I would like to call to order the August 19th regular meeting of the Mounts View School Board. Good evening and welcome. The first business item is 1.2 adoption of the agenda. I would entertain a motion. So moved. Second. Agenda has been moved and seconded. Any
discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Next up is item 2.1. Um, gifts and announcements. Um, Shauna, would you read the gifts? Absolutely. So, there were 31 gifts
received for schools and programs this period for a total of $4,52.25. And there were 15 gifts received for the Ralpher Food Shelf this period for a total of $25,772.76. It's re uh it's recommended that the board accept these gifts and extend our
thanks to the donors. Great. Thanks, Shauna. Upcoming meetings. Our next work session will be on Thursday, September 11th at 5:00 pm and our next regular meeting of the school board will be on Tuesday, September 16th, both at 7 p.m. both here
at the district center. Um at this time, we will move on to agenda item 2.2, superintendence report. Great. Thank you. Uh yeah, just a couple updates tonight. First, I want to mention that uh while we have not officially started classes yet, fall activities at our
schools are well underway. August 11th was the first day for our Minnesota State High School League activities. Uh we've been in and out of our schools here over the summer, and it's great to see so many of our students back in and around our schools. We want to wish all of them great success as they uh enjoy
their activities this fall. And second, uh, registration for our fall community education activities will open on August 26th, 9:00 a.m. So, be sure to mark your calendars to register if you think you or your child might be interested in
participating in those activities this fall. I always encourage everyone to take a look at the the variety of offerings. I'm always impressed with how many different offerings there are available through our community education program. Um, there activities for all ages. So, please take a look and
choose some wonderful opportunities yet this fall. And that's all I have this evening. Great. Thanks, Superintendent Lennox. Uh, at this time, we'll move on to item 3.0. Um, approval of the consent agenda. I would entertain a motion. So, moved. Second.
The agenda has been moved and seconded. Any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Um, next up we have item 4.1 202526,
uh, district operational plan. And I will turn this over to Superintendent Lennox. Wonderful. Well, tonight we're bringing forward the district operational plan for the 2025 2026 school year. Uh, for the public, uh, administration and board members have really had multiple
opportunities now to review and discuss, uh, these goals. This year we're focused on eight total goals. Uh three of them that have a a priority status for us. Um those goals are uh number one, expanding
our career pathway opportunities for our high school students. Uh the second goal is developing a comprehensive district plan for our outdoor learning classrooms and activities. That is a priority goal for the district this year. Uh goal
three, the expansion of our student information system in the areas of assessment and analysis. Our fourth goal, strengthening our onboarding process for all of our employee groups. Uh goal five, to support the district capital projects
technology levy campaign. That is a a priority goal for us this year. Uh goal six, complete contract negotiations with all of our employee groups. Goal seven to complete an updated enrollment and facility study. That is our third
priority goal this year. And number eight is to complete a district-wide energy audit. Uh so board members, the final draft of these goals is included in in your materials in your packet this evening. Uh and administration is recommending approval of these as our
2025 2026 top goals. Great. Uh any questions for Superintendent Lennox? We have um discussed these um district operational goals um in great detail at
our um retreat uh that we recently had as a school board. So um we have been talking about this for months uh and um have come to the agreement that these are the the right goals to be focused on for the year. So, um, as Superintendent
Lennox, um, said, I'd entertain a motion for the approval of the 202526, uh, district operational, uh, plan as presented. Second. The motion has been moved and seconded.
Um, any discussion? Hearing none. All in favor? I. Any opposed? Motion carries. Um, now we have item 5.1. Um, we are going to get a 202526
enrollment update and I'd like to welcome up Darren Johnson, executive director of school management. Welcome, Darren. Thanks. All right. Good evening, members of the school board. I'm here tonight to provide an update on enrollment and projections for the 2526 school year.
numbers in this report are based on August 14th, 2025 data. So you have a sense of what we're looking at. Uh in our second year of providing a non-district enrollment option to surrounding community members, our numbers are up from January projections. Of particular note was an increase of
students from the east side of the school district. Snail Lake Education Center is approximately 80 students past projection. In combination, Turtle Lake and Island Lake are 55 students over projection. Chipua Middle School is approximately 30 students over initial
projection, while Mounds View High School is approximately 50 students over projection. For the 2526 school year, we accepted over 155 applications for open enrollment. Over half of these students will be in kindergarten for the 2526
school year. Also, as is typical, we saw a spike in enrollment of sixth grade students in our district when comparison is made from last year to this year. across our chart highlighting numbers from indivi all individual schools. Um all of our schools but one uh is over
projections. Uh the one school that is under projection is Valentine Hills. Uh they are currently slated to begin the school year with fewer students than projected. Combined senior classes for Mountains View and Irondale High School exist at 900 plus students for current
grades 9 through 12. So that means as we take a look at those graduating classes for uh the next four years, all of those high school classes when you uh add Mounds View and Ironville together, they are going to be above 900 students. Uh as we look at our total district January
projection of 11,128 students. Our current headcount is 11,445, which means we are 317 students over January projection. And finally, at this time of year, we are confident on October 1st, 2025, our enrollment will
indeed be over projection, but it is of course likely uh that our number will not be 317 students. And finally, we will continue to watch our enrollment numbers for the final weeks of the summer, and we will be supporting section sizes by frequently communicating with site administration.
So, those are the numbers. I believe that there was a a copy of the data for you to take a look at as well. Um if you have any questions certainly feel free to to ask me. Um and I think we have I'm staying here I think for the next topic. You are going to stay here.
Can I ask just one clarifying question? Absolutely. Um I just want to clarify some people might hear over projection and take that to mean overcrowded or too many students. Can you clarify that that is not the case? Correct. Yep. So initially um in January we make uh projections so that we can
begin uh the part of um you know the finance and taking a look at how many sections or grade level uh classroom home room sizes that we will have. Um and that begins the process of us um you know assigning uh staff and and beginning that process of uh taking a look and figuring out finance-wise what we're going to need to uh take care of
our students for the upcoming school year. Um so it is only projection and then it does it does not mean for example that we are going to be overcrowded. Um this is just the beginning of the finance process. So that's the difference between projecting and uh and making sure that we have enough room. So we have enough space and enough
teachers for all the children that are coming. We are good. Perfect. We're good. Thank you. Yes. Darren is going to stay up here and he's going to cover item 5.2 readiness for school opening update. Sure. Yep. So uh also here to provide that update uh for readiness and a couple different things. because I
definitely want to talk about uh the different summer projects that are being being uh taken care of over the last couple of weeks. Um but I also want to talk about some additional topics. For example, uh in the area of staffing uh throughout the final weeks of the summer, uh members of our our talented
uh district HR team as well as building principles and school office staff continue to work to fill those final licensed and unlicensed position um in our schools and programs. Uh community members, we always remind community members who are interested in employment with Moundsby public schools are
encouraged to review the current job postings on the district's website. Uh in particular, we're always looking for interested nutrition services staff and PAR educators uh who either want to serve in a substitute or permanent capacity. Um, this is the part that I
think everyone looks forward to hearing the most, but we do have uh some summer remodeling and maintenance projects that have been uh completed uh during these summer months. So, we'll start first uh with our K centers. Uh you will notice if you drive by Pike Lake, uh they have
a a new overlay of that entire parking lot. Um so, you'll see that it's all black, it's all seal coated, and the parking and the playground, I should say, has been restriped uh at Snail Lake. Uh if you are inside, you will notice a new cafeteria floor and that space has been painted as well. As we
move into the elementary schools and walking into Bair, um you'll notice that some walls have been removed in some spaces, but in some other spaces like the main office, uh permanent walls have been added. You would also notice new carpet paint and and some of those
classrooms uh additionally have been carpeted as well. uh Sunnyside. There also have been spaces that have been painted and carpeted. Pinewood. Um once again, carpeted and painted walls. Uh new flooring in the cafeteria. Uh elementary school Turtle Lake. Uh you
would notice a real big project of the remodeling of the library. Uh new bookcases, painting carpet as well. Uh Island Lake, again, carpet. That's a similar theme this year. A lot of carpet. Um Island Lake, new cafe floor, cafeteria floor. Um their staff lounge
has been updated also at Island Lake. Um and their special education space has been uh facelifted as well. Valentine Hills uh once again uh classrooms have been painted and their parking lot has been touched up with new seal coating as well. Uh when we take a look at middle
schools, the biggest project uh High View with their uh beginning of their geothermal project which we've given a lot of updates uh prior to tonight. um new uh water distribution lines. Uh the big thing I think people will notice when they come in uh is the LED lighting
in the hallways so it's much brighter. Uh one of the projects at at High View um classrooms again carpeted uh remodeled with new tile um new lighting, new paint at High View Edgewood. Um the big notice that you will see at Edgewood is all the lockers have been painted. Um
so if uh for people that are coming in uh for back to school night, that'll be something that people will notice right away. Um Chipua painting throughout the building, uh our two high schools, uh the projects would include Irondale doing phase one of their geothermal installation. So some of those things
people will notice and then some of those things are also kind of behind the walls. So you might not notice as much of that at Irondale. Um the things that you will notice at Irondale, uh remodeled art rooms, remodeled science rooms. So, those are really big places, especially if you're taking a science or
an art course. Uh, especially this fall. Uh, you'll notice uh new case work or bookshelves. Uh, again, a lot of paint, a lot of flooring work being done. Um, and two of their restrooms have been remodeled as well. Finally, at Mountains High School, um, you will notice that they've moved the coffee shop. Um, that
will be closer in the LMC, I should say, the IMC commons area, moving from the IMC to the commons area up front. Um, classrooms have been painted, floors have been retiled. Um, concession stand, ticket booth. Um, that has all been updated as well as a new seal coating in
the parking lot as well. So, um, I like the the combination of these projects. Um, some things will be people will walk in and they will notice right away. Um, other things you would probably have to be a custodian maybe or someone that's been working on the project in a different in a different way to understand what those um, improvements
have been, right? So um I do think there's a lot of thing I think Chris Bquette had mentioned uh every school has been touched in some way which I think is great right there's that that piece that's very exciting for everyone that will be coming in staff and and parents and students alike um want to give um our appreciation to Chris Pette
who is the director of school operations and also want to note um site level custodians district maintenance crew they've all been working hard this summer and we appreciate the work that they do um transportation work transportation department team members have been been in communication with families making sure that the correct
forms have been turned in. Um, of course, our vendor, American Student Transportation, has been working hard to make sure that we have the right amount of bus drivers, right? So, we have um kids who are going to be able to get to school on time and safe and smooth. Um,
certainly if parents have any uh questions related to that bus route, they can visit our district website. Um, but we're always grateful for the bus drivers who proudly serve our community and for those parents who are, you know, wanting that first day to go well. It's always nice to see that that bus driver
who's been there for a couple years, too. So, that's something that we appreciate. Um, and finally, just want to show my appreciation for all the staff members who've been working hard this summer preparing for the school year. So, whether that's a PAR educator, for example, that's been doing some professional development or an
administrator or a teacher, um, everyone works hard in the summer to get ready for the upcoming school year. So, we are thankful. Um, but overall, I am pleased to announce that we will be ready to go when students return on Tuesday, September 2nd. Any questions that I can
answer for the group? I could tell you that the Edgewood lockers were a topic of conversation at the Bach household met with mixed reviews. As with as with every project, some people like the project and some people
don't. I would just offer a comment. Um Darren already mentioned Chris Bett and our custodial crew. Uh we can't thank them enough. There are those Well, that's their job. Yep. And they take great pride in in the work they do and we should be ever so
grateful for for the team we have and and the work they put in, often unseen, unappreciated. So, I want to say that publicly and and we're going to make sure we get them some pizza or something just to make sure that they they understand just how much we appreciate them. Uh, but I also just want to thank
all the staff who have been working this summer. Uh, I can't tell you the number of things that come up. Uh, you may recall the storms that blew through Minnesota. We had XL Energy scheduled to do work at Irondale that all of a sudden they were out in the community trying to
get power back on for thousands of people, then trying to reschedu that and and things we thought were going to be one day couldn't be and they got bounced and moved. Uh and we had to move things around and and our staff and our community have really been uh understanding about some of those things
that are just out of our control. And um and I just really want to say thank you to them because that can really um you know kind of rub you the wrong way sometimes like why is it my program or why do I have to move or how's this happening to us right now u really their
understanding their patience their grace as we've gone through this summer and some of those unforeseen uh needs to change venues or change programming they've been absolutely fantastic. So, uh, thank you to all of them who are are part of our system and worked. You just
don't see it in the summer, right? But, but those of us that are here, uh, working with them and all the summer programming, which you'll hear some about next, uh, just really really appreciate all of them that have been part of of that work getting ready for for the start of the school year. Absolutely. Thanks, Darren.
Darren, thanks for the updates. Thank you. Okay, we'll move on to item 6.1, summer school and summer work by teachers. So, we're going to welcome Angie Pesel, executive director of curriculum and instruction, Carl Brown, community
education director, Ryan Lang, principal of Snail Lake, and Bobby Olsen, principal of the area learning center. Welcome. Hello. Good evening, everyone. Well, it's August, so that means we're here um to share with you all the wonderful things that have happened and continue
to happen in the summer. Um, I have a team with me tonight and um, Chair Glene just mentioned who they all are. I'll have them introduce themselves so you can put a name to a face. My name is Ryan Lang. I'm the principal of the Snail Lake Kindergarten Center. Hello. Um, so a couple of things that we
want to just kick off about elementary is just grounding you in what that experience was for our students. Um, let's do this. So again, it was a four days a week uh, across four weeks from July 7th to the 31st. It was mornings only. We were located in six different elementary schools and one of our
kindergarten centers to receive all of our incoming students for the fall. Um, small class sizes about 6 to 12 depending on the the grade level and the buildings. Uh, the focus is on literacy, math, and social emotional learning. Some highlights for this year. We taught over 550 elementary students in our
summer programming for summer school and over 85% of those staff were Mountains View employees currently, which is a really great increase and something we're very proud of. Um, couple photos. In addition to academics of literacy and math, we got to celebrate, do fun things outside.
Students got to be with friends, um, and just enjoy that Minnesota weather. At the end, we did a staff survey of our elementary staff asking, "What did you like most?" Again, just some of the highlights of our staff that are committing their time in the summer, looking at building relationships. They
love the flexibility of the summer programming and getting to know those incoming students. Again, we have Mounds View employees who are getting to know those students that they're going to be spending this next school year with and just the joy of being around kids in the summer. Some more pictures of non-academic things that students are
really engaged with, they love, have a lot of fun with their friends and peers doing things that maybe have a little bit more time to do um than the regular school year. Then ending a little bit more with some of those uh staff survey questions, what were the challenges? 42% of our respondents said there weren't
any, which is a huge highlight. We know that five, six years ago, there's a lot of challenges with a lot of things. So, we're taking all the wins. Some of the things that could have helped our staff be a little bit more effective was just time. So, we're looking at ways that we can get them time to really be creative
about setting things up, taking them down, as well as how can we partner with families about getting uh consistent student attendance to be there for those experiences that are exciting, fun, and great for our kiddos. My gosh, thanks, Ryan.
Thank you. Um, I get excited about little things. Uh, I'm Bobby Olsen. I am the principal at the area learning center and I help work with our secondary summer school which is middle level and high school level. Um so again a lot of the same highlights that we
have. I always like to give you guys a little bit. I should put it in a graph because it's kind of nice that way. But um we had an increase again this year for our middle school participants. It's not a huge number. Mary Stab has taught me to keep that in mind, right? like an
extra four students is not a huge increase, but we still see that increase over time. Um, most of the teachers are from our district. We had a couple of subs that have been in our buildings before that came and taught for us at the middle level, which was great. High
View and Edgewood were combined because of that work happening at High View this summer, which went really well. Um, and it was nice to see the collaboration between the two middle levels. Uh students seem to really enjoy it. It was very steam based. So we're looking at
really increasing their skills with literacy, math, social emotional development of our scholars. Again, looking at having um our sixth graders especially that are transitioning in coming and getting an experience in their middle level and enhancing their
relationships with their peers, staff, and building that school community. success stories always it's relationships. Staff and students, parents alike always report that they really appreciate that relationship building time. Um there's lots of
hands-on learning experiences for our middle level learners. We also have a safe and supportive transition from that elementary to that middle level which is really fantastic for those students coming in. As always, we want to continue to build those field trip experiences, some of those hands-on
experiences for our students, and we really want to continue that partnership to get our sixth graders in. And I did notice um in looking at our enrollment, we had far more sixth graders coming into our summer programming than we did
last year. So, that's a success as well. high school. Um, we had a little bit more students participating again. Uh, as Ryan has alluded to, I don't know this thing like four or five years ago, it was a big deal. Um, and we still
experience a lot of repercussions for our students and we want to make sure that we're really supporting them um, in that credit earning. We did earn pretty similar about 10 credits less but but still a significant amount when we're talking about 202 credits each semester
is 0.5 that's a significant enough amount of credits for students to be earning. Um we had five students graduate this year. I'm super proud because the majority of them were ALC students. So, that was really fun um to
be a part of meeting the students and families where they're at uh to help those students make progress towards their goals. Always we want to do that early identification of students. We want to be able to target you early on. Ideally, we're going to help you out in
the moment, but if we know you need summer school, we want to know right away so we can build the plan for you as a student. And then retaining teachers from our high schools to teach during summer is always a big push for us. This
year we did have the majority of our high school teachers come back from our previous summer programs. So that includes Mountains View teachers, but also teachers that work outside of the district who come back to us each summer
to help with our programming. There we go. Good evening everyone. I'm Carl Brown, the director of community education for the district. Um, tonight I'm going to share um summer updates from a variety of programs that we hold across the district from ages of early childhood all the way through adult
education and adult enrichment. Um, before I start though, I'd like to just uh share my thanks and appreciation for the opportunity to work with all of our uh principles and custodial staff and office staff to really share their buildings and um district facilities across the summer because there, as you've heard earlier, there's a lot
going on. And so to add in programs and make sure that we have things open and available when we need it, it takes a team effort. So, um we have a great team and it's really fun to look back on the summer of all the things that were happening. I'm just gonna burn these out so I can
show what we have on here. So, tonight I'm going to talk a little bit about um elementary and middle school day camps, um summer music, our bandon orchestra programs, sports camps and clinics, early childhood family education, adult education, and then some adult and family enrichment programs.
So talking about the um summer enrichment. So primarily um extra activities, fun things. They're um building on uh sports, uh STEM programs, art, um theater, lots of different opportunities. We had 4,636
total enrollments. Um the vast majority are district families who are participating in this, but as a community program, we also um will happily have uh students from neighboring districts. So, we do have sometimes people come and they stay with a family member or they're just in neighboring areas and want to they find our catalog and want to uh participate.
So, it's great to have those numbers. Um, elementary day camps, those are the programs I've been here before talking about. Uh, we run those at Turtle Lake. They're AM and PM classes. They're 4-day programs. Parents can choose whether they want a half day morning, half day, afternoon. Um, really and they can pick
and choose for that. Uh it's been a number of years since we've offered that and found that it's a a model that fits well within our community. Knowing that we have a variety of other camps uh that Shore View Community Center, New Brighton uh Community Center as well as a lot of other providers offer um this has been a great opportunity um to give
people more variety and choice as well. So with the steam camps and other pieces, uh summer explorer is one of our camps. It's kind of a traditional day camp. It's something where we're finding it's it's a great opportunity to have this variety of thing without a a direct focus on robotics or steam or something.
But oftentimes families will fill in a morning class of summer explore and add in a specific class. Um or sometimes it's a class where they they would like to participate but the class they want is full and we'll offer it later in the season. So that one's a a big one. Um
435 students were in there. Um lunch bunch is a a program we just add. It's an ability of a supervised lunch so that if families want to participate all day, they can drop their students off at 8 in the morning and pick them up as late as 5:00 and um have a full day of programming.
Funfile Friday field trips. Part of our model being four days is we don't require a Friday um piece, but we offer field trips. As you can see from the numbers, 168 students, which is I think a great number. It really um to me it represents the parents that want that or need that and and have chosen that. But
it also shows that there's a lot of flexibility knowing that if people want to do something different or take Friday off, they're not bound to pay for or show up for a day that they're not going to attend. Middle school camps. This is uh the second year that we ran middle school camps in kind of a revamp model
and we had 672 students. Um we're really happy to see that the interest is there and we've kind of tweaked that and in a lot of ways it has an enrichment focus on it, but it uh gives students at the middle school age a little bit more freedom and flexibility and um had really good feedback from students and
family on the camp. So we anticipate um offering those again next summer. Uh same thing with those uh steam, language arts, uh sports, a lot of different things. We held that at Chipua this year. Uh Hi Ve was closed. So, we try to um offer a variety of things across the
district. Uh lunch group, we had 121 students. For some middle school students, um it wasn't as popular. High school and middle school sports camps. Um every year we work with a lot of our coaches and different things to offer. Um summer training and conditioning, we had 801 students. I would say it's pretty consistent with
that. And as was mentioned before, uh fall activities started up on the 11th. So, a lot of that was that pre-work that students were doing. And if they're in a fall sport, they're in season now doing practices or two a days or depending on what it is. So, they're busy uh in preparation and I think this week we
even have games starting. Other one was Wolfridge overnight camp. I'll talk about shortly. Um and then we had other youth enrichment just a number of different programs that were variety that we had that ran off-site or um through partner programs.
All right, Wolfridge. Um just highlighting this one. This has been a fun one. This is our second year of offering a um community education overnight experience. Uh we just got back a couple of weeks ago, August 4th through 8th. We were up there for 5 days, left bright and early on a Monday
morning from um Irondole High School and came back uh a little bit later than we planned due to some bus issues, but the trip overall was a great success. Uh we had students entering fourth grade through 7th grade. Um so this year we had 43 students. We had a lot of fun uh
with canoeing, hiking, um environmental ed, outdoor education, lots of different uh programs. As you can see from the pictures, we were in bogs. We were learning how to make fires and do different things. And that is an indoor climbing wall. There's a couple of those that we um were able to participate in. And I didn't have a picture, but we also
had a high rose course that we were able to use a couple of times, and students absolutely loved it. Um so, we're looking forward to continuing those opportunities as well. All right, moving on to summer band and our summer music programs. Um, every
summer we have some great opportunities for music in our students in uh, elementary and middle school um, band programs as well as uh, orchestra programs entering um, for elementary students. We had 503 enrollments. Uh we have a beginning band which is entering
fifth grade, 263 students and really roughly the other half of the students. We're at the middle school level uh for that entering sixth through 9th grade for a variety of programs. Runs the four weeks of summer school and then uh the band program does an optional valley fair performance field trip where
students can go down there and um have a concert, have some fun, but then get the rest of the day just having a blast at Valley Fair. Um the weather was great. We had plenty of buses showed up on time and everything. So, it was a really good trip for everyone. Almost 300 students plus 25 staff members.
Moving on to summer orchestra. 662 total enrollments. Uh this is something where orchestra is for students entering entering grade four and grade five. Um so close to 400 students at uh the elementary level. And then we move on to
um a little over 200 226 students in the military or excuse me the middle school level entering sixth through 9th for their fun piece at um they are gearing up for a September 16th national anthem performance at the Twins game that they've done for many years. Um schedule-wise changed a little bit. Um
it's a game with the Yankees. So I think some people are excited about that. Even though the Twins may not be having their best season, it's always fun to see uh good baseball. And when we were finalizing this presentation, it's we're up to about 650 people. So every year it's between 650 and 800 people that
attend that event. Early childhood um primarily this summer we had just some opportunities. We had a number of uh Tyke sports classes. A lot of fun. We probably had about 75 people attend those uh programs and just having some of those opportunities. Um as mentioned before, uh we've been
preparing for the start of the school year. So, we're gearing up for a lot of preschool and prek classes coming up. Um, so should be a great year for early childhood. All right. Adult education. Um, by that I'm talking about Silverview Education
Center. So, our adult basic ed program. We have a variety of different summer programs that are offered. Uh, we had ESL classes that were um students were taking um comp security, different uh technology, career pathways classes. We
always run GED and diploma prep for people who either um need support in those areas or plan on taking the GED through um the Pearson testing. Um also some Microsoft boot camps and different computer essential programs um and Pearson testing that is open to anyone. So it's not only adult education
students. We'll see people come to us for professional uh certifications or reertifications throughout the summer. Um so it's a great opportunity for them. uh summer school alone, we had 333 students participate in the month of July and we are gearing uh up for a a
full house on September 2nd, which is great to see as well. And Carl, can I just add one of the things that we talked about last summer as well is that our child care at Silverview, because adult basic education is with the area learning center at Silverview, um our
child care director, Janette Wolf, opened up the child care. So, anybody who was looking to do that adult education programming this summer, a lot of them were able to bring in their under kindergarten students to have some very high quality daycare with Janette
while their parents were getting the education and the training that they desired over the summer. So, I just want to do a huge shout out to her and her team for making that possible. It's not something that they have to do yet. They really believe in our students and their children, and I'm just super proud of that.
Thank you for adding that. Yeah, that is a a really nice uh addition to our program. And we've heard from a number of families and students that that would be much more difficult for them to attend uh adult education classes if they didn't have um some child care.
All right. And the last area tonight I'm going to talk about is just some adult and family enrichment that um we kept going through the summer. 166 enrollments. Uh we've talked a little bit about this. We've been doing summer community lunches with the city of New Brighton for uh over a year and a half now. Um those have continued. We um
slowed down a little bit and really only offer one lunch um over the summer, but we've done um breakfast and bingo programs. So, it's just as simple as uh you know coffee and a a donut or pastry if they want and bingo is a hit and people just enjoy playing it. But I don't really think it's about um
necessarily the activity. It's really about giving people an opportunity to connect with others. Um and with the adult programs, we've heard so much that that was an area, you know, over the last few years, especially during COVID, that adults were looking for those opportunities. Um we we anticipate those will um you know, continue to grow as as
space is available. Some of the community lunchons, we uh we actually are at capacity at the community center and even when we've been able to offer a couple at the mounds or excuse me, the Irondale multi-purpose room, but we're almost at capacity there. So, um if you know anyone who's interested, sign up
early. Um other pieces we have um we do have some enrichment classes. We've got adult language classes and we have a walking club that is just trying to find those areas where we can provide uh services and opportunities for people that aren't already out there. And we also partner with a lot of other groups. So if we know there's a need out there,
but we don't need to be the ones to offer it, we make sure we can refer people and and connect them with the groups that are offering it. So while summer offers also offers us a time for our teachers to do some reflective work and some growth in um who they are as professionals and in the
craft of teaching. So I wanted to highlight some of the work that our teachers have engaged in also over the summer. So the first thing is we have a new teacher orientation. So two weeks ago we welcome 57 teachers and we were all snug in this room right here. It was great fun. Got to know each other really well. Um but 57 new teachers um across
the system and they represented early childhood, special education, classroom teachers. So they're with us for one and a half days of district overview and kind of how things work in Mountains View. They then go to their buildings for some building level orientation about what it looks like in their individual buildings and get in their
classrooms and then they're um the Mountains View Education Association sponsors them also for um some time around the union. So Stacy Vanderport um supports them on that third day. Um, also over the summer, every summer, our teachers are provided with two professional learning days to work with
their professional learning communities. Um, and so teams across the system, they meet uh for two days of their choosing and they talk about how the year went. They do some reflection on the previous year and make plans as they move forward. So discuss goals, make curricular adjustments for the upcoming school year. So that happens every
summer as well. And then we have courses that are offered. Um, and as I've mentioned in the past, these are all optional courses for our teachers. So if they want to develop themselves, they're basically free courses that we offer. Um and most of them are uh instructed by other teachers. So teachers teaching
teachers around that. And so just highlighting some of those courses that were offered. So the first one is collegial coaching and that is about peer review um and how we're looking at each other as um teachers and supporting each other and how to get better at our craft by looking at the lessons that they're providing. So we had 11
participants in that. And then we've got two foundations courses. So, one of them is foundations of effective teaching. Um, and we had 18 participants in that. And then we also offer a specialized foundations course that's specific to our special education teachers. Um, and so we offer that. We had uh 16
participants in that this summer. Another course that is optional that we offer is instructional strategies that work and we had eight participants in that course. and then a capstone orientation which is uh the third course in our Mounds View certification module
and it's an action research project. So we've got eight teachers who next year will be engaging in some action research to better themselves and collecting data throughout the year um supported by the instructional support team with that. So excited about that. Again want to highlight all of these are optional that teachers are choosing to do because they
want to um continuous improvement is important to them. And then finally we have a math class that we started offering two years ago. super um popular and as uh as we know whenever teachers are talking about hey this class is really good we got a lot of interest in it. So techniques to increase um student
mathematical thinking uh this is based on a book by Peter Lilly Doll um and building thinking classrooms is the name of the course and so it's a different way of thinking about math and um students are up around the room and doing math visibly with partners and so teachers can give some immediate
feedback to teams. So very interested interested um topic for many of our teachers. We had 15 participants um take part in that this summer. Also our teachers engage in some curriculum writing. Again this is optional and what they do is they uh submit proposals to um be compensated
for some work that they want to do over the summer around their curriculum. So the first uh proposal that I want to share with you is around the middle school design team. You may recall last year one of our DOP goals was around the middle school redesign. And so we had teams of teachers across the three middle schools come together and what
they did is they worked on what lessons might look like around those um essential skills that we identified. I just want to remind you of those essential skills because you'll be hearing a lot about them at the middle level. Curious thinkers, resilient learners, solution seekers, and empathetic leaders. So we created lessons or teachers created lessons
around what that means and um how students can practice those and then use those in their um in their uh day-to-day and in their academics. Intermediate algebra did some work also we reviewed and updated um some curriculum around a data analysis standard. So you may
recall we've got some new standards from MDE and mathematics and the data analysis strand is a new one and so we needed to add that um high school accelerated earth science. So you uh know that our students have a choice. They can take regular uh earth science
or they can take accelerated at the nth grade level. And as they um uh as teachers were looking at that, as they implemented that last year, they wanted to add some additional um information and a framework around how to distinguish it from earth science. So did some work around that. United his
United States history redesign again new state standards from the Minnesota Department of Education. So added an ethnic studies strand to that. So did some work to make sure that was included. And then we've got some new courses this year uh that we're going to be running. One of them is high school forensics. So as you can imagine, super
popular. Like a lot of kids are interested in that as an elective. Um so did some writing around that. Introduction to business is another course. Um we had an advanced business class but not an intro to business class. So that seemed like a missing piece. So we added that. Seems to make
sense, right? United Sound is one of a a music course that we added and that is um bringing together general education students and special education students together in the same classroom as they work together to um understand and learn music and create music together. Um and are excited about that as well. So um
just wanted to provide a shout out to to um express our thanks to everybody who played um a crucial role in providing meaningful experiences for our students and then also took the opportunity to better themselves as educators. We get better as a system when everybody wants
to improve. And so just every year when I'm here giving this report and we're gathering these numbers, I'm just super super proud of that work. Um and know that it doesn't uh there's a lot of work that goes behind that. So appreciate the board and the support that you give us in order to do that um and supporting all of these activities.
That's what we have for you tonight. Absolutely. Well, great update. Wow. Um a lot of work um and a lot of success over the summer. So, thank you all for being here tonight and sharing those updates. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Incredible. I would like to point out
that that's not the norm. I've worked in many school districts and that's not normal. This is incredible. So, um, well, I'm I'm glad we're normal here. Yes. No, it's great. I mean, this we don't mo most school districts don't offer this amount of programming during
the summer or um time for teachers. Yeah. Um, so this is really great that we and I always I always love to see the number of credits um that the you know, students earn and then, you know, having the graduates too.
Yeah. Jim, great. I'm just curious. Do we still go do we go and take the bus and we pick up the kids for summer school or Yeah. Do do you want to talk about transportation, Darren, a little bit? You still provide the transportation. That's excellent. That's so important to get the kids there. I mean, that's
excellent. Good to hear. Awesome. All right. Well, next up is item 7.1, updates. So, Association of Metropolitan School District. Uh Jim, any updates? Oh, yes. Um we mostly um have uh spent
the last month um uh working on our legislative agenda and they tend to be the issues that we all hear about school formula curriculum a whole lot of different things and so we we continue to work on that. It's always a work in progress. We just finished up our survey
to our members on uh priorities for uh this next legislative session. We always have a student presentation. We had a uh a student activist group called Good Trouble attend and they were really impressive and really um really
excellent fine young people that are really involved in their communities. I certainly learned a lot from them and uh you know next month it's more a legislative agenda and um you know sitting down with the department I think Department of Ed's coming next month uh
to give us a presentation on some of these new standards that we've talked about. So that's what we're doing at AMSD. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Shauna, um any updates for Northeast Metro 916? I do. So Northeast Metro 916 is an intermediate school district of which
Mounts View is a member along with um several other school districts around our area. They provide us with some special education programming as well as career teched programming. Um so we had our meeting the first Wednesday of
August. Um we got some legislative updates. Of particular interest was the intermediate teacher res residency apprentichip collaborative um which is uh basically a grow your own program for the four intermediate school
districts um so that they can uh train current employees to become teachers within the inter intermediate districts. Um we had an update on Q comp from 9:16 um and then approved a couple policies.
Uh they also are ready for the school year, ready to welcome students. They are um fully staffed with teachers, just need a couple pair of professionals, but otherwise the buildings are ready to go and they're ready to welcome kids back the day after Labor Day. Wonderful.
Thank you, Shauna. Um we have item 7.2, school board member updates. Does anyone have anything to share? I just want to say thank you again to the community ed and all the work that happened this summer. I was able to attend the um band concert, the summer band concert, and it's just incredible
to see the number of students um who some of them just picked up an instrument four weeks prior. Um and it's just so great to see the level of engagement in our music programs. Agreed. Yeah, Yolanda.
And I just wanted to share too that the Maus View Schools Education Foundation does have uh tickets on sale for Rock the Schoolhouse. Uh it's a great event. It's going to be Saturday, November 8th. So you can uh go online and buy your tickets now.
Any other school board member updates? I would offer one thing only in that uh this is our last meeting before school starts. Usually our our board will mention um and I apologize if I'm taking your thunder if you were Well, go ahead. I didn't know that.
I was all excited. I was something. Here we go. No, you go. You go. You go. As we get We just talked about all the summer programming. Yes, we won run buses, but they're far fewer. Uh as we get ready to start after Labor Day, please, if you're out there, watch for our walkers. Watch for the kids out on
the corners. Watch for our buses. those are are uh important and valuable kids and and people to us. Uh and and there's going to be a whole lot more of them out on the streets walking to and from school and taking our buses. So, be aware, be alert, and and watch for them
as we uh begin school here after Labor Day. Thank you. You're welcome. Sorry. No, it's okay. It's okay. So, um thank you everyone for being here tonight. If there's nothing else to come be for the board, this meeting is adjourned. Thank you.