Good evening and welcome as I call to order regular school board meeting of Independent School District number 882. It is 5:00 p.m. on Monday, September 8th. I'd like to note that board member Melissa Curtis is um gone this evening,
but we do have a quorum so we can continue on. Please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance. 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. All right. And now we will get approval of tonight's tenative agenda. Second. Moved by Jeff Hegley or
Yep. Moved by Jeff Hegley. Seconded by Casey Root. All those in favor, please say I. I. All oppose, please say no. Motion passes. 5-0. Thought I'd take a second to get into
the groove this evening. All right, we have no citizen comments this evening. So, we will move on to uh item number five, fiscal stability, and we are looking for a motion for our consent agenda. Second. Moved by Jeff Hegley, seconded by Casey
Root. All those in favor, please say I. I. Please say no. Motion passes. 5. Moving on to collaborative connections. I will pass it over to Superintendent
Olsen to go over our acceptance of gifts. Awesome. Well, I have four um gifts here to bring forward here tonight. The first two go together and the last two go together. Um so, East View and Naturebased PTO um gave a
$1,000 to purchase books in Spanish for the Magic Book Bus. And as a reminder, the Magic Book Bus is a task force um as part of the Rallyto Read initiative that we've been partnering with in the community. Um and then another donation,
Byron and Monica Martin, $250 to purchase books in Spanish for the Magic Book Bus. Once again, that's a rally to read initiative. And then the last two also the last two go together as well as well. Rich and Jen Hansen um $6,000 for the staff welcome back lunchon and
Hogland Transportation 264 and one cent for the staff welcome back lunchon and that was to cover the complete cost um of the welcome back lunchon. We've never had um a lunchon before. Uh normally um we um have staff
back on a different date and so this was a very special um event to be able to bring back all staff. 700 staff members uh were invited in the neighborhood of 600 um came. Um there would some uh coaches and things like that that aren't
on uh full-time status that weren't there, but we had over 600 there for this event and it was a a great welcome back. Um I think the highlight for me was having um 150 students hiding behind the curtain um as I gave the presentation and welcoming back and we
lifted up the curtain and the students wave signs for paras um education support staff for teachers for um nurses um custodians cooks every employee group got recognized and and with these students all wearing the same
shirt uh they were magic adventure students was how I was able to pull pull that off and uh it was pretty fun to um see the staff immediately stand up and give it a round of applause for the kids. So, standing ovation for the kids um and led to a lunchon that uh was a
very fun um the lunchon was uh sponsored by Von Hansen's. There was other product donors there as well. U Viking Coke did some product um testing and some things like that for some water and some pop and things like that. Um but uh those were the two uh monetary donations that
came in to cover the full lunchon cost. Therefore be resolved by Monell School Board 882 to Great Lakes accept the following donations. East View and Naturebased PTO $1,000 to purchase books in Spanish for the Magic Book Bus.
Brian and Monica Martin $250 to purchase books in Spanish for the Magic Book Bus. Rich and Jen Hansen, $6,000 for staff welcome back lunchon and Hogland Transportation for $2,641 for the staff welcome back lunchon.
Second. Moved by Jeff Hegley, seconded by Mary Bartell. All those in favor, please say I. I. Opposed, please say no. Motion passes 50 on the extremely generous donations that impacted both students and our staff,
which was awesome. All right, next is item number seven, teaching and learning. Uh, help me welcome up director of business services, Tina Burke Holder, to go over our enrollment update. First look at enrollment. We will look
at enrollment projections and how we did in November, but I just want to highlight kind of where we sit as this affects our revenue budget. So at our elementary level, you can see here we have grades K through five shown here. We have Nature Base, Little
Mountain, Pinewood, and East View all represented in different columns. Uh but overall, we did run short. Kindergarten is down 25. And that's always hard to predict just because, you know, there's we have the 04 census that we can look at. There's births we
can look at. There's home school. all these different things that we can look at, but there's never an easy trend to kind of look at. Um, grades one through five, we were down overall about nine students. Um, so where we're down the
most is grades K through five. And at Pinewood, we do have a handful of students that are included in these enrollment projections, like five or six students that are served in our co-op programs at Pinewood. At the middle school, we're very close
to projections and we also have for online students that aren't dual enrolled, we have about three students that are dual enrolled between middle school and our online program. So, very close there. And then at high school level, um this shows our online as well
as the high school enrollment projection. So, with the online, we have about 125 students that are dual enrolled between the high school and online. So only 48 that are not dual enrolled. Also in here, we do not
include our high school co-op programs enrollment in here. We try to keep that separate as well. I forgot to mention the middle school keeping that foundations one program separate because we do staff separately for that. The last slide just has all the grades together. looking at what our enrollment
projection was going to be was at 3,996 students and we're at 3,977. Uh so we are down and this is just helpful to know as we look at where we at for budget purposes and how we forecast how that impacts us moving
forward. This could be 150,000 impact to our revenue budget. With less kids, we get less revenue. And that's why we always I would like to us to have a fund balance beyond that minimum 8% so that we can take the hits because we never know who's going to
show up on the first day of school. Well, no action tonight. Just to review and then we'll dive deeper into 101 enrollment in October or November and look at next year's enrollment projections. Any questions? In your experience, these numbers stay
consistent or you still see some change in them? They'll probably be consistent. Um, if kids aren't here for the first 15 days, they have to come off. So, it's hard to know. There might be some in there. That's why we tend to look at 10 one
every school year as that's a good base to look at. Do we know how many students be lost to the new private school that opened up in Big Lake. I'm not sure. I know we're trying to
keep track of that in Infinite Campus when kids go elsewhere, but I don't know where we're at with getting records updated. Go back to the slide with uh K through what is it there?
So you see like kindergarten 243 248 257 and then you see after that the classes significantly increase. Is that the norm? So that's why you're see with so we have lower class sizes in our early grades K through
two and our largest classes are at the high school. You can see at 10th grade 357 353 372. So that's why we're declining. We have grades exiting over
370, over 350, and we only have 240 kids replacing that grade level. Those lower three levels typically are they that much lower or is that that's just lower enrollment across the state, lower births, migration?
I guess I was just wondering if if we've seen that in the past and then they get to third, fourth, fifth grade and then our enrollment jumps a little bit. No. Okay. I can say just from having longitudinal information as an elementary principal, um I would say the
graduating classes um when you add um fifth grade at Little Mountain and fifth grade at Pinewood were pretty close to um trend data. So they were if you know you were usually in the 300 somewhere um and when you added those two numbers and
so now with these numbers it looks like you know at some point um we are we're this uh declining enrollment trend is catching up with us. And like Tina said, I mean, kindergarten is one of the hardest and most challenging um because
there's so many different pieces of data to look at. You can't just look at um where they were last year in the grade level before because preschool you usually um only get about half to um three a little bit a little bit more than half of the number of students um
that attend our preschool. There's a lot of different options for kids. Um and while that number um remains strong we and we try uh recruit at the preschool rival for students in our program that is a definite uh trend that's always
happened. You never get the exact same number of students in our preschool in comparison to our kindergarten. So there is no data to look at that's exact like the other grades or more exact. Any other questions?
No. Thank you for the All right, we'll move to item B, district building goal review. Please help me welcome to the podium director of teaching and learning, Laura Stener. Good evening, Chair Sean, Superintendent Olsen, members of the board. I'm
off and running. I'm excited to be here tonight for my very first board presentation with you to talk about district goals and core priorities. This is the season of the year where we start to hear from our schools. We have fall presentations on school goals. And this is an opportunity for me to share a bit
about the work that we did at our June admin retreat that informed the action planning and goal setting of our buildings. And so tonight we're really going to talk about how we'll be monitoring our improvement this year through both leading and lagging indicators. And if you're unfamiliar with those terms, I'll kind of break
those down as we go through tonight. So before we jump into the work that was done at our admin retreat and how it informed the work of our buildings, we just want to orient ourselves to our goals. These this is the third year of these goals. So, these are goals that you've seen before. Uh, the district by 2026 is working on improving K12
literacy, raising proficiency rates to 70%, working on our attendance rates for consistent attendance at that 90% threshold, graduation rates at 95% for the four-year rate, and then that district-wide implementation of vision of a learner. So, none of our goals, our
district overarching goals are changing. This is the third year of these three-year goals, and this is what our our buildings really are working to improve through the work that they do at the building level. But I want to use a couple different analogies tonight as we think about our
buildings coming in to share their plans for the year. And I want to start with a sports analogy. Now, I know there's lots of sports people in in the audience and different aspects of sports, but everyone kind of understands this metric. And so I want you to think about our district goals like our scoreboard.
They're that number that we're trying to achieve. They're that metric that helps us know, did we hit the mark? There's a quantitative number we can see, we can point to, and we can say if we hit that mark, we did it. It's really that scoreboard, that end result. But our
building level work that our building principles and our teachers and our support staff and everyone in our buildings, what they do every day, that's really like the playbook. And if you're a sports person, you know that that outcome on the scoreboard doesn't change unless you have a clear playbook.
You implement it well. You execute it well. And so our buildings spent a lot of time at our admin retreat this June really thinking about what are those impactful strategies that they will be implementing each and every day in service of those larger outcomes. So rather than stepping back and saying
what additional goals will we set at the building level, we took an approach to say our district goals are what we all work towards. Rather than setting additional goals, how can we focus on our playbook, our action plan, our strategies that will help us hit that
metric on our scoreboard? And another way to think about this is through the terms leading and lagging indicators. So when we think about leading indicators, these are the things that have to be happening, have to be at the forefront in order for those lagging indicators to change. And so we can't
expect student outcomes to change if we don't have adult practices in place that are the known strategies that help change things for kids. So as we think about this, we I want you to think about leading indicators as the practices when implemented consistently really drive
outcomes for our students. That's where our admin team spent a lot of time this summer thinking about what are those pieces we need to have in place across our building in order for us to have our student outcomes change. And the student
outcomes are really the results of the actions adults take and they do take time to move. We know that we can't do something on Tuesday and say now our fastbridge results are different on Wednesday or do something in March and say our MCA results are different in April. Those practices, those leading
indicators need to be implemented well in order to see those student results change. Um, and what ended up happening as our admin team worked together were some core priorities for those playbooks, if you will, really surfaced. And what was so fun for me as a new
leader to this system was to see how even though our buildings really came at this work from their own building level and I'll I'll walk you through how we did this in just in the next slide. Um the core priorities that our principles identified were really common across the
system. Our principles are committed through their action plans this year to strengthening tier one instructional practices across the board. Um they're committed to advancing literacy for all students and the strategies that that move that look different from East View to Naturebased to the high school.
They're also really working on preparing for and leading standards and curriculum shifts. There are big big changes happening in the world of state standards. The way that we approach mathematics is very different in this new set of standards. And our principles
recognize that in order for our teachers to be prepared so our students can be successful, we have to prepare and we have to be able to lead those changes. Trauma informed and relation ba relationshipbased practices. If I've learned anything about Monaceel is relationships matter. They matter to our staff. They matter to our families. They
matter to our communities. And our buildings didn't lose sight of that importance. also this idea of using data to drive instruction and engagement decisions and improving student family engagement and attendance. So although these aren't necessarily specific smart
goals that you're seeing, what you're getting a window into is that playbook, that action plan. What will our buildings do to help us move towards those goals that we've set? How we arrived here, how we arrived at these core priorities was through
multiple steps. So, I was really fortunate to be able to co-lead the admin retreat with Cindy Foching. We were able to come together, to plan together, and it was an awesome way for me to sort of share the baton with her for that last part of of her leadership and to be able to weigh in and and bring
my influence as well. And I really enjoyed having that opportunity. Uh Cindy and I started with a student data review and our principal spent a long time looking at deep deep data for behavior, academics, attendance, um looking at graduation data, where that
was applicable. And so really spent a good almost a half day really diving in deeply to what is their data telling them. But we didn't go to the action plan yet. We said just wait. There are some other really important overarching plans, overarching goals, overarching
vision that we have to consider before buildings start building out their action plan. And so that was looking at our MTSS semi, which is a data tool that we use to assess how we're doing with the implementation of MTSS. Our EL and sped departments put together beautiful
blueprints for professional development to meet the needs of diverse learners. And we have our achievement and integration plan that lays out specific strategies for meeting our goals. So our building spent time there as well to say what actions am I seeing from my data? What actions am I seeing from these
overarching plans? And then what's specific to me as a building leader? For example, kindergarten might have some really specific needs that aren't going to show up unless we have that opportunity for leaders to have some autonomy about how they meet the needs of their specific learning community.
From there, buildings completed their action plans and then I was able to take all those action plans, synthesize, distill down and look for those common themes, which is what gave you the core priorities you see there. And so even though buildings really came at it
individually, the commonalities across buildings were there. These priorities don't encompass every single thing every building will work on, but they encompass the main strategies we'll be using this year to improve student outcomes. And this is how we will take an approach
this year that might feel just a little bit different as you're seeing the building presentations come through. And so we're going to think about another analogy around health and how it's so critical for us to measure what matters. So, I don't know about any of you, but I've had moments in my life where I've
said, "I might need to pay more attention to my health." And often that can come with just getting on a scale every day and saying yay or nay or it's the same or what's happening. Um, but it doesn't really matter how many times you get on the scale. If you're not measuring what matters, if you're not
paying attention to that nutritious eating, the regular exercise, the quality sleep, the stress management, when those adult actions are in place, we can expect the outcome, the number on the scale, the number on the scoreboard to change. And the parallel for education is is similar. So, we have
these metrics. We have literacy proficiency. We've got attendance. We've got graduation numbers. Those are our outcomes. But our buildings will be paying close attention to the strong instructional strategies, the effective student engagement, the trauma-informed approaches, and really thinking about
how are we measuring that those pieces are embedded in every building, in every classroom in a consistent, impactful way, that those leading indicators are measured so we can see those lagging indicators come behind. What this means for your building goal
presentations as you start to see them in the coming weeks is that our buildings will be anchoring their strategies to those district goals. So in the past you might have seen a different goal. The middle school might have said we have a specific goal. This year you'll see much more of here are
our strategies that anchor to the district goals. We're all working collectively for those district goals. And so the buildings will be detailing for you what strategies they'll be doing in service of those goals. Um primarily focusing on those adult behaviors that
need to be in place. And it really gives them an opportunity to share the good work to highlight the strategies to share what does it really look like? What's our playbook for achieving what it is that the district has set forth as the vision. Um but we also know data is
important. Um we can't just say well we're not going to look at data. And so in order to to shift to that more playbookbased presentation but still keep our minds on data, we'll include a supplementary data packet or tool as part of the agenda so that you'll have
that opportunity to see very clearly what's that numerical progress? What's the scoreboard at right now? Um be able to ask questions about that as well. But what I wanted to do was frontload just a little bit today to help you understand what was the process our buildings did.
And so as you see those building presentations, if they feel like they might have a little different vibe this year, that might that's why. And it gives you that background to understand the process that we went through. Are there any questions I can answer tonight?
This is a lot. Um I'm excited. Well, welcome. Thank you. Fun for you to be part of that. A question for you. So reading obviously has been a focus of the school district now and we just implemented new curriculum. It's year two now that we're
on. Um how is that working and how how is the vibe of how each skill school felt about that new curriculum? I think it's as you know the readact and the implementation of not only new curriculum but new learning has been a
huge lift for elementary teachers. What I think is a great win is that when teachers are going through their mandatory training, they're able to go to their curriculum and see, oh, what I've learned that is a high quality instructional practice is here in my curriculum resource. I think that next
step is really that work around connecting those two pieces in a a maybe more intentional way. And so it's one thing to say, I've had this training. I understand what to do and I've got a curriculum that helps me do
that, but it's another thing to say, how am I as an intentional practitioner drawing from that training, looking at student data to modify and adjust? And when a curriculum is new, um, in general, the the rule of thumb is it takes three years to implement that
curriculum well. And so year one often is very much what is this? How do I do it? Just trying to deliver. Year two is refining and growing practices. And year three is where we can really get um much more detailed in how that implementation
is going and the tweaks we can make based on student data. So kind of a long answer. Um but I think it's it's hard to broadly say how are people feeling because there was such a heavy lift. I think we see a lot of positives. we can guarantee our curriculum is aligned with
the best practices. And so now we can do the work which is often referred to bridge to practice. How do we bridge our learning to our practices in the classroom? And that's what's really on the horizon. This sounds really good. And you may have already answered the question and I
apologize if I asked this incorrectly, but a lot of your presentation dealt with the the behavior of the adults in the room. What about the fact that students um learning is going to be independent sometimes of the adults behavior? Have you How are you taking
that into account in all of this? Yeah, that's a great question. Right. You can't always control those uncontrollables. Exactly. Exactly. And I think what this speaks to is really getting clear about what we can control. As schools, it doesn't always behoove us to spend a lot of energy and
effort in saying here are all the things we can't control. So no wonder this child is struggling to learn. But if we have those really intentional practices in place that aren't just academics that are thinking about the social and emotional needs, the family engagement,
then we can take a look at how do we use processes like our MTSS process to really drill down and define how things look different for individual students who still aren't maybe having the success that we would expect. But by focusing in on adults and making that
really, really strong and cohesive, that helps us create that wraparound support that we know students need. And then we've got another system, our MTSS system that says sometimes even all of those great plans, we're going to have kids that still need more, still need
different. And that's where we're able to bring in a team of adults to look at data and say, what's that second scoop, third scoop, different approach to student needs? Does that answer your question? Yeah, very much so. You sort of take by doing this, we're sort of
eliminating the adult as the part of the equation and focusing in on the student in a in a in a way. Thank you. Thank you for the great presentation. Um, what's your confidence level that we're going to reach the 70% in reading
proficiency? I would love to be able to answer that when I've got a little bit more time under my belt. So, what I with just having the MCA data become public this last week or so. Obviously, we had the preliminary and I've been starting to dig in, but I don't know that I've had
the time to be able to unpack where we're at and the strategies to be able to give you a confidence level. I know that's not answering your question, but I would hate to stand up here and and make something up when I don't feel confident that I've done my due
diligence to answer that in a respectful and intentional way with integrity. I appreciate that. We we've focused heavily on transparency and integrity around here and with the upcoming vote. Um, I think if we can give some honest
confidence level to where we think we're going to be at ahead of the vote, that might build some confidence in the community. So maybe in a couple two or four weeks would be good. I'll be back to do the district data presentation. So at that time I think I can have a better handle on kind of
confidence piece. Thanks for granting me the time. Absolutely. uh what do you feel is a strength of Monaceel um in the area that you're dealing with and where is an opportunity or weakness that you're looking at? I would say what struck me from the
get-go as a strength is the um the real joy and commitment and dedication of the educators. And so worked with lots of educators throughout my career and I think I've had an opportunity to work with a few teams, not not every teacher.
Um, but I've really been impressed with the way people come to the table. They say, "What can we do? How can we partner? How do we get better?" I don't I've not encountered resistance from teachers when I've worked with them on curriculum implementation or pilot data
or goal setting or standards work. Um, I think the same is true for administrative team. They're they're really eager, dedicated, willing, so collaborative. And so I think that's that's a true strength. Um I think an opportunity for growth is some pieces
that are more systematic. Um being able to look at how are we um really ensuring that there's a clear pathway and plan for teachers to have the professional development that they need. Our buildings have gone through a great process, but there's only so much time.
There's only so many minutes. There's so many priorities that are our priorities, the state's priorities, the community's priorities. And so, uh, an area for growth that I see is is more of a systematic collaborative approach to big picture planning around staff professional development, um, in order
to, um, really look at the whole picture and ensure that we're not inadvertently or unintentionally creating maybe gaps for our staff in some of those critical areas for learning. And I don't mean that to say that there are gaps, but as I've entered the system, I've I've noticed that I've asked some questions
that have led me to say, "Oh, we could step back and do that piece collaboratively, and that might help us have a better, more cohesive plan for how we're working with our staff around their professional learning needs." Thank you very much. Welcome.
I like the red and black. I know. Me, too. All right. Do we have any other questions? No. Great job. Thank you. You all right. Next, we'll go to item number eight, safe and healthy culture. Please
help me welcome to the podium director of nutrition services, Laura Wacker Hansen, to talk about our adult second meal lunch prices. Hi, just a quick update for you here. Um, so
tonight we are asking board approval for increase on our lunch price. Um, from $5 last year to $55. Uh, this is the state required minimum price for lunches. This is normally something we take care of earlier in the
year, but the state was just a little late getting it to us this year. So, um, just asking for approval on the increase in the lunch price by 5 cents for this school year. Have any questions? If not, this is an action item.
So moved. Second. Moved by Jeff Hegley, seconded by Casey Root. All those in favor, please say I. I. Please say no. Motion passes. 50. Thank you for the update. All right, we'll
move on to item B, our first reading of policies. Please help me welcome to the podium Director of Human Resources, Rob Danaker. All right, Chair Seven, members of the board, Superintendent Olsen, we have nine policies that were reviewed at this
month's uh policy committee meeting. Uh the policy committee gathers the first um first Monday of every month to uh do our work and um we spend about an hour and 45 minutes doing that. the board members um and all the participants of the committee take significantly more
time to review all the policies before we bring them forward. And so just want to put that out there um ahead of time as well. So we're reviewing these uh numerically tonight. All of these nine are brought to us uh through legislative updates and we'll start with uh policy
number 418 uh drug free workplace drug uh free school. The purpose of this policy is to maintain a safe and health uh healthful environment for employees and students by prohibiting the use of alcohol, toxic substances, medical cannabis, non- intoxicating cannabonoids, edible cannabonoid
products, and controlled substances without a physician's uh prescription. Um specifically the legislature um under the exceptions uh article of this policy, the legislator legislature made
some changes that preclude um uh the district taking action against somebody who is a participant in a medical cannabis program and that's the most substantive change of 418. Any questions from the board at all?
Seeing none, we'll move on to 501. Uh this is the uh school weapons uh policy. The purpose of this policy is to asssure safe school environment for student, staff, and the public. There were some minor recommendations from MSBA in terms of amending some definitions. So u a
more descriptive definition of dangerous weapon also uh defining possession. uh those were up front and then the major change was towards the end of the policy uh regarding active shooters. So it it changes article 7 from reports of
dangerous weapon incidents to reports of dangerous weapon and active shooter incidents in school zones. And so for instance include would include any incident in which an active shooter uh incident means an event involving an armed individual or individuals on campus or an armed asalent in the
immediate vicinity of the school. So, it doesn't necessarily mean a shooting incident, just means somebody who is armed on or adjacent to school district property. Any questions from the board on uh 501? Okay, moving on to 503. Student
attendance. The purpose uh of this policy is as follows. The school board believes that regular school attendance is directly related to success in academic work. uh benefits students socially, provides opportunities for important communication between teachers and students, and establishes regular habits of dependability important to the
future of the student. The purpose of this policy is to encourage regular school attendance. It is intended to be positive, not punitive. Um and so the legislature made a minor change in um the stat one of the statutes that affects student attendance. And
interestingly enough, it's that they deleted or eliminated the idea of this uh superintendent serving as the uh truent truency officer for the district. And that's actually with good intention. They um the legislature recognized it's good to have
um uh kind of a chain of command approach and somebody specifically in that school building accountable accountable for the student attendance in that building. Um any questions regarding uh policy 503? Okay. Moving forward to 515. Protection
and privacy of pupil uh records. The purpose uh of this policy is that the school district recognize its responsibility in regard to the collection, maintenance of and dissemination of pupil records and the protection of and of the privacy rights of students as provided in federal law
and state statutes. Um the major change um brought forward by the legislature in this policy sorry that affects this policy is that uh parent contact information is no longer uh treated as um directory
information. And so um what that means is that uh school districts must treat parent directory information in the same manner as they do student directory information and uh increases um privacy and protection thresholds therein. Um
and so again that was the major change in and aligning uh the rights of parents uh more similarly to the rights of students in terms of data privacy. Any questions from the board on policy uh 515 okay moving forward to 516 student
medication and teleaalth. The purpose of this policy is to set forth the provisions that must be followed when administrating administering excuse me non-emergency prescription medication to students at school. Um the major change here was that um there was a legislative
update in some of the language used around epinephrine uh specifically in the statute and therefore in this policy uh previously referred to epinephrine auto injectors. Uh but recognizing that auto injectors are one of a handful of methods to deliver epinephrine. Um auto
injectors has been updated or modified to uh more generally refer to epinephrine delivery systems. Any questions from the board on 516. Okay, moving forward. Uh 523 is the next one. Um and just correction, eight of
the nine were brought forward by legislative change. The ninth one is this one. 523. This is a policy that MSBA has had a draft model of uh for some time. Uh we have not had a local version of this in Monosel. So this is a brand new uh policy coming forward. Um
the purpose of this policy is that certain policies as contained in the school district's policies are applicable to students as well as to employees. To avoid undue duplication, the school district provides notice by this section of the application and incorporation by reference of the following policies that also apply to
students. And so in this case, there's five uh policies that are housed under the 400 series, which typically deals with employees, but those five policies uh could also be applied to students, which are typically housed under the 500 series in MSBA model language. And so
these uh five policies are uh 413 which is harassment and violence, 417 chemical use and abuse, 418 drug-free workplace, drug-free school, 419 tobaccof free environment, possession and use of tobacco, tobaccore related devices and electronic delivery devices. And finally
420 students and employees with sexually transmitted infections and diseases and certain other communicable diseases and infectious conditions. Any questions from the board on 523 as proposed? Okay, moving forward to 534. Uh, school
meals. Uh, the purpose of this policy is to ensure that students receive healthy and nutritious meals through the school district's nutrition program and that school district employees, families, and students have a shared understanding of expectations regarding meal charges. Uh, specifically, um, there's been some
modifications at the state level regarding uh, continued implementation of the free school uh, free school meals program. for students. And so, uh, some modifications and some of the language pieces around that, but then also
locally, um, uh, director Burke Holder and Director Wacker Hansen brought forward some recommendations regarding, um, staff meals. And so, uh, for instance, um, a staff member who does not have sufficient funds will not be allowed to charge a meal or allocart items until additional money is
deposited in the staff member's account. Basically the purpose being that we don't want to create a scenario in which staff members are running into the negative on their meals accounts. Uh any questions on 534. Okay. Moving forward to 602 organization of school calendar and school day. The
purpose of this policy is to provide for a timely determination of the school calendar and school day. Um in the last most recent legislative session, uh the legislature um uh amended the statute regarding school calendar. Um by law in
Minnesota, uh schools must start after uh Labor Day unless there's some qualifying conditions. Um but for the next two school years, 2627 and then also 2728, Labor Day falls relatively late in the calendar. And so the legislature is
allowing for those two years only. uh that school districts that decide to can start September 1st or later. Um and so provides a couple of extra days ahead of Labor Day if school districts choose. The school Monaceel Public Schools has not made a decision on whether to access
this opportunity or not. We're just um recommending updating the policy to allow for it if the board decides to do so in the future. Any questions on 602? Okay. And finally, 709 uh student transportation uh safety. Uh the purpose of this policy is to provide safe
transportation for students and to educate students on safety issues and the responsibilities of school bus ridership. Uh this is a fairly significant policy. It's uh over 25 pages in total. And uh it there was
since the board has last reviewed this policy uh there's been actually two different cycles of legislative changes that have affected it. And so there's significant changes um within um basically uh in essence just kind of
clarifying um different um safety methods and and and expectations. And then also the last 10 or so pages of our local policy 709 really have to do with procedures for um driving incidents. And just a helpful
reminder that um Monaceel uh public schools, we do not um own our own buses. We do not hire our own drivers. We contract those services out to a um local contracted vendor and um but they are still beholden to uh the policies as
we set forth. Any questions from the board on 709? I don't have a question on 709, but going back to 501. Let's do it. It appears that under Roman numeral 3,
letters E and F match letters A and B and would probably just be redundant. Still getting there. I should have waited. Trying to keep everything straight. All right. I'm sorry. 501 Roman numeral 3 definitions.
Okay. A and B appear to be repeated in E and F. You are correct. Uh we will clean that up. Uh they were simply uh they were moved as part of the Y I figured. Thank you. So we will delete ENF when we bring it
forward for a second read. Any other questions? All right. Chair Steven. This was first read only. No action required tonight. Thank you, Director Daneker. All right, now we'll move on to item number nine, innovation and leadership.
Uh pass it over to Superintendent Olsen to go over school board recognition month. Awesome. Well, September is uh Minnesota school board uh recognition month, and I want to take a moment to uh publicly thank um each one of you for your
dedication and your service. Um, schoolboard members across the state, especially here in Monaceel, put in countless hours um whether it be sub subcommittee work um the technical reading that go into um preparation for making decisions and then the
subcommittee work of um district um budget and district policy. And so while your work is um behind the scenes, it does serve as a guiding light for the Monosella School District. And so on behalf of the students, families and staff, um I would like to recognize and
sincerely thank you for your leadership and truly be in the heart of Monaceel School District. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. And that brings us to a journey at 5:44
p.m. Our next school board meeting will be September 22nd at 6:00 p.m. And this board meeting will be followed by work session which will start promptly in five minutes. Thank you for all of you
that attended this evening.