimate and they were doing experiments everywhere. It was
unbelievable. It was one of the I think proudest moments I've ever had as a superintendent here. It was so amazing. Kids were extracting DNA and building bones and it was just amazing. It was so cool. First one, uh Lori Gubarowitz, uh
her vision, her dream. So, hats off to her. But what a cool thing. Um Mark mentioned the Blue Cross Blue Shield uh piece. We had four meetings last week with retirees.
uh two on Tuesday and two on Wednesday. Representative from Blue Cross Blue Shield was here to talk to retirees about the plan that they'll be moving to. Uh we got great feedback from our
retirees. Uh and um I think we've we've tried our best to get information to them to answer questions to get them what they need. I think we had 180 or 190 of them attend in person. So, uh,
really good turnout we felt. And so, it's been a a big lift for Casey's team. Um, but so far so good with that. Uh, the survey I mentioned earlier, went through earlier, community engagement is
is on the the list of things we're doing. A number of you mentioned negotiations. Um, I've had two meetings of the state compensatory revenue task force that I was appointed to. Uh, that's been interesting and it's really
slowgoing. We have to have a report, preliminary report to the legislature in February of this upcoming year and then um subsequent reports. But right now, we're really just digging into, you
know, uh, what are other states doing? Are there answers out there or other opportunities out there? Um how has this worked? Is this the you know the the right metric is um whether it's direct
certification through county services or accessing county services or free reduced forms uh educational benefit forms. Are those really the right um tools to identify students that are unprepared? because that's really what
compensatory revenue is for is to get at students that are unprepared. And um poverty has been used as a proxy for that. Uh and there's research to suggest that it is, but really is it moving um the needle on that the way that it
should. So I wasn't really prepared to to have that be one of the questions that we wrestle with, but it's a really important one. So, I'm glad that we are. Um, the last thing, you know, there are a
lot of staffing changes uh this month. Um, two individuals that I work uh and have worked a lot with that I feel like I need to just mention. Um Anna Lloyd um exceptional leader who stepped into
uh many difficult situations that were a function of her job description job. Uh and then also so many things that she stepped into that um weren't her job description helping others solve their
problems and providing some wisdom. um she stepped up to lead uh on our strategy team which was really valuable to me and the ALC and her ability to si think uh at a with a systems level and
ability to break down problems uh is incredible. So um appreciate her contribution her leadership to in our district. Um Cara uh in five and a half years if you think about the things that that Cara's been involved with uh
managing operations through a pandemic uh closing out construction on a hund00 million in projects that I think hit every single one of our buildings. Um amazing. Um helped through budget reductions in every single year except
for first one. uh ultimately leading into balanced budgets the last three years, helping us uh resolve or get get dozens of contracts settled and lead into and help us to work through some really important health insurance
changes that are going to set us up for a long long time. Uh those are just a few of the things in five and a half years. So incredible partner for me and incredible contributions to the district that are like have lasting impact. So
thank you. That's all I have, Mr. Chair. Thank you. Uh reminder, upcoming schoolboard committee meeting dates are posted on each agenda. Schoolboard meeting agendas can be found in the district website and
on the designated posting site of the ISD 318 dead services center. Is there any other business come before the board? Ask one quick question. Uh car is this your last meeting? Um well then I think we'd be remiss to say that
we are going to miss you tremendously and thank you so much for all your service. >> Second. Agreed. >> Thank you, >> Julie. Has anyone signed up for public input? >> No, they have not.
>> Meetings adjourned. Thank you, Mark. >> Casey, thank you for that information. >> I appreciate that. Julie, do I have paperwork? >> I bet I do. And you do, too.
>> Thank you guys. Good report. school board member report. >> One of the best. >> Excellent. >> That's true.