i pledge algiance 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 for here tonight uh patrick will be
coming but just a little bit later um i have a motion to approve the agenda i'll move to approve the agenda thank you got a second i'll second thank you all those in favor of approval agenda
say i all those opposed same sign motion approved um on the communications common accommodations i think we're going to start off with mr pl it's on and ready to go good evening board and community members my name is trent langum very
proud to be the high school principal and it is my honor each month to present the best of the best the students of the month one grade or one student per grade level per month it is quite an honor the staff collaborate and select the student based on those who are responsible for
themselves and others they are positive role models they offer help to those in need and they progress academically and i'll have them come down one at a time and then stay for a picture ninth grade nessa
[Applause] sancher 10th grade corbin lampier junior madison [Applause]
hardrove 12th grade come on down and then i'll read a little more info about our senior aiden kuyat manville high school student of the month senior march 2025 aiden kuyat son of nicole and mark kuyat of manville he's got a philosophy that has helped
him be successful in to the best of my ability outside of school aiden stays busy playing sports during all of the seasons currently uh football basketball and golf he's also a member of the band here and he has a job
during the summertime after graduation aiden is planning on going to college at the university of wisconsin stout and wants to major in business administration and in 10 years he hopes to be married with a family of his own and live close to home congratulations
aiden kuyat congratulations everybody take a this way one two three [Applause] all right good evening brock training activities director cass manville uh i
always get a a fun honor to give these comic coins as well to the welldeserving candidates and tonight we have a couple of them uh the first one is our cass and manbell wrestling team um i i hate to say it but each year at this meeting
it's usually me bringing up the wrestling team so uh what i want is to never make it seem like i'm taking this for granted because um i'm just going to talk about coach hill first um you know third year now third full year as head
coach um and of course assistant longtime assistant with the program before that but um he just does a tremendous job of putting our kids in a position to succeed you know whatever it takes um
kind of mixing the kids into different positions and uh they just do an amazing job not only the work ethic that they put in um it's grueling uh i was a wrestler way back in the day and you know it's just one of those sports that
kind of teaches you uh that if you don't work hard it's just not going to happen and so these guys uh work extremely hard uh they sacrifice a lot of things few meals here and there uh probably the things that they really want to eat they don't during the season i remember
crossing off the days in the calendar some years when when the cuts really got tough um but uh they just do a really good job of doing those things the right way we didn't back in our day we did not cut weight the right way if some of you guys remember that but uh uh they uh
they put him in an awesome position to succeed like i said uh i can still picture travis walking down the hall in his little notebook leading up to the section tournament and i said "what's that?" he's like "we're figuring out a way to get past zumbie and then you know we should be good you know and they're
matching up people with our kids the best matchups for our kids possible for them to be successful so um we're just in in such good hands with coach hill and and travis and the gang that uh i'm going to bring him up first." so coach ryan hill
all right i'll make this short and sweet um as every year you know the most important part of tonight is to thank our our school board and our administration um we we don't have the opportunity and the ability to do what we do year in and year out with the resources and the
support that uh that this team here in front of us tonight gives us so um thank you from the bottom of my heart from from all these kids from all these coaches from all these parents from all these families from preschool through senior year in high school um we're
really fortunate to have be in such a special place that that wants to succeed um the way you guys want us to so thank you um and then obviously our community um there's community here tonight there's nowhere i go in town that someone isn't asking me hey how can i
help what can i do um and that that's really special so thanks for everyone for all the help a couple accomplishments on the year first and most important one um i wasn't surprised but i was pleasantly surprised when we we got
academic all state gold award this year um we graduated some some really smart kids um and just kind of thought you know as we progressed maybe we'd fall off a little bit we didn't fall off at all uh we actually improved our gpa this
year um so academic all state gold team average gpa 3.617 so that that's awesome uh and then obviously uh you know in front of you tonight is the section 1a champions um they had no easy road to get to the state tournament uh they had
to avenge a loss to zambroa mazeppa that happened earlier in the year um and i think zamroto's ranked like number three in the state um when we had to go beat him so congratulations on your section championship guys and then lastly you know we fell a little bit short in the section or in
the state finals um but you know these guys went out and you know they they left it all out there and wrestled a great duel and you know there's a lot to be proud of and they should not hang their heads on that so congrats fellas to our state tournament team members um i'll just go through them
real quick if you're here raise your hand when i say your name um 107 pounds we had damon man um 114 pounds mason meyers 127 pounds drake andress 133 lb spencer myers uh 145 lbs bodie gazner
152 lbs moyes nelson 160 lb charlie heaser 172 lbs parker richards 189 lbs braden brazard 215 lbs cassen wa 285 lbs griffin grover 285 lbs kaden white 285
pounds hudson ban and then our state our section place winners um third place at the section tournament oliver powell uh third place at the section tournament zeke ranvvic third place at the section tournament kaylin anderson fourth place
at the section tournament rex ashford fifth place at the section tournament caleb white third place at the section tournament jacob dudesman and then our state qualifiers uh kimani bent 152 lbs section runner up as well owen nelson
189 lbs um and he was a section champion as well and then our sec our state place winners were aiden frederick sixth place at the state 133 pounds and section champion jonah coleman third place at the state tournament 139 lbs and section
champion and then lastly owen frederick fourth place at the state tournament 145 lbs and section runner [Applause]
up congratulations [Music] oh there you are okay here we go one two three [Applause] all right thanks for coming in guys i
know it's busy getting into spring sports and you want to utilize the weather while it's here uh all right one other award that we have tonight is a is a pretty neat honor uh a number of our students sophomores through
uh seniors get involved in what's called a big sisters sorry big brothers big sisters program and which they'll get paired up with uh a younger cassanderville student in either the elementary school or the middle school where they meet weekly and just kind of
go through different things and talk play games get to know them and the biggest benefit um that i can see from this program is having one of my siblings do it and one of my daughters do this as well is just the impact on the self-confidence of their little and
so uh this is a super super important um act that these kids do uh they go over in the morning typically is that when you go over in the mornings in bridge and meet with their student every week and uh how many years have you been with
your little two years and so the relationship that they get to get to have with their little is incredible and uh this one nominated brandy newell for the big of the year come on down
do you have a speech prepared right well let's get a picture one two three [Applause] moving right along as board our student board representative report good evening school board we thank you
for your time as we present you the march school board quarter it's been a busy month with sports activities and classwork as we approach the end of the third quarter as winter comes to an end and spring gets closer many new activities are beginning while others have ended for tonight's report
we will begin with an update on the end of our winter sports team seasons starting with boys basketball the boys basketball team ended their season with a record of 7 to 18 they did their first playoffs on march 6 against furbo and had a loss of 4175 which
concluded their season the girls basketball team ended their season with a record of 18 and 11 with their first round of playoffs on february 27th against steuartville they concluded they concluded their season in a loss to steuartville with a score of
5030 to 60 as we know the boys wrestling team also made it to state this year for both team and individual for individuals there are few wrestlers that placed at state and for team we received runna spring sports and activities began this past week so there aren't many
updates just yet as it's mainly been practiced and will be for the next couple of weeks however softball has permission this past weekend and we'll have another one on march 21st in austin at 16 some upcoming clubs and activities the
prom committee has chosen a theme inspired by by the disney movie tangled our theme this year is a night under the lanterns additionally our pro postprom will be 80 snow week was a success despite having a snow day in the middle of the
week plans flow smoothly on our snow court um or our snow court winners this year were logan narison and maya sorlson during the week student council organized events such as bingo trivia and dress up days in addition to the
dance which were all of a hit sad or student against destructive decisions has held their star leader meetings at the middle school and elementary school these past few weeks this program was to teach youth in our community about making smart choices
when faced with peer pressure and finally our speech team has a meet coming up at 9:00 a.m on march 22nd at the mayo high school thank you again for your time and attention this will conclude our march school board report
anybody have any questions or comments i just want to comment i love the creativity with the prom night under the lanterns that sounds magical thank you they're both on prom committee so we
have to take that one out uh for just clarity i did not know that thank you was a genuine one that's right now either one of you uh attended the afterm after prom party yes tell us a
little bit about how that went and what are you looking forward to this year i think it's just a really good way to get students together um after the dance just it's like all good safe fun there's lots of games they have really good
prizes that you can win at the end of the night and they make sure they really make sure that everybody has something they can participate in and that they will enjoy like last year they had we did a vegas theme so they had casino games and they had sporting like type
games but then they just make sure that everybody gets some type of a prize while they're reading and i think it just it's a good way to keep having fun after the dance yeah i agree i'm a very competitive
person there's a lot of people and stuff like that yeah i think the most encouraging words that i heard was safe as a parent congrats mark dad to snow queen she doesn't get any uh better
treatment at home royalty is only here can you guys talk a little bit more about sad um i know that it's really impactful for the elementary students to be able to connect with um that group and talk about risky behavior and risky
choices yeah um i wouldn't say i know a bunch about what they did um but i do remember like when we were younger and being an elementary school middle school student
i remember having those conversations of with dare and sad and i remember them coming to visit and i just think it's so nice as a younger student to see older students come and speak on those matters
and you know talk to you about not giving into peer pressure because as it it definitely changes as you grow up but i think it is present even at those younger ages so i think it's great that they know
yeah i have to agree i have a friend who was part of the sad stuff this year and i know she also enjoyed just her perspective learning like helping other kids learn about that type of stuff yeah i think it was also informational for her to like see it from other point of view so
yeah i appreciate that they do that and i heard very good things about it all right thank you ladies i enjoy the rest of the app moving on to the drama board presentation um i believe it's we have a presentation
from arts katie ari just by way of introduction um we asked i'm the my name is don christ i'm the president of the jungle circle and every year we try to kind of add something new or do something new with our program and this year we were really
fortunate to get in connection with henipin arts and they've come to evaluate our programs and have provided us just an enormous amount of assistance in looking at our program and how we do it i thought it would be or our board thought it would be a good idea for them
to come and talk to you a little bit about the theater program not just here but all the theater programs that they work with and some of the benefits of this thank you for your time today awesome hi y'all um thanks for letting us drive down and
visit we're in twin cities we enjoy the drive traffic so your timing has really sorted itself out but um my name is ari kanan sweeney uh i use she her pronouns i'm the vice president of arts education and partnerships at henipin arts i've been
with the organization for about 10 years and previous to that i professionally stage managed and contracted with henipin arts previously dressed um and before that i was a proud spotlight alumni of the program uh i have a degree
in business communications and arts administration and i'm katie tainter i use she her pronouns i'm a program manager on the arts education team at henipin arts as well working with ari and a couple of other um wonderful people that helped us do all of this work um i've been officially on the team
full-time for about a year and a half now and previous to that had been working as a performer contractor teaching artist choreographer dance teacher um kind of cobbling together my life as an artist so it's been really wonderful to be um in a full-time position where i get to use all of those skills as well um i'm also an alumni of
spotlight education program um my high school participated as well um so i've known and loved spotlight for a long time and i'm happy to be here talking with you about it um i have my bfa in dance i wanted to study um performing arts in college um it's just touched every area of my life from a very young
age so it's um a huge impact on um who we are from arts like ari mentioned we used to be kind of a theater trust so if that's a name that you've heard um we've gone through a little bit of an identity shift in the last year um with that we operate the four theaters along hen avenue downtown
to minneapolis the state contagious forum and deli rigs theaters um so there is um the broadway touring shows that come through those theaters um there's dance comedy music concerts um podcasts all sorts of different things and so while we love that we have the opportunity to have live entertainment
along haden avenue um what we're especially proud of particularly as folks that work on the education team um is the programming that we get to bring across the state um it's how we got involved um at cass vanderville um how we got connected to your school and your students and your theater program um
annually we spend over a million dollars on this programming so it's really our love letter um to get to all the different corners of the state um and how we share the programming um that we offer just give me a nod when you want me to advance you can go ahead and advance you're in charge
okay um are we past this one then yet yes we can go to the next one okay this one wow same with that arts impact um we are arts administrators so if you are ever looking for someone to come and gush about the importance of arts we are
those people um it's us um but also we were student athletes i know many many years ago for some of us you're so just it was amazing to sit and watch the wrestling team kind of roll through and to recognize like how we're championing students and the work that
they're doing in the that they're creating um and as proud athletes i think we would say that um at least i'll speak for myself and not for katie um i truly do believe that the theater is a team it's a sense of community it's a space um that students create for
themselves and they build something beautiful for your community um so now i'm going to give you some stats not that you needed them but hold on to them i won't give you numbers because those are hard to hold in space but um we know that students involved in arts um have a
greater social and emotional growth pattern uh there's greater self-expression and self-discovery it builds empathy and emotional intelligence and fosters belonging which what that means to you sometimes means greater school attendance greater
commitment to your school and the work that you're doing here um higher academic achievements often trend with the arts and engagement with the arts um for students motivated to go on to college we find a higher entrance rate
into colleges of arts engagement um there's a greater curiosity and motivation to learn with students engaged in the arts um what that means for the world and the workforce that we live in we recognize that um employers
are increasingly seeking people to think creatively yourself and work collaboratively true believe is everything that your theater program is doing on a daily basis right here in this building um so with that we'll talk a little bit about our program and how we feel like
we kind of intersect with that love and interest in supporting and championing students in their creative endeavors we work with 110 high schools across the state of minnesota um that means that we are in
every corner as katie sort of mentioned my car has a lot of miles put on it um i have seen many different versions of what a school looks like what a theater looks like what a captorium might look like what a beautiful facility um that
y'all have here looks like and see the different ways that magic are of growing and expanding here um we view our programming in a primary and secondary fashion so i'll talk a little bit about the secondary and then you'll jump into the primary um but for our secondary
program ways in which we're supporting students critical review is a rigorous writing program that sends 46 students to uh every broadway show that we host and students use those broadway shows as a writing catalyst u so critically
thinking and developing opinions about shows and boy do students have strong and beautiful opinions um we also offer workshops when broadway shows come through students have the opportunity to engage with these artists that are coming from all around the country um
and traveling for shows but we also hire local artists and we serve um our students by creating satellite workshops which your school will hopefully host one of those satellite workshops for us where we invite other schools from the
area into your community and into your space and we bring artists in and do a focused workshop um to provide educational development for students with that too just to tack on as i'm the person that gets to help plan some of those workshops um the cool thing i think about the satellite workshop
series is we know it can sometimes be a barrier um for schools that are further away from the twin cities it's harder to get there after school or depending on what other um you know activities and sports and theater that they're doing after school sometimes it's tricky to make it downtown so kind of gives us an opportunity like again come back into
your space and offer something a little closer to home that they might not have access to otherwise so that's something i'm especially proud of in this um you can go to the next slide um our flagship program is our production assessments program so like don mentioned um this is kind of what got us connected to cass
merville um this is how we kind of um get into 110 schools across the state and um it's our sort of biggest and longest running program um our production assessments is a is a program that is really meant to kind of honor and uplift and support the work that's already happening in schools and in
theater programs across the state um what is it exactly we send um four to five trained professional theater makers and theater educators to your school to kind of observe um take in the work that's happening and then to offer direct and indirect feedback so some of this comes in written form some of it
comes in direct contact um kind of from teaching artists directly to students in that work um so they get to really provide some encouragement some uplifting of things that are going really wonderfully and some ideas and some tools for things that um students can take with them as they are um building their skills and as they are
going on in their either making careers whether that's beyond high school or not um tools that they can kind of take with take forward with them um so this year there were five evaluators um we call them evaluators i should mention that as well um this year there were five evaluators that came to cass and mantville one that came a little earlier
in the process to kind of um again sort of reinforce the things that the creative team is is offering to their students um provide again some some insight or some tips or tricks or ideas or things that they might be able to implement as they were going forward in their rehearsal process but there were three evaluators that came to actually
see annie um right here um and sort of observe the student performers on stage and then we have one technical evaluator that comes into the backstage spaces gets to actually work directly with those students have conversations with them about what it is that they're working on what's their documentation what sort of problems have they solved
as a group um and then give some written feedback for that um we do offer um all of this feedback sort of compiled and then delivered to the school at the end of this whole process so this year what this actually looked like was a huge 25page document
um with a lot of ideas and suggestions that both the theater directors and educators could take for um production moving forward as well as written feedback directly to the students that they can then um kind of take in think critically about what are some of the patterns that maybe are are that they're
seeing in that feedback what is something that could be useful for them to take with them and then again you know we know feedback is tricky so sometimes you have to like know what is important to take in and what's important to let go um and kind of give them that tool to use that um so that's really critical thinking
um and alongside of that feedback um we want to sort of honor and uplift and formally recognize the work that's happening in theater department so just as amazing as as your state championship wrestling team is we want to honor and uplift and celebrate the work of your student performers and technicians too so you can go ahead to the next slide
all of these people received um honors recognition for their work on the show so your ensemble received a vocal performance um honor student orchestra run crew overall technical team and lighting crew all received honors through our formal honors recognition process as well as a bunch of individual
performers and technicians savannah potter reese hyatt peter christensen mars wright lana gransy cam swank jacob batzel and lucy peek all received um specific individual honors recognition for their work on annie this
fall then transfer that amazing honor and recognition celebrated at our end of the year celebration which is our version of the state championship we're sticking with the because we often are um june 9th your school is invited we've got so
many schools we split amongst two evenings but june 9th is your spotlight showcase which is at the historic state theater in downtown minneapolis where students from across the state will come and perform the students just listed both technicians and performers will have the opportunity to participate in
uh individual honore numbers where they get to mix with other students from other schools and develop a choreographed number uh two featured dancers any senior interested in participating and two school representatives to kick off the show and that opening number so that member and
that those performances we want representation from every corner of the state and every school that we're serving to really champion and celebrate for folks to come together um and build something powerful in the same way that they're doing here they now just get to come down um after a week long kind of
rehearsal experience and celebrate the work that's being done across the state and really champion the the season so with that that was so much information just throw out all of you so quickly but um i just wanted to say thank you thank you for having us um thank you for
caring for these students thank you for caring and being champions of the arts and we're very excited to continue our work with you thank you i just had one please um on the june 9th
spotlight showcase will that be live streamed for grandparents and stuff live streamed licensing does not allow us to live stream the show we are working on it we are in the works we're hoping that um we'll actually be able to partner with
pbs to air um to work around but live streaming with some of the rights for all of the 110 schools productions gets tricky carlin would you go back a couple to um the students that received all of these awesome awards i just wanted to give
them a round of applause that's incredible thank you so much for your feedback i um i got to see i was just sitting behind somebody from henipin and the the notes were robust so the effort that went in to provide the feedback was incredible so thank you so
much for everything you guys do absolutely thank you i just wanted to say thank you also i didn't know about this program and i am just blown away it sounds amazing and amazing for our school so thank you for being here and educating
us about it um it's awesome um so my younger sister uh was a professional dancer and she was able because my mom was a single mother raising kids it kept her out of a lot of things that possibly could have got into
she uh danced with the rockheads off broadway a lot mama mia and things like that so to me it it it means a lot i i appreciate thank you thank you i feel like those personal stories and those anecdotes are what um need to be brought forward because so often it's those are
stories that you don't hear that you can hold in your space yeah affects everybody and and don't laugh too hard but she used to use me as her dancing dummy and i don't have any it was enjoying and i i appreciated that
thank you so much thank you good to see you i'm sarah coordinator at the middle school good evening josh lass middle school and excited to share with you uh the three priorities that
we've had this year at casso middle school um one of the important things before we get started was sarah and i before we sat down this year um it was important for us to align our goals um with the district and as you can see here through our connection learning and empowerment goal um we wanted to connect
and work with our teachers from the district level and so one of the best things that i get to talk about is connections and middle school is it's vitally important that we build connections with our kids and as they were presenting posit positive
relationships extend beyond the classroom whether it's on the stage athletic fields uh anywhere grocery store we want to ensure that we're building those positive connections with our kids so if we look at our goal um this year typically we we end up at
about 92% of our students feel they have a positive or trusted relationship with an adult at kms um and we want that to be 100% and some of the things that we do to ensure that our students have positive connections we have advisory program we call it counter time that
runs at the end of the day it's a cohort of students fifth grade through eighth grade and they see the same counter time teacher for four years and so it's an opportunity to build mentorship uh skills amongst our older students um but also our younger middle school students
get to understand what it looks like as a seventh grader and eighth grader we also have take five and that's an opportunity for us to work with students that um may be struggling academically or behaviorally to encourage those relationships with students and provide them um the support that they need to be
successful lastly i think one of the major things that we do as far as connections is our pbis model which is positive behavior intervention and supports we use pbis to model um teach expectations for our students and our students do or excuse me our teachers do
a great job of recognizing student behavior um as you can see within our data when you recognize student behavior you get positive student behavior and so the more that we um acknowledge that our students are making good choices acting appropriately we want to make sure that
we acknowledge that because that reinforces what we see so that is just a brief outline for our connection goal i'll turn over to miss okay i would like to read what our students said oh yeah sorry i think it's really i like school
this year because i have really good teachers and get to spend time with my friends my teachers care about me and make sure to talk to me if i'm messing around the best part of sixth grade are the teachers next student our school is so special because we get a lot of fun
opportunities the connections within the school is special everyone knows each other and we are one community our second goal that we have for this year is our learning goal and what we did with this goal we changed it a little bit um we've usually talked about an outcome of 75% efficiency and
what we decided to do this year is measure growth in a different way so we picked eight um how did we pick eight i'm not quite sure it's my favorite number um but we thought that that was a nice that was that's a big growing number if you grow your students 8%
that's that's a large growth um and so we wanted to increase proficiency for each cohort of students so what our teachers did at the beginning of the year is look at where each hour came in and then their goal was 8% so what that means is each cohort had a different
outcome but they're all growing by 8% you can see um off to the right our reading and math data as we kind of track it throughout the year the measurements that we're using are the mcas which we do at the very end of the year and spring and then our fall
nwa data and our winter nwa data so that's how we um monitor our growth throughout the year while those assessments are different something that we've talked about in previous years or explained is that the nwa has a linking study um it aligns those scores to
projected proficiency with the mca and so that's why we're using those different assessments even though they're different they are aligned when it comes to mca data we are constantly trying to be responsive to the needs of our students and so we are continuing to try out new
curriculums to see what is the best fit for our students so this year um we implemented my view in fifth grade we implemented my world which is fifth grade and seventh grade social studies so far our fifth grade teachers are
loving it and what is really great about that curriculum is it has literacy embedded within it so what we're really excited about is that our students will actually get a double literacy block with their language arts and their social studies and then fifth grade math is trying out in this year to see how
that aligns with standards and student outcomes um right now what we're using is bridges and just not quite seeing what we want to see with bridges so we're looking at some other options and seeing if that would be a better fit for our students and we also have a readout
training an olap training going on at our school um the elementary it's a really big focus for them but our special ed teachers our ads teachers um me i'm doing it um so there's a small group of us our el teacher we are making
sure that we go through the read training too and we're learning a lot about the science of reading and what we need to do at the middle level to make sure that we close those gaps for our students mr larson would you like to read what our student said absolutely my teachers take time to explain my
teachers help me if i am struggling to understand my math teacher helps me more than any of my teachers ever have she cares about me and always has a smile on her face my teachers care about all of us but they show their care in different ways and these students were shocked by the
way when i called them in and i said you know i asked your plc or i asked your teachers um who's shown great growth this year who's been really impressive to you and they all looked at me like what me really because i told our plc leaders to think of someone that maybe wouldn't normally get recognized and so
it was really fun having these conversations with students asking about their day and what they love about our school our third goal is empowerment 100% of plc's will research explicit instruction responsive instruction and inclusive instruction we really wanted
our plc leaders to take ownership in their learning this year um we know a lot about adult learners and it has to matter it has to mean something to adults in the room for them to be able to take it and then implement it within their classrooms one of our biggest areas that we've done research on is
flex um mr and i have talked about flex the last few years but what we've done this year is align our approaches to flex so um this is a a 25 minute period within our day fifth through 8th grade all students get it and this time is for
them to work in small groups with teachers um sometimes it's in response to a recent assessment or it's to pre-teach something difficult that's coming up or challenging that's coming up and so um our students are able to get more time with their teachers and
dig into content a little bit more every day and then the other thing that we really focused on this year is called universal design for learning and what that means is you're planning with all students in mind so if you look at those graphics you see the first
image everyone's getting the same thing the stools are the same height you can see that some students are accessing the information and some students are missing the second picture that's differentiation that's where we're changing the height of the stool we're making sure that the students can obtain
that the curriculum the instruction the bottom picture is what we're focusing on this year that learning looks different for each student and when we measure our student learning that might look different too so not just our day-to-day instruction but also the assessment you
can see in that bottom picture the students are the ones that are taking the lead in their learning and so that's really we're trying to shift our work and empower our teachers to explore more and then mr larson you can read what our students said all right some of my favorites i feel
safe with all my teachers i feel comfortable asking for help and i like that we get to have choices in the classes we take this school is special because there's always someone you can talk to one of my favorite students corbin i learned a lot during middle school and decided to focus on my work i
learned how to manage my time because of track and i'm excited for high school because the classes like moment and lastly payton i have learned to ask teachers for help my teachers care about me and help me i used to be the shy kid but decided to be more social because of
this i enjoy school more and all of this ties back to our students the work that we do with as adults um often gets lost in the shuffle in the work that we do with our students and it's important for sarah and i um each and every day to uplift our students for
some of these students um it's taken them four years to figure out time management how to do their homework um and that takes time and patience and we've got a tremendous staff at the middle school that that works with them each and every day every day is a new day and we want to teach the skills that
are essential for life so thank you any questions i got a really quick question just as basic as possible what's the difference between like envision and bridges and i guess what what are they trying to accomplish they're just different curriculum platforms so you know there's a ton of different options out there and
what we are trying to do is make sure that the curriculum that we use with our students is aligned to standards and our rigorous minnesota standards what we're seeing is bridges is a really great fit for third and fourth grade but for some reason our scores drop in fifth grade one of that one of those reasons is that
we don't have the the same amount of minutes in our day that elementary has for bridges and so we want to make sure that what we use in our classroom is a better fit and that might mean um exploring a different curriculum that's set up for more that middle school model where it's 50 60 minute class periods in
working with mr christensen our fifth grade math teacher we're not seeing envision has a little bit more of the rigor than bridges that's that we need at the fifth grade level but big picture bridges is just kind of like this is how you should instruct the class is your lesson come plans and so envisions a
different version of a different package absolutely i just wanted to say i think it's really incredible um the middle school for a while now has really focused on relationships and how impactful that is it's important um we hear it's important for many different
um avenues um as schoolboard members um but i i just wanted to ask a couple questions one more like positive note though i really appreciate um being intentional about individual needs of students because of course that's also
important um the flex is awesome how often is that adjusted or do you need to is it individually or is it a set time on the calendar so it's going to vary by team um i know that certain teams do it for about four weeks that switch um seventh grade can
be a little bit more flexible and so they can do it daily it really we want to be responsive and so we giving these teachers the opportunities to say "hey we've got students that are just struggling turning in work we're going to pull them aside and they're just going to we're going to sit there and we're going to help them support them
and work and get their work completed." um and then the other piece is is providing that pre-teing for math oh you know what i taught a lesson today 10 of my students just didn't get i need to pull them back in and do a teaching and so it's it's being very intentional with the time that we have with students and
pulling them in and it's not anything you know it's not a consequence we want to ensure you know what we want you to know and it's just inventing more time and giving them more um opportunities to display their learning
i think it's really impressive there's a lot of variables you guys are considering constantly and to make the system adaptable to the needs is really it's a lot of work so thank you doing a great job i mean it's we've not done this before and so just it takes a lot of time and effort and so
i certainly want we certainly want to appreciate our teachers efforts and working through this because it's learning is not just on a on a conveyor belt and everyone's moving along the same direction it's middle school it's all over the place so understanding how we can best support our kids and using
the time that we do have during team to support our students thank you um i have one more question um the pbis in the office referrals how do you balance positive reinforcement with accountability it's a balance for sure um you know one
of the things that i focus on especially when i work with kids it's kids are going to make mistakes they're 10 14 years old i'm 39 i still make mistakes you know the accountability piece that that i work with most is when we're making the same mistake over and over that's where the accountability comes in and that's when we work with parents
saying "hey you know what i've seen this we've we've discussed it we've addressed it and yet the behavior still continues." um obviously you rely heavily on the parents for that support um and there's certain things like for instance we we have a student that just has struggles with their phone just have
to have the phone on we don't allow phones so now the phone's in the office and it just gets checked in each day and so we want students to build responsibility that's an important skill um however when they're unable to demonstrate that responsibility appropriately then that's when we come
in and say "oh phone's just going to be shut and it's not an issue." and then and then i'll bring it back to relationships to answer that question too um something that we've done this year more and more is restorative practices so when a student um if they
chuck an apple in the cafeteria and it makes a mess then they help clean up the cafeteria so instead of just giving an office consequence we're making sure that the consequence fits with the actions and we're constantly trying to restore or repair the relationships with the students student to student or
student to adult awesome thank you thank you for all that information i i highlight um the overall picture that you're creating um i took some some words that you could have here like one kid said another one says manage my time
um and then the last one is coming out of their shell so you're not only um addressing um the school part of it but you're addressing the social part of it and as a parent i appreciate that because i want my kids to be you know to
be prepared and be ready for the next level and that's basically what it is i appreciate that i like i like the way that they're the theme i mean this the student said what you're doing without saying it you know my question on the take five that's five
students per grade is that five students overall we test each teacher we say take five but some have four some have three we test each teacher to um work with at least four students on a regular basis what we found is that when you look at
our data we've got students who will fail multiple grades for multiple classes succeeding um we know that their home life is a great anytime that we can build those relationships and connections with kids it helps us um as much as i don't want
to learn things about fortnite those are things that i've had to learn so that i can have a conversation with a student um i don't know what fortnite is i don't know if i ever it is um but if that's our way to connect with a struggling partner that's sometimes all it takes
and we can start a conversation if they're having a bad day we can just bring that up that deescalates the situation you get them in a better state of mind and then we're moving on and so it's it's a combination of a lot of different techniques that we try to use to to again connect with kids once we
have that connection then we can empower them to do better things thanks guys thank you absolutely i kate ryan introduced the following resolution to accept and move for its adoption whereas the december and january great start grants from the
state of minnesota were awarded to pk childare and pb childare for a total of 14,928 and $8,193.75 respectively whereas the following have generously offered to donate
to a km robotics sponsorship hi cassen $200 contact manufacturing $500 rob and judy thompson $100 day applied americas $500 and
bremer bank $200 whereas the following have generously offered to donate to km ffa stevens truck center $100 contact manufacturing $250 the buck walter family $300
highland systems $100 mower county farmer mutual $100 culver's north $1,859.85 hardware hank $250 occurren financial $100 and byron dental group $100
thank you second all those in favor i same time motion carries on to board committee reports had a few committee meetings um planet
facilities like you guys meant earlier aaron if you want to give us we end up talking about the personel personel meeting last time i guess mro will be filling us in on
personnel committee yes we had a meeting on the 27th um during that meeting we discussed enrollment what it's looking like for next year and kind of what our staffing looks like with that moving forward
questions looks like finance is not policy met z meets this thursday oh okay sorry and legislative i'm sure mr tucker's got some kind of update on craziness up there
nothing sorry nothing currently i know i brought up the b once i did see an article though and i think you told us that shouldn't affect us too much but the article saying some school districts really going to hurt just the way that minnesota's redone their um the free and
launch program is essentially getting rid of that portion to designate people we need extra assistance which then some schools i think it'll have a lot more applied for that so i mean i think some schools are saying we're going to lose a couple million dollars if they don't change or address this shortly but like
i said i don't think it's going to affect us very much probably around 15 grand that's a lot better than a few million so that's big one and then i keep um all the meetings so far being able to go up there not worked with my wife's schedule so i keep looking for a day to be able
to get up there thank you um moving on to superintendent's update sure we're going to we're going to start with a quick video tonight um this came out from masa it's kind of a recap of school funding a
little bit about it discusses the historical funding of 2023 and really how it is kind of misleading how that historical funding happened and what came after all of that funding so if you want to go ahead and play it real quick after headlines across minnesota
declared record school funding in 2023 you may be asking yourself why are so many school districts making budget cuts and going to voters for more funding here are the top reasons minnesota schools are struggling to balance
budgets number one inflation families aren't the only ones feeling the impact of rising costs for school districts the costs of labor health insurance property insurance and school bus transportation continue to
rise the 2023 inflationary increase to the general education formula is a step forward but it doesn't make up for decades of underfunding and failing to keep up with rising inflationary costs number two unfunded and
underfunded mandates from the state when it comes to some of the most costly things schools have to pay for it's the state legislature not the local school board who makes these decisions from implementing new instructional strategies to increasing curricular
requirements to providing unemployment benefits there are decisions made at the state level that local districts must follow while the state may offer one-time funds to help pay for some new requirements the ongoing costs are often the school district's
responsibility and number three the changing role of schools in our communities the needs of students are different than they were 10 20 or 30 plus years ago from mental health support for students specialized learning assistance family resources and
career programs to help meet workforce needs schools have taken on additional responsibilities to meet the needs of their students and community when you add rising safety needs aging buildings and technology and declining birth rates it's clear why minnesota districts
struggle to balance their budgets school funding is complex with the majority of funding coming through the state in the form of general education aid schools also receive funds for specific categories that can only be spent on certain items additional needs
are then covered by property taxes in other words just because the state is providing us with more dollars doesn't mean we can use those dollars wherever we like each year we tackle the challenge of balancing these funding sources with our increasing expenses to
build an effective budget that meets student needs when our student needs exceeds state and local funding we may seek additional support through a referendum as you can see there's more to the story beyond headlines of schools
receiving record funding inflation unfunded mandates and a changing role for schools funding schools is an investment in our students community and future please reach out to your elected officials and share your story so they can help do
their part to make sure our students and our schools are receiving the resources they need for success visit our website to learn more i don't think i'm probably sharing any earthshattering news in regards to
that video of how of how people feel and how um funding education goes not only in you know the state of minnesota but everywhere and unfortunately we are continually tasked with having to keep up with inflationary cost and other
mandates and lack of resources that come from the state and um i do have some legis legislative updates that i wanted to share with you that came out in the early session um of the legislative session this year um you know obviously
i think everybody's probably aware of the special election last week um for the house leadership it is now a 6767 tie in the minnesota house um again which will come back to a power sharing agreement all committees will now have to have co-chairs from both parties with
equal representation except for the new fraud committee which remain under the republican control this means any bill will require bipartisan support to advance both the committee and on the house floor which we know is always a struggle to begin with anyway
um one key fellow house file number 11 which would have extended the implementation of the paid leave law by year was tabled in hopes of allowing further discussion and compromise which is hopefully a little bit of good news for school districts and everybody else um senate education policy committee uh
this really has to do around the mcas for the older students in in in grade 11 getting rid of the mcas and replacing that with the act or another college entry exam whether it be acupplace or something like that um and also considers a bill to exclude students
that opt out currently it counts against you but if they opt out um it's a it will it will help your actually state accountability um senate finance education committee would allow schools to use long-term facilities maintenance funds for roof projects uh proposed
letting school boards renew capital project referendums without board of approval um house education policy committee uh heard bills to extend a short call substitute teacher pilot program and adjust the daily substitute rate of pay um obviously that would be
more for the metro area than outstate but hopefully um giving us that opportunity in funding some of those programs as well um and this one i think is interesting reviewed a bill requiring legislators to spend 12 hours per banium observing teachers and or
administrators house education finance committee received an update to expand teacher workforce including including a proposed statewide teacher apprentichip program um heard presentations on the k12 budget forecast compensatory revenue
what you were talking about and uh per pupil funding formulas uh bills of interest that are still out there increase funding for school unemployment aid expand local option revenue authority for districts increase local optional aid and just free lunch
eligibility um proposes allowing school boards to opt out of certain laws and rules for flexibility and that would have been things that were mandated in the 2324 session um these bills around funding proposals and and bringing the
discussion of policy changes and new mandates um obviously these all are going to impact minnesota school districts and for those of you that didn't have the opportunity to to hear it or you haven't paid attention to it funding is going to be a continue continue to be a major topic moving forward especially with the generated uh
projected general fund shortfall for the fiscal year 2829 bnm bn which was forecast to be 1.5 billion in november deficit and now it's going to be around six billion they propose so again i don't know if there's going
to be a lot of money moving forward but hopefully um we can keep our fingers crossed with that um and last for my last piece of information last thursday evening our leadership team met to continue on the process of our km strategic plan uh the
session focused on redefining the desired daily experiences the theory of action draft and refinement of the district's operational plan and a brief introduction of vision card uh the next steps in our process will be to review with leadership team to bring the design
of the vision cards and establish baseline data and the areas to be determined of what we want to focus on and hold ourselves accountable for once those are completed then it will be shared out uh with the board to review and check to see if there's any changes
they would like to be made but up to this point everything has been focused on staff students and community and then once the project is completed we'll bring it to you for your approval and move on to the next steps any questions
can i get a copy of just stuff whenever absolutely i can give that to you any other questions just one kind of random question you can answer pretty shortly so talking about changing the high
school students taking the 11th graders at least taking the act and y do you have any concerns just out of curiosity the concerns that's setting up that you know college this is collegebased test that college is for all students and you know if you're not doing well i don't know this is kind of weird to force a
multic college prep thing where we're not actually prepping all students for college you know multiple pathways yep and i and i think the goal would be whether the the act or the acupplacer was for those individuals that might be going to a community college and and that would be the placement for them so
i don't know if they're all going to have to take the act but it could be the asvap for those going to career or military or whatever the case might be there's a number of options i i would hope it wouldn't just be that the students would have to take the act is that one that would opt out of
yeah okay thank you thank you very much personnel information always move on to the consent agenda motion to approve mark do you mind just explaining the format difference in our um how the personnel
information is different just because it doesn't require a vote it was in some of our trainings and it was really helpful okay so well i did inquire with mark and this came from an msba training but the personal information we used to have on
the consent agenda and then we vote on the consent agenda some personal items don't actually require us to approve or not approve them so it looks like they pulled off the items that don't require us to vote on them and then left items that do require a vote on the consent
agenda just right do we have a motion to approve the consent agenda okay second thank you have a second any discussion on those okay none all those in favor to
approve the consent agenda say i i all those opposed same sign motion carries we have looks like we have no old business move on to new
business approve hs tuesday will you give some background on this trent would love to we have for many years uh speaking of act good timing that's a day when we give thanks
for many years that's a day when we give our juniors the option of taking the act or the asvab and that um for many years we did that and that necessitated a lot of staffing time to bring kids into groups to administer those tests um for some
years we had other kids just had the day off and all sorts of different ways we've done that now we've moved some of our mca tests on to that day as well in a shortened day model and so the ninth graders are going to take the preac
takes about half a day the 10th graders are going to take the reading test on the 8th of april we stretch it out and try to set the expectations for their engagement as high as possible get a real serious testing environment feel and then the juniors we have asvab in this room and the act all over the
building and seniors just get have long had that day off as a as a senior perk and then later in april no disruption to the school day in terms of modifying the day we run a different schedule to give our juniors the mca math test sophomores
their sciences it's it's all part of upping the expectations and the seriousness with which the students take those assessments thank you any other questions i got one you know i know we've done that in the past have you have you seen
the benefits from that versus trying to do them in just isolated pathways i guess per each very much so multi- multi-prong approach to increasing student achievement one when you're
dealing with high school students is to um ensure their effort and so what we found honestly the feedback from our proctors what i saw for years was if students didn't the need to try hard on those tests we were we would run it where they would be taking their mca
test missing their chemistry class they were hustling out through that test to get back to chemistry because that mattered to them as grades as homework and that and so we needed to change the game and and really shift our thinking and students have appreciated
that and we've seen the effort certainly we've seen an increase in test scores in recent years thank you i guess with that i can make a motion to approve thank you all those in favor of uh setting that
date say i same sign motion carries uh 5.2.2 approved the 2024 to 25 let me take a look at that is there any questions on that
i have a question do um i know we do this annually but do we review it um like on a committee prior to it coming to our board meeting personal it was on your agenda elizabeth i wasn't at the meeting we did not get
to that i'll make a motion to approve the 2024 25 scenario thank you second any discussion on that any questions otherwise u all those in favor approving
the senior list say i same sign motion carries on 5.2.3 approve you requiring consented or emitted early retirement
thank you patrick i'll second elizabeth is there any further discussion on that do you want to just give a highlight of um i mean we all have the pleasure of going over it but why we would do something like that and the benefit of
it um basically what we're trying to do is we know that we're probably going to need to do some reductions just because we've got smaller grade levels coming through and in order to try to preserve some of that young talent um
and providing a way for some of our experienced staff to be able to move on um by offering that incentive to try and preserve those positions um again it's the incentive is available
to those that have 15 years of service with the district and are at least 55 years of age thank you we have a motion in a second discussion all those in favor say
i same signs i'd like to make a quick motion that we take a 10 minute break before we start the review superintendent applications form here a while so do i have a second i'll second recess i
same [Music] um reminder to use mics so that amy can hear you when you talk hi amy back up amy again she
yes i just have to remember how to make all the other screens smaller minimize why can't i minimize her see that uh yeah zoom a little more otherwise i can put it up on my
side too [Music] there you go i think we're good