--------- welcome everyone to uh the regular meeting of the prik Savage Board of Education all members are present and would you all stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and
to theic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all as I've already said all members are present and we will begin the evening with Laker Pride Dr
Thomas thank you chair white board of directors good to see everyone this evening um we got two things uh this evening that will be highlighting for our Laker Pride um the last time we were together we welcomed back um one of our own major promotable David Brown who
leads our ALC and uh he is uh coming back this evening um to present the district uh an an award for the um support that our district has shown him and folks like him around the country who are continually serving the country as well as serving their local community
so with that I will turn it over to uh Mr Brown all right uh Dr Thomas chair white directors and Community it's my absolute privilege to be here tonight to present uh the Patriot award uh as recognition to the wonderful support and patriotic support that the district has
provided me uh during my service but before I get into that particular I'd like to turn over to my colleague here to explain the the Department of Defense award and some aspects to it Mr swager thank you David and thank you guys for having me uh my name is Nick Swagger I am a volunteer with esgr
that's employer support of the garden Reserve we're a DOD sponsored organization run by one uh government employee here in the state of Minnesota about 40 volunteers like myself so ESR does three major things first thing we do is we educate service members and
organizations on kind of the rights and responsibilities of deploying and returning uh the second thing we do is uh adjudicate questions that happen between employers and uh service members they deploy and the third thing by far my favorite is recognition and that's
recognition of outstanding employers who support their their G and service members so I've been doing this for about 10 years done about a hundred of these it's my first time at a uh education uh facility and it's just want to say really thank you guys uh I'm going to read off a few names I just
want to say this award is not just for those people it's for for you all for the people in the audience that really support those Garden Reserve members that leave their families it's really really difficult to do um so today to recognize uh Michael Thomas Dan Edwards and Emily Herman so I'll read this uh
citation here it's from the office of the secretary defense employer support of the garden Reserve recognize the aforementioned individuals of the Prior Lake Savage area schools as a patriotic employer for contributing to National Security and protecting Liberty and Freedom by supporting employee
participation in America's national guard and Reserve Force so thank you very [Applause] much I'll turn it back over to David to talk a little bit about what it meant for him thanks just a couple quick concluding comments thank you so much
for uh representing the importance of the work that you all do and the support that you've that you've done uh during my deployment for uh the 34th infantry Red Bull division last year uh in 2024 to the Middle East and Central and South
Asia uh your your it's just this award is just a small token of of my appreciation not only for me but my wife Maria that we have for the support and the care uh and the helpful actions that you all did leading up to my transition away into to theater while I was serving
and back here uh to my beloved uh Bridges which uh is such a privilege to serve at each day um folks your actions speak as loudly as your words in supporting me you're a model employer uh for service members and I just would
also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues at Bridges area Learning Center as well those of us that serve in the Army we have a saying about our families which is a key component to our service which is our families are Army strong but I'm happy to say uh Dr
Edwards uh Dr Thomas Miss Herman and Dr beik uh that plsas is also Army Strong thank you so much for your [Applause] support believe the other two are sitting over here
Dr get this right very your name all right thank you um thank you so much sure next um I want to uh share an update on some exciting work that we're doing here um may have seen this a
couple times my Friday is 5 and maybe some of you have been out to the school but we have an exciting thing that's uh happening in our district and it's the incredible growth of our unified Champion schools going from just two schools to 11 in just one year this is a huge step uh toward fostering inclusion
leadership and meaningful opportunities for all of our students and a lot of this work is being led by Michelle Chuka who leads a lot of our student Support Services here for the district and her staff and so I'm going to turn it over to Michelle to talk talk a little bit about the program as well as probably
meet some of our students thank you Dr Thomas good evening chair white and members of the board I'd like to take credit but I'm really going to hand it over to the team of people here who have made this happen um as Dr Thomas said going from 2 to 11 schools is was incredible and it couldn't have happened
without um some really incredible staff members and some really incredible students that that came to make this happen inclusion is a core belief of mine so getting out of the way and letting them do their thing really has been one of the biggest privileges of my time so far here in Prior Lake schools
so without further Ado um I want to hand it over to them and I want you to know this is just the beginning of incredible incredible things more students with and without disabilities are learning playing and leading together through unified programming so this will be maybe one of of many over the years of
times we get to come and tell you of the great things so here you go I'll hand it off to the team hi I'm Hannah ring I'm a speech pathologist at Prior Lake High School um and I'm going to give you just a little bit about the history of unified um it started in the 2018 2019 School year I
was approached by a student at Prior Lake High School that was super interested in starting this club they realized that a lot of schools around the area have this unified program and we didn't have anything like it and so it was really kind of the student-led vision from there Twin Oak started a unified group as well they became a
unified school and so they started doing some Polar Plunge events um and then last year the 2023 2024 school year is kind of when it became a really big vision for a lot of us we started doing some district-wide research and planning um the motor group which a lot of them
here today started planning the first unified track and field day you might have seen some of that highlighted on social media last year but that was a really cool opportunity for our students um and then this year we are a fully um a unified Champion District so we have other schools that are in the area that
have schools here and there but it's not the full District um we are one of 17 unified districts in Minnesota and um everything about unified is voluntary for both student participation staff participation um so everything that you'll kind of see here today is really
staff and student driven hi I'm Megan headed I'm a Dae teacher here in the district this is my second year here and I've been loving Prior Lake um I'm here to just talk briefly about the funding sources for unified um Championship schools so Polar Plunge it's been traditionally here in
Prior Lake which has been amazing um but but now that we're Unified District 50% of the money that our district raised comes back to our programming um and it's also been a fundraiser for sports teams in the past um but with us being Unified District we were able to let them still fundraise for their money so
they got 30% of what they fundrais and then 20% of it also comes back to unified funding so um this is all Polar Plunge fundraising opportunities that we get to create um our district will approximately be getting back $3,200 that we could to plan for more
events and field trips and other things that our um team will talk about um we also did some swag sales with our t-shirts and sweatshirts um that students and families were able to purchase um and yes thank you how do I click
something hi I'm Todd Deckler I'm the physical therapist for the school district um I do office out of uh Edgewood so I'm representing Early Childhood today so a big thing with our Edgewood School is that we are one in four of preschools in the state that have signed up to be a unified Champion
school they're doing some great things there with uh starting an inclusive Library partnering with Community Education for the Down Syndrome day on 321 um different buddy activities there's some pictures of those things going on and this year we are um last
year we did Trek and field for secondary and Elementary and we're planning a day for preschool this year as well and you can see our our fabulous uh Plunge team did really well this year raising believe over like $15,000 so thank you good evening I'm Andrea hilgers and
I'm another dape teacher in the district and I primarily serve students at the elementary level so just some of the um highlighted activities that we have done includes a physical therapy day where students came into our elementary and just spoke to the kids about you know
how they can support students and and using Physical Therapy equipment um bringing that awareness to the students at Red Tail Ridge we've done a couple of bowling field trips unified we are track and field day there's also an inclusive Library so our um all of our
elementaries and and the schools um have access to books that also do to talk about disabilities so they can share those books and talk about um disabilities with their peers and read about them we've got morning announcements where we've highlighted different
um months where we've celebrated um inclusion and those types of things so we've come up with some um morning announcements and then also just whole school activities as well so cookie decorating and things like that so some highlighted things that we've done at elementary thank
[Music] you I'm Jenny running and I'm the physical and health disabilities teacher for the entire District so I cover all levels um a couple of things happening at the middle school this year is they've been partnering with kiddos with all different abilities to do morning announcement similar to what Andrea just
talked about we have a really Stellar uni unified advisory in 7th grade right now that is really amazing um true friendships are being born and it's just really fun to be a part of and to see we are hoping for some unified electives next year at the middle school level so
we'll see how that goes um and new this year launching in gosh I think right after spring break will be our unified Club between both middle schools so we've gotten a lot of great interest in that just within a matter of weeks of getting get started so very excited
about that now the big stuff so I'm going to introduce some students that are here to talk about what's going on at the high school um like I said I'm Hannah ring the speech pathologist at the high school I'm also the unified Club adviser at the high school and then a fax unified fax co-
teer so today we have um Ethan Glenn with us he's a 12th grader he's one of the presidents of our unified Club on our board we have Lucy sadland who's a 10th grader also a co-president of our board and then we have Ella Miller who's a 12th grader as well um and she has
been an involved buddy within unified um Ethan and Ella they're both both throughout for throughout their four years at Prior Lake High School have been involved in unified um and Lucy's been a really big pillar this year to Our Success too so they're going to share a little bit about the high school so as far as the unified Club
does it brings students with and without disabilities to together um for really fun activities before and after school we do fun activities After High
School celebrations tie Dy t-shirts party snacks and open gym I like unified because you make very great
friends um I like the UniFi Club because I get to um build relationships with kids of like all different abilities and ages and it's just a really amazing thing unified is important to make new
friends students need something like unified to help make new friends and give time to spend
with those friends oh hi my name is Ethan Glenn and unified represents all students of all different disabilities like Lucy said and we just really want to give everybody the same opportunity at the high school and give the same experience and I think it's important to us and Ella I've known Ella since freshman year
we just been became really good friends all throughout these years and really grown with each other and just excited to see what's yet to come unified PE is a class that you can do to make new friends and enjoy doing
work I like unified PE because sometimes you need something special to help you in class
and you're able to get that yeah I was really excited this year when I heard there's going to be unified classes in the high school we always had the club throughout in the last three years but this this year when I heard there was going to be classes during the school day I was super excited especially gym class it's just a fun
time a fun hour to go run around hit a baseball throw a football just spend time with each other and really grow on that deeper level because it's one thing to be sitting in a classroom and maybe you're studying for a test or something like that but when you're out there competing with each other having fun La know is an incredible athlete so it's fun to be in there play soccer with her
and really stuff like that growing those connections and I was lucky enough to be in it two quarters and there's a third quarter coming up and I just really hope for the next couple years more kids know about it and can use it as their gym elective and can use it to spend time and meet new kids in the high school cuz there's so many kids in the high school
that we don't even know because is such a big school so it's just great opportunities to meet people from all different backgrounds all different [Music] abilities so one of our other classes that we have um is Unified facts and it
is a cooking class that gives students the opportunity to like get to use like adaptive and really cool like cooking supplies like we have an Adaptive apple cutter and it was super cool to
see kids get to use that and we've done a bunch of different units so far we've done units on vocabulary measuring knife and cutting skills and microwave safety and just like again using how to like learn or learning how to use those
utensils and then I really like unified facts because it's more like opportunities inside of a classroom to be with um the students of like different abilities and stuff and and one part that I really love is that we all get to like walk down to lunch together and like get their lunch and
then just kind of see them continue their day uh what does unify mean to you and to all of us I think I can speak for all of us here that it means everything like the joy that it brings us when we walk into a class or walk into the morning I know apod first floor is where the life skills room is and usually in my morning
I go stop by and say hi cuz it just brings a joy to my heart and everybody I know here and the joy and happiness I know especially to El when we run in see her in the hall say hi just the joy that UniFi brings to all of us unifying everybody at the pr High School is means more than most people can understand and
just I hope the success of UniFi can continue to grow and give more opportunities the love that I know I have and all of us have up here the passion that we want just everyone to feel included and have the same High School experience and go home after a good day being happy and proud to be a Laker
to me unified means having great friends and having more friends I want to see more students joining
UniFi and more classes and then we just highlighted a couple different pictures so these are pictures from fied fact our um Club some different Gatherings that we've had um our secondary track and field day so you can see kind of like in the bottom right
corner we have students that are using some adapted equipment with a balloon um and their wheelchairs so um just making it accessible to all of them because they can go into any fiad class and kind of sit off to the side um but this is really a class that's for them and then their gened peers can kind of come in
alongside them and help them out um similar to what we're doing in fax and then just our events after school are typically a social based event and we also had the opportunity to do some Partnerships with mcaps so Ethan I'll let you talk about business yeah so
I'm a part of mcaps here at the Pake high school and I'm in the business the advanced business pathway and this year we were lucky enough to do our client projects and partner with the Polar Plunge in unified and because of our work we were able to put all of the sports teams at PR high school Under unified Affiliated so then the sports
team were still getting their 30% back but then UniFi was getting money back so it's kind of a win-win so everyone was the whole District was getting more money back so we really just strive to see what we what can we do we know all these sports team are wanting money are needing money and so is Unified so we just kind of combined them together so
we were able to promote that and it was an easier way to put out there saying hey we're raising we're raising money for Special Olympics and Special Olympics here in our district so it's not like the money is going all the way across the country it's here in our community that's helping the people here they were an amazing team they did
all the Promotional and marketing materials for our plunge this year so that was awesome um some of the motor team also did a presentation to the education Pathways year one and year two on uh unified for future Educators that was awesome they did some planning with us for kindness month as well and the
trades pathway partnered with the life skills program at the high school and did a couple different projects that they got to work on with them that was really awesome to see too so we've been across the whole District future dreams and we have many many um we would love to see more
unified classes at all secondary levels high school and middle school as you can tell it just brings so many opportunities for all of our students um increasing our unified advisory at the middle school like I said we've got one amazing teacher um in class right now we
would love to see that expand we are in the works of doing some Partnerships for more inclusive playground equipment including some legislative action um we'd love to see our Polar Plunge increase so we can have that funding still to fund all this amazing stuff and
more inter District events we just scheduled a baseball game against Shaka gloomies which will be in May so we'll let you all know about that and we'll let you know about our track and field days too coming up so awesome thank you guys so much thank you
[Applause] so yeah [Applause] G grab you want to be
in it's close together as a kid want [Music] thank you thank you thank [Applause] [Music] you thank you again everyone uh next on our agenda is our superintendent report thank you chair white and just a brief
one tonight just to remind um our families our students and our staff that uh on February 24th we opened up our survey window our annual survey that we do and it's open until this Friday the 14th and just want to make sure that everybody takes the time to complete
that you know we were talking with some teachers today and they asked how is this used and do you actually read through all of those surveys and I said guilty yes thousands and and so yes we we really pride ourselves on listening to our stakeholders whether it's our parents our students or our staff to
really help inform the practices of what we can do better things that are working well that we want to continue to replicate so again that window closes um uh March 14th and I believe at the April study session we'll be slotted to bring that uh that we do our annual presentation to the board as well um and
then we'll share that out um throughout the school year with the staff um and our students so just that's all I had tonight all right thank you next on the agenda is the open Forum this is a 15-minute period of time set aside for the board to receive citizen
input um I would just just remind speakers to uh try and speak in a manner with which you'd like to be spoken to and to try and honor the 3-minute time limit tonight we do have one speaker if Dustin Smith would like to come forward a little nervous to follow that
uh imagine that was uh pretty incredible and as somebody that works for a disability rights organization that's uh that's really incredible to hear so it's glad to see that people are advocating for inclusion and and accessibility in our community uh good evening Dr Thomas
chair white and directors of the board thank you for the opportunity for me to speak this evening my name is Dustin Smith and I have two children starting in kindergarten next year that's right two and I need to get away sometimes and this is where I choose to spend my time so what does that say about
me um I was in attendance at the February 24th board meeting in which a number of individuals expressed their anger and frustration regarding the administration's response to a teacher's online conduct as a human resources professional I know that decisions and discipline involving
workplace conduct are never easy human behavior and communication is at its very best complicated we believe that there is a solution for every problem that everything is black and white and in my 40 years on this Earth I have learned
one immutable truth there are no Solutions there are only tradeoffs human behavior is nothing but Shades of Gray with that in mind I want to let you know that I support the decision the district made regarding this specific situation I do not know what the
teacher's intention was in Sharing The Post online and we can debate about what the intent was but at the end of the day we cannot control how others received that message did the end result of that me message they shared cause harm to other students and families yes does this mean
that that teacher is an evil person no all of us are the hero of Our Own Story we do not like to think that we are capable of harm but we are I am capable of harm I have caused harm both unintentionally and regrettably with intent our words and actions have
consequences and in fact I am still atoning for some of my words and actions and the thoughts that I have expressed in the past case in point I remember listening to the speakers last time and thinking to myself there is not one thing that I have in common with these
folks for me in that moment what I decided or what I was thinking was right and they were wrong and as I have had time to reflect one of the speakers spoke about spoke about his concern for his daughter's future and the education that she was receiving I share those same
concerns when it comes to my two children well now we've got something in common and maybe that's all there is maybe we have vastly different views on what that looks like and what it should look like but we share that core belief I said before that we are all the
hero of Our Own Story the unfortunate byproduct of this means that people who Express different views or support different causes as the opposite of us we cast them as the villains in our story this cannot be how we interact with each other in this world we need to
be able to trust regardless of what a person's beliefs are trust is a choice I choose to trust that the school and the administration and this board are making decisions in the best interest of our students and educational professionals I choose that parents have the best of
intentions for their children I believe we all must work together effectively with understanding compassion empathy and mutual respect if we are going to achieve our goals for this District as a final note it turns out another shared interest from last time was an admiration for speeches by
Abraham Lincoln I won't read all of his inaugural address but I will just close with we are not enemies but friends we must not be enemies though passion may have strained it must not break our response of affection thank you for your
time appreciate it thank you thank you Mr pleas all right next on the agenda we will move to the consent agenda these are items that are considered routine in nature and will be enacted with one motion is there a board member that would like to pull anything off the
consent agenda before I ask for a motion yes CH chair white thank you um I'd like to to PLL 9d the monthly financial report as well as 9f2 District retirements please okay
we'll just move them down to the bottom and and call them G and H when we get excuse me chair white uh it was mentioned that we need to approve the agenda first oh thank you thank you thank you for catching that one luckily I haven't taken a motion yet
so I will now take a motion to approve the agenda as presented so made by director I can't remember last name France France I name second second by uh director Johnson any
discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 now moving on to the consent agenda is there a motion to approve uh the consent agenda minus uh letter D and
F2 so M by director ainson second second by director bullan any discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 and we'll move down to the monthly
financial report I would like a motion to approve the monthly financial report so made by director ainson second second by director olad discussion yes thank you um I just have
a question um this question I emailed in for director or for um director Frederickson um my question was is that in the December monthly financial report the unassigned unassigned fund balance
was 14.4 million approximately 11.7% and then in January the unassigned fund balance shifted to 7.6 million for 6.2% and so my question was why was the money shifted if you could help um the
board better understand why it was shifted um to um shifted certainly um chair white um Dr Eon members of the board um when we get money into Revenue into the district it
goes into essentially a um unassigned bank account um we're allowed to use that money for whatever it was intended for um as I've talked about several times we have about 40% of our money that is actually categorical which
means we have to spend it for the exact purpose that it was intended so when we get payments every month which are metered by the way the state doesn't just send us our total U allocated Revenue they meter it out a tenth every
month um and then there's some other miscellaneous Revenue that we do get but every month um in that pot of money that we call unassigned because that's our bank account um we don't distinguish all of those categorical fundings we are
required by Statute and the Department of Education to specifically have um assigned balances in those categorical um items so for instance Capital um the gifted and talented the Q
comp Levy um compensatories the staff development all of those we have to report as separate funding sources so typically in the way that you can rearrange those unassigned
fund balances to those categorical programs is at the end of the year you just make the adjustment uh last year we actually made the adjustment in the middle of March I believe um the problem by making it early in the year is that
there's not because we get metered payments there's not enough to quite cover all of those we'd end up with a negative uh unassigned fund balance if we did it at the beginning of the year we're trying to be proactive and not have all of this work at the end of the year for the audit because it has to be
done so we did it in the month of February so the transfer is not moving money it's just taking those uh categorical assigned dollars and moving them to those assigned um kind of buckets if you will
um again we just did it a month earlier this time so you had less total revenue than you would have done last year when we did it in May or March um so I appreciate that it looked to me like it moved to Debt Service fund is that
correct no no um no there was um thatb service is entirely separate there is a Levy that we get for Debt Service um there is part of the ltfm that has to go to Debt Service but that's entirely
separate okay yeah because in December debt Services was at 10.8 million and then in um January it went to what looks like a negative 3.6 so I was just assuming that's where but you're saying it basically spread out through all the different funds so my question is is
because I don't recall and perhaps I didn't pay as as close attention to this in the past pass but I don't recall this massive shift in the past and my concern is and my question is is that now that our unassigned fund balance is below the
8% per our board policy um what is the it says in our policy that deviation from the fund balance will be reviewed and addressed by the school board so since we're at 6.21% what is the um what is the next steps for us regarding this so once you see the March statement um
it's it's already May or actually February the February it's already been fixed so as we get another payment all of that payment that we received from revenue in February now just goes into the unassigned because we've already fixed it and I think it's at 9.1 I
believe is what so it's just a cash flow it's just a matter of timing on when we do it I mean we could have waited another month but again we're trying to be proactive and take care of these little things that we required to do um in preparation for that audit just to
make as much as we can in in July when we do the audit have less work because there's just a massive amount that we have to do then so it's just a timing issue that helps ease my mind thank you so much any other discussion or
questions um no I just want to say that thank you very much for that wonderful explanation Tammy we're H when you look at the financial statements it's pretty easy to see over the past I don't know how many years that it it's the fund balance is quite volatile we're looking at that average and um it will continue
to swing and it has swung in previous years but it's usually balances out uh to what is uh estimated at the end of the year and um I know that we have new members on the board and new people listening and so thank you very much for repeating the the uh process that I know
you've repeated last year and in previous years so thank you yep certainly there's no further discussion we have a motion and a second on the table all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries
70 and not under letter H District district retirements I'll make a motion to approve the district retirements so made by director ainson second second by director France discussion um no I was just hoping that
we could recognize our district retirees who have um contributed a lot service so I don't know if you want take that one or sure yes we have uh a number of um longtime employees couple of them that I know personally that uh had children
that that played Sports and other things with my children back in the day so with gratitude um for all their years of service we uh accept these retirements 215 cumulative years 215 cul years that's quite a bit so thank you
thank you thank you D thank you we have a motion in a second on the table if uh there's no more discussion all in favor sign signify by saying I I opposed motion carries [Applause]
70 right next on the agenda is acceptance of gifts and I will quick find that all right we have one gift this evening uh the the donor is the Minneapolis foundation and the mingon Su
Community it's a grant of $700 uh for five Hawks um uh for the understanding native Native Minnesota Grant and it will be used for the purchase of books and to help improve uh the narrative about native peoples and
their histories and culture and tribal governments this does require a rooll call I'll now accept a motion to accept this gift so made by director Johnson second second by director bullan and we'll start at the end director olad hi
director Johnson hi director ainson hi director bullan I director France I and director Mason I and I that motion carries 70 with gratitude next on the agenda is Personnel items director
Herman thank you chair white members of the board the first one um we are presenting today is on behalf of C coaching this is already agreed upon boost or funded position um recently boys volleyball has joined the middle SCH School High School league so we are adding um a b Squad position that will
be fully funded by the boosters okay is there a motion to accept so made by director France second second by director Mason any discussion or questions just happy that we finally got it in I know they've been trying for
some time M all right there's no further discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries 70 and then additional Staffing director Herman thank you chair white members of the board the next Staffing request is
from Community Ed um they had these positions last summer and um the need continues um to be there so we're requesting the the two FTE for May through June and then moving forward in director doll's budget he will continue these positions says there's there's definitely an ongoing need for them
they'll serve the same role that they served last year um helping ensure that they can um meet the additional registration needs of their summer programming and it's all funded out of the 04 Community Services fund right thank you is there a motion to accept the additional Staffing for Community Ed
so made by director ainson second second by director buan any discussion or questions hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 we have no unfinished business so the
next item on the agenda is new business our annual compliance vote for American Indian education director Oak good evening superintendent Dr Thomas chair white members of the board um every year our American Independent
advisory committee hold a a vote a compliance vote um to State whether they concur with the district's offering um educational offering to American Indian students um this year's vote is um by a vote of 15-2 non-concurrent um so the
next step in the process is that um our APAC chair uh will work with their committee to write a letter to us here um she is planning to present that at the next school board meeting and then we will have 60 day 60 days to respond
uh to her letter okay is not an action but are there any questions for director Oak thank you for um your relationships with this group I we did increase by two votes positive
votes so uh celebrating the little wins than anyone else all right thank you next on the agenda is the 2526 uh budget enrollment projections revenue and expenditures and again a
report only director Frederickson thank you chair white members of the board uh you have the 25 26 enrollment projections um at our last Finance advisory committee we talked about the different ways that we could
look at projections and we had agreed that we would use a linear progression model with a three-year weighted average so that's the chart that you'll see uh what that would look like um we are
still kind of working with the enrollment numbers we still have some Kindergarten um challenges which is the second report that you'll have in there for kindergarten enrollment um we still have less than what we um were hoping
for so we're still about 40 kids down from what we anticipate um but again we'll continue to watch it and we'll make adjustments um the final vote for the budget is in June so we'll continue to make adjustments as we see fit um I don't know if you've heard but the state
set the inflationary factor for the formula allowance at 2.74% we were using 2.5 in our budget so that's about another $140,000 um there are some items that the governor has proposed so we're kind
of waiting to see what legislation does with that and we may have to make some last minute adjustments around that so we'll continue to monitor it monitor the uh what happens in legislation and and continue to keep adjusting the uh Revenue
projections um the kindergarten enrollment as I said is the way that we calculated that was from um the 28th of February and we looked at how many were enrolled with the open enrolled um and then compared
that to where we were previously in the other year so we're still um about 40 kids KS down from what we were hoping to see um but we'll keep hoping that we're going to see more in the next month or
two um so as I said we'll keep adjusting it as as we get more information questions or comments director Frederickson can you tell me why it looks like on February 3rd looks
like there were 78 open enrolled versus on February 28th there was only seven um I'm not sure we got 78 director that was as of February 3rd so on February 3rd we had 30 78 open
enrolled kids and then on the 14th there were nine on the 21st there were five and then as of February 28th at 7even so um when we begin the process we're taking kindergarten enrollments um we kind of hang on to them um to see if
we're going to have space for open enrolled kids specifically around Lola Del Lago and we kind of hang on to them um until until the 14th so that second week that we got the kindergarten registration then we placed all of the open enrolled kids so it's just a kind
of a timing process um we typically will always accept any of the open enrolled kids unless we absolutely do not have room which hasn't happened um this year so any students that are open enrolled we will find a place for them so if we were to calculate we would just do the
78 plus the other numbers if we were looking at open and R well they've been placed so now they're part of the in the on the February 24th you'll see we have 413 as opposed to 301 the week before so that includes those open enrolled kids
that we've placed y all right thank you appreciate it director Johnson and director frederson please correct me if I'm wrong um it can't be just a straight calculation of open enrollment because there could be some that didn't accept their placement yes so if you look at the 78 plus 9 plus
5 plus 7 that's not necessarily going to be how many of the 435 are actually open in roles because some of them could have denied their placement that we provided to them okay is that accurate director FR yes I should have mentioned that there sorry if I misunderstood your question perfect apprciate it we asked
for them for their three top three choices we try to give them their first choice um if we can't then we offer them their second and sometimes they just don't want the second so they'll decline the Open Enrollment but yes thank you I appreciate the
context any other questions yeah uh director Frederickson one more question on the kindergarten enrollments for 25 26 it looks like you're targeting like the 520 number um is that correct but then on our three your weighted average um we will use that c for financials
right so that number is like 560 correct that's what we're hoping to get is the based on the linear progression with a three-year weighted average it we would expect to have 560 what the 520 number is is if you
look at the previous years we had um you take the 85% so if you take how many are enrolled at that point compared to the official October 1st it's 85% of of um what the October 1st number looks like so it's
just kind of a a gauge to see how we're the statuses right now um so if we said that 442 is 85% of what our October 1st enrollment would be that would be put it at 520 but if you just look at a a
linear progression with the three-year weighted average we would expect to have 560 so at what point would you adjust your budget to that number that um so I haven't adjusted it yet because the um formula allowance changed there is some
talk about the special education Transportation being only 95% so that would change that number there's um the governor is proposed eliminating Q comp so that would be a change so I'm just kind of waiting to see as we move along
um in the process if there's going to be any other drastic changes I don't want to keep coming in know this changed this week this has changed that week we're just kind of waiting to get um where we can at least work with a number that we feel like is fairly um solid at that
point so there will be some adjustments thank you anyone else with questions regarding the enrollment all right revenue and cash flow director Fon um the first report you have is the revenue the general fund Revenue again
this is looking at um the state AIDS and the um Levy amounts from the levy certification report assuming um the um enrollment comes in at 560 for
kindergarten that would be our projection so it's most of it is Formula based um there is a couple of them that are have other than formula based but I've just put all the calculations on there if you want to there's a levy certification report on the MD website
like 44 Pages you can um kind of match up each of those items in there um if you want to see how it kind of all fits together um but for now our Revenue projection is 12,555 481 any questions or
comments yes director Frederickson I think this is the correct sheet for the email that I that I sent you based on the the negative deficit that we had is that
correct um that comes with the cash flow summary which we can to early um so I had a request from a couple um board directors that are financial statement was
um kind of confusing to try to follow and that there was a request for a cash flow report if the board decides this is a useful report to them um I would ask that we no longer put together the
financial report um because everything in this summary can be found in that financial statement packet um and we just don't have the bandwidth to keep adding reports um so if this one makes more sense to you then
certainly we will continue to to do this one um the way that we do a cash flow forecast is you essentially take your expenses in each of these category or revenue and expenses in each of the categories from the previous year you
assume some inflationary factor and then you take the actual amounts from last year apply the inflationary factor and then that becomes your forecast for the current year and then every month as you get actuals you kind of fill it in so in
this sheet where the shaded areas those are the ones that haven't been final yet they're not actuals they're just projections so those numbers are a um percentage increase from the actuals from the previous
year um one of the things that um I would kind of mention is this is a forecast so it's not always going to be accurate so one of the things that you'll see in here I think there was uh a few emails about a concern of a $1.43
million negative fund balance uh if you look at the February salary expenditures you'll see that the forecasted amount in there is $6.8 million 6,811
$990 that actually last year included the Retro payment that we paid for the teachers for their contract settlement we're not going to see that this year so as we finalize the actual numbers for February that number is actually going to be about a million dollars less than
the 6.8 million that's in there which is going to reduce that $1.4 million deficit at the end of the year um there's also um we've been talking about all year the um amount that we're overspending or Not overspending that
we're paying for transportation that's over what we anticipated um we have been taking steps to kind of negate those overages the activities buses only are going one way they're not going both ways so we're saving some money there
we've um halted all the spending for um non-salary supplies um to try to save some dollars there we're making whatever it costs that we can savings as we move forward um I can tell you that in the last two months we've actually come in
about 800,000 less than we spent last year so we're trending that we're trying to fix that but um to be perfectly honest we're we're going to be spending about 2 million more than what we budgeted for transportation and as I've mentioned we're doing an RFP we're in
the process of getting that done U we're actually going to do two rfps one for regular Ed Transportation one for special ed Transportation um because a special ed transportation and the activities um because of the way that the contract is
structured they're higher than what we anticipated um we thought the contract would be about 6% increase and it's actually coming in about 177% so we are taking measures to try to to negate those overages um which is why
every month we in um the business office we kind of do an analysis to see where are we right now what's it going to look like by the end of the year um so while this analysis will show that we have have a negative fund balance at the end of the year we are anticipating and are
very hopeful that that's not going to be the case um because we have taken measures to uh negate that for the rest of the year um I can also just um would like to add um also that
there is as we look at a $1.4 million deficit even if we keep that number um that's a 2.3% variance um I I totally understand that that's a negative number and we're taking money out of fund balance but if
you look at some other Industries and their variance um of what it's allowable between budget versus actuals for expenditures in construction it's between 5 and 10% variance um they're
actually three to 5% variance the tech industry is usually five to 10 or 15% um there is an organization called the Council of great City schools that has 78 members of the largest urban districts in the country and every year
they run um a performance measurement and benchmarking project um which basically is the key performance indicators that are applied to all of the um operational and business services for all of those um 78
schools and I looked at the latest report and um budget versus actual percentages for adopted budgets um the lower quartile is at
95.5% um and the mid is 110 with the um upper quartile 119 which is significantly different than it was two years ago because we're still kind of seeing that effect from Co um and the last report is from 2223 they
haven't done um obviously 23 24 the 24 25 um prior to covid it went from lower quartile of 91% um the mid at 100 and the upper quti 108% and we're sitting at
97.7 um so again we are trying to take measures to get to that most efficient um amount that we can get to um but as I've said before there are many things beyond our control in the in school finances like utilities the
transportation um we've added some um High need special educ education students that are costing more dollars so we are trying to be as efficient as we can but I'd just like you to keep in mind that our variance is
2.3% and we are certainly making an effort to increase that um or decrease that amount um but it is within Benchmark of what the council great City schools has put in their
kpis any I have a couple of questions so it looks like most of the overage that you're projecting um is in the purchase Services um is that were Transportation Poli figured um yeah I mean that that to me is like 18.58% to 16.7 so that's like
11 11% overage I believe or somewhere in that neighborhood so are we are we taking measures to cut in other areas for purchase Services because I think that RFP for transportation wouldn't kick in through until next year's budget right I mean there's nothing this year that would save us so you have as you
take it as a whole um while the purchase Services is 11.1% it's also um you know it's $16 million compared to the 70 million that our salaries are within 1.1% yep so that
bottom line um is that 2.3% variance and we are doing what we can to um decrease that you'll see other expenses is reduced by 21% um Capital expenditures is where we're saving some dollars we're at 1.8%
variance um so we are again making um whatever reductions we can um this has luckily been a so far far a mild winter um so I'm hoping that our electric bills this winter won't be as high as they were last year or the year before so we
will gain some there um but again this is the business office every every month goes through a a complete analysis to see where we can make some tweaks to um reduce whatever we can um and I I just want to say thank you for supplying these reports I think
they're super helpful personally um and then so as far as like the projected amounts going forward you will adjust those every month right is that what okay we would see just as we're you know saving on expenses that might we'll see that number come down perect
okay any other questions director France um so you had made a comment at the beginning that if we want this cash flow report that another other reports would disappear um including the ones that compare last year's year-to date and all
that um the information that's on this cash flow report is found in that financial statement report um so the request was if we can do this which is essentially getting the information from that report
that you wanted to see that I would not do that financial statement report I mean if if it's not being helpful um I we don't need to go through all the work to produce it if it's not going to be a useful tool for you which financial
statement report that whole packet just that the monthly packet there's other funds in there the monthly packet that we would produce um that was one of the things that we were saying that we would just pull the essential information that was relevant for a more on time tracking
um and this is much more efficient from our standpoint as well so that's the big that big monthly one is what we would suspend and if if anything maybe quarterly uh at best okay quarterly but is that also include the balance sheets for each of the
funds um it was my understanding that those weren't really being used that we're just looking at the financial statements and that this report the cash flow report would replace that okay I liked the balance sheets from a financial perspective they're they were
useful to me um I don't need your write up because you always go through that um but those balance sheet and the revenue sources um comparing last year's um uh
numbers also from where we were last year at 2024 and all that just cuz that data is not in that report um so I don't know are you would you consider taking feedback I didn't realize you were
replacing other reports yeah we could certainly do and I and I and I'm 100% in favor of lessening your workload there's no doubt about that I'm just concerned that that because these reports have to be done a week before the board meeting um and we're already stretched to try to
get them done by Wednesday because of the bank statements and everything else that um adding one more report on there is just going to stretch us pretty thin to get them done um by that board packet on Wednesday um but we'll we'll do what we
can director I'm sorry I was going to say um the monthly highlights um I could go without because you're repeating everything that's in there and stuff like that but would it help if we um gave our input um I don't want you to go through all the work of that huge report
because lots of it is redundant and it's already in the transaction reports it's already in the summary reports um it's just being restated in different ways um but I do really like those Balance sheets um and the comparison to last
fiscal year um but if there's anything it be automated through Infinite Campus um as much as possible particularly since it seems to me that the write up that you do to summarize on the monthly highlights that seems to be manual um I
could go without that but those balance sheets are really nice and they do say everything that's in the other one because I'm not so much interested in what's projected I'm interested in where we are year to date compared to where because I understand the fluctuations okay I will make a note Dr
I was just going to add um so I'm wondering if um because I would agree there's a couple pieces of components as information that we're in is in the monthly financial report that I don't feel like is reflected on this report um the last year component I
wondering if you could just add like a a a year-to date last year comparison um and then also there's no budget listed on here of like where we are like what our actual budget is so unless I missed it um but I know like
with our Revenue we're at 121.8mi that comes in um and the impact Etc particularly on some of the other funds uh so that helps explain a lot and if we take too much out then we're going to go through explaining again and again and that's what I also don't want what I'm
really looking for is obviously with a financial system some of these can be run with minimal um minimal human hopefully um input that sort of thing it's basically you you run your p&l you run your cash
balance you run all that um so that's I would be interested in keeping those automated reports uh that did show a little bit more of the detail because that way when when questions are asked
they're they're definitely in here um um but I don't I I totally agree that we need to eliminate as much manual labor as possible that's just the way I um I feel cuz I've been um these are very
especially the breakdowns of the uh expenditures um that help explain where the variations are um and hopefully avoid more questions to you as people learn how to read Financial reports I think that would be really helpful okay and then I have um another
question um the categories on the very left hand side where it says beginning fund balance Revenue local S I understand the revenue and those those names and categories are similar to what's on page 22 of our budget manual is there any way to make the names the
same so that there's consistency within our documents so like under expenditures under this document we have it broken out by administrative District Support Services Elementary but then over here it's lumped together different it's salaries benefits so like there's
no consistency from what we're seeing from a budget standpoint to what's in this document yeah there I think in the budget document we've also broken it out this way so this is by object so if you're looking at the um monthly check
register it will be lined up to this what you're looking at for the um administrative those are programs so um in order to do a program report to get the same information we would have to do um break all of these out which would
take considerably more time because we'd have to break out all of these categories into each of those programs um and again if if it helps we can do a uh eup far's account code kind of training at one of our study sessions
to show um how the account codes affect this but it it it's two different things um either program or this case object is what we're showing on here so I'm I'm just wondering um because this sound this looks like what
we were talking about when when you guys especially when you in advance of the meeting with with director Frederickson um could we try you know having a quarterly report on the things we're talking about and if that's not enough we can always revisit it and and adjus us as we go this is a new thing that
we're trying to do and this might not be the be all end all that we thought it was going to be so um is that information too infrequent accordly basis for you to start with um or you know you know what I'm saying I I'm this I'm trying to
to director Francis point we want to increase your workload if anything we'd like to decrease it if we can get the same information um yeah I think the the conversation was to have something very simple and hopefully reduce your workload on a monthly basis and then if we can have the full report on a
quarterly basis um I think that was what I think we had talked about yeah is that okay moving forward just to you know I don't I'm no no no trying to get a consensus here of of of uh we could again we can move ahead try it if all of
a sudden if we're 6 months out and we're not getting it often enough we can always you know revisit it and and and come back to that but I'm just trying to see how we can move forward from from right here and from this report um uh just a couple
of things um first of all with the new Financial system the update the eup far's uh description isn't showing up on that anymore which I think um would help people who aren't familiar with the accounting codes um if that could be
done that would be hopefully easy but I if that's a custom report and it's not going to fit or whatever because I noticed the type face is a lot larger now than uh it's not an option in the new Skyward we would have to manually add that but I can certainly put together kind of a cheat sheet that
would at least give you um I think from the check register the two that you're going to be looking at are probably the first two numbers which is the fund and the last three numbers which um is fits these categories it's the um object
codes yeah um but but there's also building and what fell into ltfm and what didn't and what fell um um I think the eup fars does already have a pre-printed uh cheat sheet that yeah so please don't do any I
wouldn't even ask that um I'm used to seeing them over the years but I understand that it looks a little confusing now um it is very confusing it's a lot of numbers yeah um yes so the
what shows up quarterly I I pretty much wouldn't even need the the write up quarterly I mean it's pretty much self-explanatory in our board meetings um director Frederickson does go over those differences and has been pretty good with um letting us know when a
variance is expected because of something like like last year with the transportation and special ed and we knew 3 four months ahead of time as they were trying to work through the numbers uh so I'm not too concerned about that I'm only concerned about the manual work and if these reports are able to be
produced automatically that's fine just spit them out with the normal uh standard reporting format um that occurs my concern is is with putting in the projected numbers cuz it's a linear projection and it's not going going to
reflect the volatility that we do have uh when things are paid out I mean the end of the year you know with Summer payouts and and yeah it's and December also um so trying to do a linear projection uh I think is going to be
more misleading that's my opinion um because we're not linear so um so that's why um but the July August and stuff like that going through the year that's the exact same number number that we get we just get through through to date
month through year to date and then comparison to last year's if that's a manual report then I'll suffer CU I don't want you to go through that work I mean I can add them up myself um but I am concerned about the projections being a little bit
misleading yeah the projections like I say the the way it's calculated is previous year times whatever inflation Factor you're building in there so it's not necessarily going to give you um if this is what you're expecting to see in the final financial statements it may or
may not be true um just because like I say as we're trying to find efficiencies and cutting some of these cost um it's going to adjust those actual numbers but not the projection because the projection is just a formula based on the previous year can I ask a question
about projections you had mentioned that the February number we're going to be it's calculated to be about a million over and now you just said that it's basically a manual calculation that does a percentage over last year why wouldn't if you knew it's going to be a million less why wouldn't you manually put that
in so we get the most accurate picture as we can in the projection if you know that that's the case we could do that um but in my 32 years of doing this there is always something that's going to come up so if we're going to be as
conservative as we possibly can um I would just let it run out and then make sure that um each month when we get the actuals that we're actually doing a real comparison to see is this what's going to happen um you
know I think last year we or two years ago we had a snow plow breakdown so we had to buy a snow plow so there's always something that comes up um I would rather air on the side of um being conservative rather than saying oops now
we're going to spend more rather than we're going to spend less I I'm a little challenged by that because as a financial analyst in my role um in the business world you give yourself the best guest month to month and so um I think as a board as a board
member I rely on your expertise of you knowing what happened last year versus this year and how does that number project out so um I you know I certainly can change those um one of the challenges is going to be June um June has all of our audit entries in
there and I those are going to be absolutely going to be a guess at this point audit entries depending on what new gasby rule there is or um what lease laws change there's just a whole multitude of things
in that June so June is the one that's always going to be really volatile yeah that's so I just tended to leave it the way it was so that we could kind of see what happens with June we also have all those other um so teachers can choose to
either be paid um through the school year or all year and though if they choose to get paid the 24 payments then in June we have to pay them their July and August payments so June is always going to have um extremely high payroll
because we're paying them out um those June and July pay payroll checks that they earned in the current year so those are always going to be um in there um there's also a lot of any of the teachers on call we
don't know what those look like yet um so it there's just a lot of variables that again I tend to be conservative um in making these estimates but we could certainly change
them up front um and then hope that something doesn't other things come up as we're trying to make adjustments and hence my statement that the projections are I mean they're just
linear projections there they're not reflective of reality uh or the the fluctuations that a school district has every month and um what I don't want to see is you know people spending more time trying to figure out why a linear
projection doesn't match with reality rather than looking at our real financial situation um I would suggest that um the board members take a look at um the the reports that are in there and figure out which ones they can go without and if
director Frederickson could let us know which ones are manually intensive um that would help too I'm seeing a few that are obvious because they're not an obvious financial report um and I would be willing to to do that
if that's if that's what the board wants any thank you chair white um board directors so what you're seeing here this evening is from the last time that we came together and then a huddle also with treasur Atkinson and I think some
conversation as we talked um with the financial committee possibly I might have been conflating those two meetings together um but here's what I would propose chair white and board directors so what you see here is our initial draft and um I'll probably be repeating
a lot of what chair white just said what I heard tonight there are three kind of elements that um several of you have expressed interest balance sheets year-over-year and a percentage of monthly spent those are three things that I've heard from um
several of you that you know if there's nothing else I would like to go back with our team um and see what that would entail um whether it's something that could be generated um or if that's something that's going to be manually done um and then adjust any kind of up uh reporting for our next business
meeting for you all just to see you know where that would fall but those would be the only three components that I would like to explore to see um the feasibility of bringing that forward and would that generate more work is that a manual entry uh creation Etc so if if
that if I'll just ask um chair white if that's the will of the board that we would do that and then if you could just add the actual budget what our budget is cuz I know the budget has changed we've revised it one time so just the actual budget numbers on there so you don't have to reference multiple
documents and then you clear I mean that's already on there but yeah I think that's it's not on this spreadsheet not on that spreadsheet but it's in the other right I understand not having to flip and find which document we're actually looking for would be helpful you guys want to take a correct at it we'll take a look and then we'll
reconvene like we did before and then just work through some of those details and then bring back kind of a verion to okay I thank you all if there's nothing else good I thank you I appreciate your explanation of all that and I understand now like
how difficult that would have been through email so just absolutely thanks so all right thank you next on the agenda is the fast Bridge report again it's report only no
action is requested director zush I was going to say good evening to Dr Thomas but he's not there anymore so good evening chair white members of the board um I'm here to talk about our um midyear data which is fastbridge and I'm just going to make this window big
sorry um before I get started on going into the data I wanted to talk a little bit about the purpose of fastbridge and what it what it's um what it tells us and what it doesn't tell us um fastbridge is what's called formative assessment data
so fastbridge um is a tool that provides us timely insight into student learning um it's designed for individual student assessment at a a particular point in time and it helps us understand um the extent to which students understand
certain Concepts it's used um by our Educators to U monitor progress uh for students help adjust their instruction and then identify students who may need additional support um unlike summative assessments
which are more of those MCAS that measures learning at the end of a certain point in time um unit assessments would do something similar uh format assessment is really used to guide instruction in real
time um the material uh that's assessed in different windows and fastbridge changes depending on um where we are in the year and what grade level you're talking about so the skills that are assessed in the fall window are not the same as what are assessed in the winter
window but they follow a natural on average projection of where student skills develop um so just wanted to um talk a little bit about how fastbridge supports our schools so really we use this information to
identify early students that may need additional support or have learning gaps uh we also use it to monitor progress um we can see over time as we collect multiple data points if there's a change in trajectory um in one way or the other
that might indicate that something is going on in the classroom that we might want to pay attention to and that helps teachers look at that information and make adjustments um it also helps us at the team level it helps us at the school level um built look at this information
to determine kind of what's working and what areas we need to invest in further in terms of um instructional support fast Bridge um you've probably heard of triangulation of data uh it's a little bit misleading because it's not necessarily three data points um but
fastbridge is one uh data point that we use to track student progress uh we use a lot of other pieces of data as well um teachers use everything that they um qualitatively and quantitatively collect on a daily basis in the classroom um in
terms of student progress student um work observations of how students are engaging in conversation um and really using their professional judgment to determine how a student is is doing um it's really meant to be a snapshot in
time and it um as any assessment it can really be influenced by various factors um such as the test condition or whether the student feels like doing it that day um the last thing is these are um we
try our best to maintain consistent implementation of fastbridge um that requires ongoing professional development um with teachers and staff um they also they have a lot on their plate and um you know we we try to do
the best we can with training but as you probably know by now our train amount of uh professional de development time is very small and the amount of things we have to cover is vast so um there could be some variability as well in terms of that
Administration um this information is really used to um inform instruction it's not meant to evaluate teachers or students in isolation um in that singular data point it helps us with our tiered inter system or multi-tiered
systems of support um and really early identification of students that need additional support either um you know tier two would be kind of an in small group support they may have the same skill gaps as other students in the class or they may have more of a tier three need where they need more
one-on-one support um and this also helps us um identify areas that we may need to do more professional development as a district so I will walk through a little bit um I know there's a lot of questions about what the data is showing and what
it means so I will um walk through that but first um these are uh our data beliefs we we um have these at the beginning of all of our um data slides that really um the purpose of showing data is to ask more questions and have
robust conversation um and they don't really not a single data point will give us an answer even if we really want an answer um we give the screener three times a year it's fall winter spring uh this is the first year we're
mandated um to do specific Windows per read act for our reading screener data um so I'll talk a little bit about um a change in our timeline that we had to make um due to
that um just a reminder that um I've talked about this a lot um as we Implement anything new uh especially new career curriculum uh every single maybe not every single but it is a very well documented um situation where we often
experience an implementation dip so just to remind everyone that when we uh start something new it takes three full years to implement anything um a curriculum it takes three three full years for both students and teachers to get up to speed on how everything fits together and
close gaps that may occur during the transition um so just want to keep that in mind um for math we screen students in K through n we also screen students in 10 through 12 as needed um I'll start with kindergarten
and first grade uh in the upper leftand corner you can see the number of students screened over the total number of students that we have in any particular grade level uh any gaps you see there are are um you know it could be a student absence we try to make them
up if possible uh it could be a student refusal at the mo in the moment um we try our best to screen every single student um you'll see that we got really close this year in most of our grade levels um in the the thing to keep in
mind with these reports is that the horizontal um black line across is on the x axis is indicating the cut point between students that are on track and
students that are not on track it's a somewhat arbitrary cut point you can actually change the cut point so I can go in our system and change where that cuto lands um we use the default one suggested by fastbridge um so somewhat arbitrary but that's kind of where you'll see the difference between the
pink and the purple color in kindergarten um and first grade which is early math and early reading the purple is all one color it's I will I can go into details if there's questions about why some have three categories and some
have four um but any student that is or the percentages that are above that purple line um mean that the student is Gen generally on track per this screener uh and then anything below that line in the pink indicates that there's um possibly some risk that needs to be uh
followed up on so here for our math uh kinder Garden you can see that in the fall we had 81% of students on track um on their Readiness to um learn grade level content and then in first grade uh
we started the year with 71% um and went up to 83% in the winter um director zush before we get get too far into this I have a question about again reading the colors okay um when you talked about the cut scores and I I'm very familiar with cut scores for
the MCA um what on a when you say the cut stack when it's on track what is that comparable to like a proficiency is that 50% proficiency or how does that comp I know we can't compare to MCA standards but how does that compare to what level of proficiency are we talking
about to be on track in our district yeah so it's it's not proficiency it's um you know it's a it's foundational so it's screening to indicate whether there's some concern about accessing grade level content um but it's based on National percentiles um
the um so the high risk is um students below the 15th percentile so that would be that dark pink um and I also have if you want specific numbers of these are um also wanted to say these are fast Bridge reports these are not things that
we've created um so if there's some frustration with how it's labeled um that's how it comes out of the system so the dark pink there is um students that are below that 15th percentile uh in the light pink that is some risk and it's um
typically uh between the 15th and 39th percentile and then um on track would be 40 and above um in the subjects where you uh differentiate low risk and on track that cut um there the on track or
it's called on track for college pathway is above the 70th percentile so here um anything in the purple is 40th and above and that is considered to be um on track to be ready to learn the content for
standards for kindergarten thank you or first grade y any other questions with the way these are set up before we get it's related so that that Benchmark line is at 40% even in the grades two and above where there's four
colored okay because I think on the family reports we only have three categories provided so where they're where you're showing four color codings and the older grades um what are those categories like how would you classify
them um they're classified and I um I can show you here there's that light purple and dark purple and I did receive your question on that um and I looked into it and um they simply state that the family report is really providing a
highle snapshot and they have chosen in their family report to simplify it for families so I I I I understand that that's maybe not simplifying it that we have a different um scale on this report um but basically I think for families um
in the family report it basically shows in one category if you're above that cutline they're basically saying you're on track you're good to go um and then below is when there's the specific um categorizations for families so for families anything above that line um the
family report will say that the student is on track in that area so on these graphs the dark purple is 40% to what range 9 the light well until the light purple oh 40 um to 70 okay
thank you yep I have a question okay and I don't mean to stop you I know you're on kind of on a roll so I apologize for just uh going through here but um so let's say if we just look at screener math K And1 obviously it's going to vary
individually and all that but if we look at that first graph uh that breaks down kindergarten in first grade in the fall um there was a percentage that may need help being able to go on to the next part of that school year so they could
keep track uh and then you would test them again in the winter and the winter is tested on new material that they should that their learning should have learned or are at to know who needs help to go on to let's say more even more advanced uh math or reading uh as it
goes so um and you could just out of curiosity could you have a student that scored very very high in one skill set but then didn't get another skill set and therefore these graphs which are not supposed to be summative are um are
averaging them out yeah you I mean I think um I guess similar to the finance um you know learning isn't linear either so sometimes a student will get kind of caught up in a particular skill area that would you
know be a problem for a while and then they may not have a problem in other areas I think about math you know you may be really good at algebra and really struggle in Geometry those are not necessarily exactly the same so if you're thinking about foundational skills there might be a student that really understands certain foundational
skills but struggle with others um and this is um designed to um look at the you know typical learning trajectory of students and you know a lot of students don't fit in that kind of um linear fashion so um and it also doesn't mean
if you're in the pink area that doesn't mean that you can't learn material that might just mean that you need extra support or you need some scaffolds or um teachers may need to help you along in order to access that material so it doesn't necessarily mean mean that a student is not going to learn the
material it just means that they may need support in doing that until they understand that foundational skill makes sense thank you go on I guess okay okay so for second and third grade um this is what our um data looks like
also these are it says no data to compare on the upper right that always causes confusion um I can basically design these reports to have up to five um different um time periods in which I pull data if you
don't max out that five it gives us that no data to compare um it's very annoying but it's uh if I just want to show this year's data um in the two periods then it's um it has that default so I'm sorry
that that's confusing but um that's what that means it means that I haven't maxed out the number of time periods that I can when I pull these reports um so again anything above the line um is on track in the upper grades
in our reporting system and in the teachers Reporting System they see that differentiation between um that dark purple and light purple on the family report it kind of puts it puts them together and just students being on
track EXC me uh the major change from kindergarten 1 and then to second and third kindergarten first um that's early math that is administered one-on-one by a teacher or another adult uh the second and above is all um administered on the
iPad and that is uh student uh administered and I know that came up a little bit during our finance and Tech discussion but students take all these assessments on their iPads starting in second grade um this is the data for fourth and fifth
grade um you can see it's it's fairly um I would say non-significant change in terms of the percentage of students in the at risk categories here um for grades four and five um now we're getting into Middle
School uh six and seven um you see that slight decrease um I know we're going to be talking a lot in detail in a little bit about middle school math um so we can go into more detail there um but we might be experiencing a little bit of an implementation dip although I don't see
it's not a lot it's not significant um so but that might be part of the reason we also do tend sometimes to see that dip in the winter generally um and then we have 8th and n9th here and then once we get past 9th grade
um the tool is available for any teacher that might have concerns or questions about um foundational skills and they can administer those to any students grades uh 10 and above so then when we move on to reading
overall our kindergarten first um that's the aggregate of the early reading um and then the aggregate for a reading um grades 2 through nine is on the right um when we look at kindergarten first grade we see that big uh decline
in kindergarten from Fall to winter um for those of you who have been here for a while um we know what that is um which is good uh we looked at the we noticed this dip a couple years ago uh where it kind of brought to our attention maybe
there is something that we needed to learn more about what was going on there and we talked to our kindergarten teachers and they said basically that our foundations curriculum our scope and sequence and pacing guide is not aligned
to our window for winter fast Bridge um they basically said the winter fast bridge is assessing skills that we are about to deliver in terms of uh our instruction we uh took a number of classrooms and after that next unit we
screen students again in kindergarten and noticed that um the scores were night and day they went way way way up so last year what we did is we adjusted our winter screening window to adjust to the pacing of foundations and we saw um
really good stability in our data the reason we are back now to the original screening window is due to react requirements so we were given specific um guidelines on when we had to administer our winter fastbridge um so
here uh this would be you know something that out of context might look concerning but we know from our studies over the last couple years that this is um a kind of a timing issue with foundations and our winter screening window I think as we talk more about
react and understand whether foundations will be staying and if it is how we will be adjusting that to meet um full guidance of the react um we'll revisit this and figure out kind of what our full uh curricular package will look
like at that kindergarten level director zush how long have we had foundations in our district you know I know it's been here for a while I was going to say five so we're 5 years into the implementation of that curriculum okay okay and then um now we're into a
reading which is uh second and third grade again back to those four categories for here still three categories on the um Family reports um we know with our curricular review that we have some gaps in terms of of our knowledge building curriculum which is the vocabulary and
comprehension component um that is not um uh currently aligned with um the requirements of the react so that's something that um as we do our full literacy review we will be looking at um that um vocabulary and comprehension
which is really the focus of the um the upper grades once you kind of get past um second or third grade that really is an important component to reading instruction and we have a lot of teachers doing amazing work um without the materials but I think we'll um be in
a much better situation having those science of reading materials down the line um so I wanted to talk a little bit about what we did with this data uh we structured our winter early release um to really go over this information and
uh guided teams and teachers and schools on how to look at it and how to um develop next steps and I just wanted to share a couple examples of some of the things we heard um as that rolled out um we had a good conversation with a
teacher who um has done a lot of work to focus on you know students that have those gaps and really looking at those with low scores and how to improve those scores um and this uh after this professional development she really talked about how um it was important to
look at the growth that students were making regardless of the category they fell into um there's a lot of different ways you can look at this fastb data this is just the overall um percentiles but you can also look at students growth and you can look at their growth based
on their start score so we want every student to grow regardless of where their start score is so it's uh it's a more nuanced look at data to really understand are we making growth with all students regardless of where they started um and regardless of what category they're in we also had a that
did a really nice job looking at their winter fastbridge reading data and looking at how it overlaps with the current Ola training that they're getting through science of read or through the react um that's something that all of our elementary schools are going through now and so that school
really looked at the trends in their fastbridge data and how it aligns with what they're seeing in the classroom and then also how they can incorporate the components of their Ola training into what they're seeing in their grassbridge data and then they also talked about
action steps or areas that they want to focus on um moving forward based on their data and their Ola training and that was something that teams did individually as teams and they came together as a school and talked about that overall um and then another example as a
team noticed um that their students weren't scoring as high as they wanted to on math fact fluency so they took a look at their Bridges materials and noticed that the main areas were that fact fluency is being built is during workplaces um and so they really focused
on how to take that workplace implementation to the next level in order to build that fact fluency so that's about it um I know there was a couple other questions as well that came in um but if anyone has any questions about winter fastbid data
or how it's been used I will try my best to answer them now I yeah I had sent in one more thank you um I um I know this is like half the data right so we don't have the CBM math and the auto reading scores um if I don't know if these are easily produced reports that you can
just spit out but um I would love to see that I know that's like the math facts and the phonics and the the fluency side of the tests right um those are um yeah so a reading and a math and early reading and early math are the ones we typically present because those are um
kind of a High Lev measure of overall math and reading the other ones that you mentioned are very specific so CBM reading looks at print concepts phonological awareness phonics and word recognition um autore reading looks at decoding word identification and
comprehension um some of them are as simple as producing a report others um like the CBM automaticity for math um it's called a g or a general outcome measure and there's different levels for every grade so it's a matter of um the
other thing that a lot of these other um components CBM Auto Reading those are also used in different situations to progress monitor so we may use it for every student in grades so for CBM reading we use that for all students in
grades 1 two and three for grades four and above we use that as needed and that's up to the teacher um the teacher's discretion on whether they need to track that um progress so I would say it's very those other um
assessments are very specific to instructional um feedback uh and they are um nuanced in the sense that not everyone not all students receive them it's kind of an as needed um and then
the some of them change depending on the grade level so it's not that there's there I don't have any like there's not any privacy or reason why we're not presenting them other than I think they have a lot more Nuance to them and
they're M they're very specifically designed for instructional feedback um so if that's something that the board overall would like to see moving forward um I can produce those reports it would yeah it would probably triple the number of slides um which I'm happy to do if
that's what the board would like to do um but again even more so than these other two than the other two that I presented tonight they're very um specific for instructional feedback so if I understand that like just taking like CVM math which is like
a measure of math facts influency Etc like they they get a percentage score right so is it is it that you just they don't Supply that for the students like to be able to Output that by grade the same way or I can do not all students take that or I thought they all did um
well they do they do but there's a different version of it for different GR levels so they're all different reports depending on the level um and then some students may take there's levels like one two and three it typically goes by grade level it's not always going to go
by grade level um so yeah they're they're feasible to to supply for sure yeah I mean I feel like it would be interesting to see just to kind of see what areas of you know where where we're at grade level wise right I don't know if anyone else cares well this would be
to me would be a perfect example of some of things we've been talking about maybe starting to do in the future which is pre-recording these presentations so that we have the information ahead of time and it's a much more high level discussion at the board table instead of taking an hour here we can do it our own
you know due diligence ahead of time so um maybe moving forward we can talk about that if we if the board I have that coming up at a study session the possibility of these pre-produce things and and this would be a perfect example of where it might be useful yeah other questions no I would I would just agree that you know we heard
during our strategic planning process that one of the highest priorities of our communities was academic excellence and challenging rigorous relevant construction so I do believe that we could take a deeper dive into these scores um I just want to say that for me
um I'm very thank you I appreciate your honesty and your transparency in this process I some of these scores are really difficult for me to accept and to look at as a board director who is ultimately responsible for student outcomes in our district um the biggest concern to me obviously there's some
things about middle school math that we're going to learn in the next presentation um but the reading scores I mean if a student can't read and I if correct me I'm wrong 30 to 40% of our students here are struggling in that at risk category um that is very challenging to me so I would like to
know um two things um I'm wondering that coming out of our strategic planning process of last June July when we knew that academic excellence was part of what was a loud cry from the community were there any changes to um teachers
plans smart goals built plans um can you give any examples of what was really done to help to put the focus on academic Excellence um to help support um the Improvement in fastp scores
specifically the um so the yeah the um strategic plan was adopted starting July 1st I believe all of the School Improvement plans were built um in direct alignment with the Strategic plan so all the categories that are in the
Strategic plan were the categories of the um School Improvement plans School continuous Improvement plans skips um that is the same for the um Department plans so every uh goal setting process
in our entire District was from July till a till August September 1st um perfectly aligned with the Strate IC plan and the outcomes um also because of academic Excellence being kind of the one that raised to the top as the key priority that was risen even further to
the top so um departments and schools were asked to identify those academic outcomes at the top and then identify areas in the other three three categories how that would then support that academic goal um I think in areas
such as reading we are doing extensive work this year to train teachers on um the science of reading um I understand the you know the frustration um but also we can't implement we we also don't have
clear guidance you know on on what our options are in terms of implementation and we couldn't Implement reading this year it just wasn't you know we we're implementing reading but we couldn't Implement a new reading curriculum this year um so I think um our teachers are doing some really great work in terms of
their professional development that's the focus um we're doing that simultaneously and really deepening the um implementation of our math curriculum we know that that is a big investment that we made um to purchase Bridges it takes three years to implement so while
our teachers are you know learning science of reading this year they're in year two of implementation of bridges um it can't all happen at once so I think we're very we've been very strategic on how we're rolling out um the academic Focus
areas and um tracking that progress really carefully towards um we're we're tracking implementation really carefully because that is um really the best outcome for um academic Excellence I'll just was go ahead I have one more
question but you can go ahead and then I'll follow you just to add a little bit to this to um for so in the fall the skip plans and deip plans are the ones that we reviewed with you they were also in my midyear as an artifact for just your point of reference so you can go back to that and look at those templates to see how we've elevated that front and
center reading is clear across the state across the country and I'm I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that with the redact reboot um or whatever it might be called restart
reset uh that we might be get closer to some guidance on when we can go ahead and move forward with an approved curriculum the challenge aside from the magnitude and load we're already in a implementation cycle but you know when
we land uh what would actually be approved because what we're finding now some of us ourselves included when we purchased some early phonics curriculum that may or may not be reimbursable you know with redak funds and so once we don't want to go out and purchase new
curriculum materials until we absolutely know what's going to pass the sniff test with with mde so we're cautiously optimistic that with this rewrite we're going to get more clarity that we can go ahead and then go into the market space and start looking at options for an
overall comprehensive um uh literacy adap uh literacy curriculum for our district based in the science of reading thank you that actually tees up to my second question so you know we all felt really good about foundations it's been around for a long time it's an excellent curriculum we're hoping that we don't
have to change based on MDA um uh mandates so if it's an excellent curriculum then what is contributing to the declining scores have you been able to identify um what's what's contributing to the scores can you speak to which where
you're talking about declining scores um all through our reading scores they're all from Winter to to from s from fall to winter pretty much every single grade was declining and so what is contributing to that is it um I mean I don't know I'm
not an educator I can't say so here I'm seeing the kindergarten dropped which we knew was um the timing issue um first grade was up a little bit second grade up third grade
even and then fourth you see some decline so again foundations is in that um foundational Reading part of um the science of reading one of the gaps that we have in foundations is phic awareness
which is one of the foundational pieces um it has so basically there's I don't the reading rope has I don't I'm thinking off the top of my head around eight components um foundations has a number of them in one
of the sides so there's the foundational skills and there's the knowledge building skills foundations hit almost all of them in the foundational skills it has some gaps in terms of pH pheic awareness and we're aware of that um as you go up in grades it's we're lacking
in the vocabulary and comprehension components so that's why I think you're seeing a little bit once you get into like that fourth and fifth why we're seeing a little bit of a drop there um but in the lower grades um other than that kindergarten um it's looking around
the same as it has been which is um not great cuz it's right above I mean if that cut score is 40% then I mean I'm not trying to paint a terrible picture I'm just saying I would have expected both hands so fundations doesn't carry the comprehensive approach of literacy
so it's one aspect of it so until we get that component which will be coming with what will be approved we're we're only doing a portion of the strands that um Jay-Z or Dr zush just mentioned so while
we're holding time in slight improvements you know some of our younger grades we need that comprehensive literacy curriculum to round everything out and so we don't supplement with that our our our staff do supplement um materials but not all the materials that we are having and
getting trained in are premised in the science of reading so it's going to be a complete shift of what we're seeing across the entire State because everyone is sitting in the same space relative to what their patterns have been and just kind of flat and so that's where this
big investment here in our state of Minnesota has been around the react so that we can bolster that across the board so yes I think our staff are bringing in additional supplemental materials where they can um and if I'm bringing in something that might be
different than what you're bringing than what you're bringing we don't have this comprehensive literacy curriculum that can hold it all that's rooted in the science of of of reading so that's the the missing element I believe director ainson which is the biggest elephant in the room right now that we're all clamoring for and just wanting to move
forward in I appreciate your transparen with that so thank you Dr Thomas and addition to the timing of the test in addition to the timing of the test that's the kindergarten aspect that was we already acknowledge that anomaly but just in general um every
grade is subject to the question at hand um which is why there's been this push from districts to get this react where it needs to be so that we can go to the market to get the missing components of our comprehensive literacy curriculum director Johnson uh director
zush this kind of uh goes off of director Mason's and some of the questions that I asked as as well with those other slides would that also show once we get science of reading react all those would that show
if the future curriculum is having improvements in all of these areas as well because you mentioned some of the phonics things right vocabulary recognition those types of things would that show that what we're choosing is
making improvements in all these areas what did I um I would say possibly with the caveat that implementation takes three years so we are yeah so if we're starting with a new curricular resource
or we're trying to supplement foundations with a new pheic awareness supplement we may not see that right away because there is um a lot that goes into implementation obviously we would like to see it immediately we all would um but that's not usually the case when
you start something new correct yeah I I if I may director Johnson if I can just uh I want to make sure I'm understanding your question because you referenced uh director Mason's question around um some of the fluency comprehension measures that are not unilaterally administered
to every student yes so it would not give us a it would give us a view it wouldn't give us the same holistic view because it's not every student at 90s something per aren't taking it so um
again I would say those assessments are going to be extremely granular for what I see and maybe what you need and maybe these six others in my class and I'll and I'll track and progress monitor that probably have a lot of conversations with families in that regard unless we
choose from a timing standpoint to administer another round of assessment suites with two or three other measures which again now going to become a testing time frame issue out of instructional time that data wouldn't be universally
um kind of generalizable because we wouldn't have enough n fact uh end counts in there to say yep it's it's making a difference we can talk about it from an intervention standpoint I think that's where it's best used okay and well D director zush said so there's one
of them that only K through three I don't remember which one you said that one they I'll take it but then four five and six it's only as needed so you could use judgment only present the K through
three because they all take it yeah can you clarify that sorry so all students do not take Auto Reading they just all take a a uh you want yeah which ones um Auto Reading I have as grades 4 through
n and then 10 to 12 as needed I but all students take it right there's not like if you're over 80 some per on one you don't have to take the other like they all take both right the way I understood it um no they um Auto Reading is a component okay I'll I think it will help
if I back up a minute um a reading a math early reading early math are um the highlevel components of those subject areas in fastbridge there's what's called um the FastTrack package
which basically says if we give students this package of Assessments which includes earlier a and then a combination of some of the other ones that produces a report for our teachers that's called a screening to intervention report and that takes a
comprehensive look at all of those combined and provides really specific targeted actionable next steps for teachers so what gets packaged in that fast trck package depends on the subject
area and depends on the grade level so it's not that we have CBM for everybody we don't have Auto for everybody because the package of what gets put into those um FastTrack combinations vary by in fact CBM I believe starts in the winter
in in one grade level I can't remember off the top of my head Jen's probably in the back leg screaming that first grade thank you um first grade it starts in the winter so we wouldn't even have CBM for fall in first grade so how these packages are designed for reports to
provide to teachers for instruction would change over time so these are the ones that we have consistency across grade levels those other ones again I can present them but it would be you would see CBM for first grade in the winter it'd be blank in the fall and
we'd have so um again there's nothing that we can't report about those but they are specifically designed to provide that screening to intervention report for teachers in the specific time frame in which they happen so not every student takes Auto not every student
takes CBM those are specific skill sets that are um assessed at different points so that teachers have actionable steps on what to do with the information but you're not selecting students it's just the grade isn't taking it at that time
or well it's mostly and for students in higher grade levels that are still showing gaps some of these are used as progress monitoring so if a student still needs support in a certain area we know that they need to be um their monit their progress needs to be monitored
over the course of you know every week for a six- week targeted intervention some of these measures can also be used as progress monitoring measures so they're not uniformly given because it could be used for a different purpose depending on what the student needs and so in Upper
grades um there might be certain assessments that are used specifically just for students who need progress monitoring in that area Dr V um so thank you very much for this um my
concern is that the fast bridge data that we have in front of us given everything that you've said about it over time as well as this year is not supposed to be used the way we're
actually interpreting it here anyways it is not supposed to be meant to show if PE if if kids are reading um or doing math or whatever it is a teacher instructional tool to try
and figure out after new skills are being introduced throughout the year if the students are needing extra help or they're really getting getting it and I would assume that any student can go from 0 to 100 and back to zero again
depending on how they learn so I I I question why we are looking at this data and instead of just getting a summi of report from the built committees about where they see and interpret the data
because every student is going to be different so we can't really take the averages and students learn it different Paces um so I just question using formative data and a summative report by
a whole grade level um is there um perhaps a better way um for for there to be metrics on how to understand sort of like a financial report of where if we're on track to meet the end of the
year if we have the resources potentially to do the intervention or or if the if the instructors are learning enough about what they need to adjust in the curriculum now and I and this is just my experience as a parent I can tell you that every grade level seems to
have its own little culture too sometimes you have you know classes as a whole that tend to behave a certain way across the whole grade Etc and uh whatever so I I would assume that the instructors would understand how to normalize that um but I don't know how
easy it is I mean we we can't say if I'm introducing a new skill and let's say one student doesn't get it at all who normally excels and they happen to increase let's say a purple percentage that doesn't really tell me
where they're going to be after a couple more you know uh you know instructional help help happens and then all of a sudden they get it and they jump over the hump and then the spring from what I understand test yet new SK
skills um so I guess is there a better way for us to understand and gauge the progress we're making towards that academic Excellence throughout the year so so um I I I would I would share this kind
of how we started this evening this is a formative tool that we are reporting to you all for your awareness clearly this is a practitioners tool okay this is not something that our
board of education is going to look at to say we're going to make key decisions based upon this this is why this is a report only and that we give this to you as we are receiving it um I will say that the cumulative effect of looking at
fastbridge is we want to make sure that we are seeing um percentages of our students being ready to acquire new higher level skills from one window to the next and to a couple of your points
uh and Dr zush mentioned this as well there could be a particular unit or a particular course if I'm in secondary algebra versus geometry that I knock it out of the park you know with algebra but maybe geometry gets too abstract for me and I just disconnect and and I go
down well that's a conversation that we can look at at the classroom level at the school level or at a grade level Etc to start making some adjustments but as a board again what what I would encourage you all to be looking for are what are the trend lines that we're
seeing of skill acquisition ability of our students to acquire new skills and I think to um comments made earlier um about well what our teams doing with that which is part of what we'll talk a little bit about you know with uh a a math update
um that's where the real magic begins to happen but I think for us in our transparency to the board into our community we want to show generally at at the aggregate level how our grade level is doing with their ability to
acquest with that new skill attainment knowing there will be Peaks and valleys in their Learning Journey because it's not linear as couple of you've mentioned as well to the budget um but that's what I would just encourage you all to be
looking at with regards to to this data then our state Benchmark obviously is our MCAS Minnesota comprehension or comprehensive assessment to see what is that summative and so this is an
assessment for learning MCAS are more of an assessment of learning and so that's where I think we can begin to look at those Benchmark proficiency measures year-over-year and again a cohort I think you just name
named this two or you know one grade band might be a tough grade band that year right so next year's fourth graders compared to this year's fourth graders might be better connected engaged so their scores are higher because you're not necessarily comparing the same cohort you'd have to look at Fourth to
fifth um but then your skill levels are different we're assessing higher skill levels so it's not a true Apples to Apples comparison which then goes back to our legislative platform about do we have the right assessment Suites in the state that's truly capturing the learning of our students and there are
many who are saying hm I'm not sure we do so so to not belabor this um I think it's important for you all to kind of get this aggregate over overview in this
formative like how our students you know acquiring skills throughout the year and then have discussions about our MC which as you all know are a point in time and to Dr zumbach's point will also pick up noise if I'm stressed if I'm
hungry if I'm whatever but generally speaking that is our measure until something else changes in in our state so I offer that for your consideration in this dialogue tonight as well as any Futures that we have around fast Bridge there really isn't another tool that we
could give to the board other than this is your situational awareness not action um but probably a lot better managed also with some of you when you've asked individual questions or some sitd Downs I know a couple of you had a a huddle as
well um so I think that's probably more beneficial in general but we want to make sure that we are sharing where we're at you know with this because I think you all have asked some great questions tonight which is getting to some of the Crux of the issues that we're looking comprehensively of why are
students in our district and generally speaking in our state not performing with regard to you know literacy and and MTH skills and and and how are we how are we responding to that and right at the tail end you made the point that I've been thinking about
since we discussed earlier this week around this it's the my frustration as a board member is exactly what you're talking about and what Mary was talking about is I I'm I'm dying for an accurate
snapshot in time that we can share with our community because my first meeting when I got back on in October was was all about the frustration of the MCAS and how disconnected they are from standards and everything else and do they really paint an accurate picture and the consensus was probably not and
it's nobody's fault but that's my frustration as a board member is we don't I find it hard to believe we don't have an accurate um normed assessment that we can take to our community and say this is how our kids are doing that's my frustration and so to your
point is there a better way we can get this information I'm I would love that well we have to have something that's that's spend many many hours our teachers do assessing in fact we I've heard a lot of complaints from teachers of we all we do is spend time assessing
kids and I'd rather just teach and so um yeah I mean what is the magic answer I mean and and do we need to I mean I personally as a board director I'd like to see an academic update everything month I'd like to take a deeper dive into this I'd like to look at it by
school I mean and then it's really not our job to really as a board to understand the why of the implementation of what's going on in the district but I think as a board we have every right to ask what are the solutions that the these teachers or the admin are bringing forth to help support our teachers and
our Learners within our district that's what I'm looking for as a board director and that's why I asked the question like what are they doing is it less iPad time is it less seal is it less like what is happening in the classroom that's different than what they were doing last
year to help our Learners succeed understand any other comments um no I would just say that I appreciate everything that um director zush has done um obviously learning is
not linear doing it monthly is not going to help the situation uh but um um I I would just ask that if we don't have a metric that we actually get um you know
the um triumphs and struggles of uh of our Educators so that we know we're allocating the resources for that intervention and also helping those students that are doing well um to continue to do well um and potentially
that's not a an factual piece of data we can ever pull to because it's it's too um involved and and contains too many variables especially in the situation that a student or a cohort may be in ETC um but since they talk about this
already at the built um and they're doing it at the individual student level that maybe just getting that um together would would be a little bit more informative and also if if we are struggling like you know when the new math standards come in new science
standard ards come in things like that if they are struggling if we're doing our job as a board to make sure that they have the help and support that they need um in order to make sure that students are graduating from each grade with the necessary skills well and again as a reminder um
in terms of our school resources we have reading interventionists that work at K3 K2 K2 K2 um third fourth and fifth we do not have reading interventionists
that is something that teachers have to do during class and while they're managing other things and we do not have math interventionists so from a resource standpoint um just wanted to bring that forward again that kindergarten first
and second reading is the only area where we have specifically allocated interventionists so that is another factor that just wanted to put forth um director in Bush Mike with that comment
that you just made that there's in uh intervent specialist K through two is it is that something that is necessary for o other grades is that something
that the is that something that so um director Bolan this this is a a conversation I've had with many builts in my built Tour on the second half of the year um and again when you take a look at our K2 compared to our
intermediate 345 you can see some differences between how fastbridge is uh uh being uh the the skills being acquired in in K2 because we have that early support so I am hearing
consistently across many of our schools having that intervention support at other grade levels multiple grade levels would be absolutely critical um so because when I'm thinking like I appreciate all of the information in the reports we've we spent time together
during the week like I appreciate all that you've um put into this and the thing that keeps stirring in my mind honestly is um you know kind of goes back to the academic achievement msba
conference that you and I attended Dr Thomas um I as a board member I'm thinking how how do what information do I need so that we're off so that we're directing in a way that best supports
our students and so while you have spent so much time and I'm so grateful for it that this last sentence that you said is what I need to really what I need to know because how do how do I help how do
do we make the decision to make sure resources are are are re put there or you know so I'm thinking of like what do I need for governance um and so uh yeah I just I really appreciate
understanding that where our intervention lies and where it may be needed and then I think that's a that's a that's the board discussion right how do we help in this season of where we're in cuts and all of these things you know
how are how do we do that and I think that's I feel like maybe where that I want to have further conversation all right if there's nothing else thank you Dr zush and we will uh I'm going to suggest a five minute little recess here thank you
director ainson beat me to the punch that if you back here at 8:23 thank you Part: 2
okay next on the agenda is a our teaching and learning committee math update director Edwards all right thank you so much and my apologies uh not sure if it's cold or allergies or what it is but I've got my water here um I was uh saving my voice uh in the previous
conversation certainly there were a couple of points where I uh might have uh jumped in there um and to that end I just want to uh bring uh mention a couple things related to the previous conversation specifically with regard to redact I had Com or I'm sorry uh the
foundation's implementation I had commented and we had said five years I just wanted to clarify that the implementation of that um was a little bit different than the the approach that we have taken to math and I think that's going to be uh relevant to this conversation we have here tonight
specifically when we did this and this was before my time in this role this is my former role as principal at the middle school level so I wasn't directly involved in but we did a K1 initial implementation then we followed it into second grade and then we followed it into third grade with the students so it
was three years of that before we were actually at full K3 implementation and and we've been in that place for three years now so um and there are gaps obviously um per the react that are being seen across the state of Minnesota
um that have called attention to the need for a more comprehensive intensive look at literacy skills and the development of literacy skills in our students and so I just thought uh just for clarification and and to that end I'm going to provide just a little bit
as a former social studies teacher often teaching some courses in history I I can't uh help but provide a little historical perspective related to this conversation as well because I think it's important uh as we give this update where we're at in our implementation that we go back in time just a little
bit to understand the historical steps that we've taken along the way um when I uh transitioned in my role from uh Middle School principal into a K12 uh director of teaching and learning role uh one of the first conversations I had
and actually the July of 2021 I remember it well uh was to sit down with Gwen molden our uh curriculum specialist at that time that was K5 and to have a conversation with her as I was transitioning into a leadership role at a K12 level to help understand uh what
where are our gaps or where are things we should be paying attention to and in that first conversation um we talked about or she talked about the U need to pay some attention to our math uh curriculum because again we were at the early stages of implementation with the
foundations uh related to our uh literacy and we needed to spend um some time and attention looking at uh our math and uh looking at that across K uh 12 and so we began in that first year 2122
bringing together a committee we looked at a vision statement for Math and you as a board um have seen that uh presented to you in previous uh uh presentations each of the last two uh school years prior to this year uh as we brought forward adoptions both in
Elementary uh two years ago and last year in middle school and that was a K12 vision and then we set out for where do we start this work um and so we we ident Iden ified we wanted to start this work at the elementary level um because that
was uh foundational uh and we wanted we knew that we had uh great inconsistencies with regard to how we were approaching math instruction and again we are coming somewhat uh fairly fresh out of uh our Co experience and so
again this was 2122 school year we identified that we wanted to Pilot some curriculum resources uh at the uh Elementary level in the 2223 school year and uh after doing so uh we made a decision in that spring of 23 to uh make
a adoption of the bridges curriculum we implemented that began that implementation last year simultaneously at that time in the spring of 23 we were looking at resources at the secondary level and at that time we decided we wanted to look at uh some uh secondary
re resources particularly at the middle school level and we identified a resource uh to uh pilot in the same year that we were implementing our K5 curriculum for the first year and fast forward to this year 2425 we are in year
two of our implementation of our bridges curriculum K5 and year one of our CPM uh curriculum at the middle school level and we are we and throughout that time uh so as not to forget our our 912 teachers have been engaged in this work
and we are continuing to engage with them to identify what are those resources that uh we see needing to help us raise uh the rigor and uh experience for our students in in mathematics across our system K12 so I just wanted
to give that brief uh take us back in time if you will uh walk through that and uh prepare for uh what we want to share with you tonight which is an update of uh various phases of that implementation uh and we last week uh
had a teaching and learning committee meeting of which uh director olad and director France were participants in as the board representatives to this and uh a very uh different experience that we took uh our committee through um that
was an hour and a half uh we don't intend to bring uh the board through the full experience but tonight's presentation is intended to um bring a presentation uh experience to you and with that that we're going to advance uh
uh our agenda is to talk a little bit about our rigor and our MCA achievement levels which and the descriptors associated with that uh once again we we spent a significant amount of time with our teaching and learning committee last week uh we're going to give you an opportunity to be mathematicians uh
tonight and then we'll talk a little bit about some additional implementation updates so um we all find uh We've we've talked about it multiple occasions here uh that we are drawn and this came up in the previous presentation around our
data that uh what we our work here is around our academic excellence and our commitment to that in our strategic plan and specifically again this conversation is related to math um but there are many components to this and uh I have uh here
tonight as our guest presenter Jen Maloney who is our uh loan differentiation specialist uh here in the school district in Prior Lake Savage year schools and is uh supporting uh much of the math implementation as our Min staff uh uh within our teaching and
learning Department our peer coaches have played a vital role in supporting our work to date uh some of the conversations you as a board were having on the last uh presentation around what type of supports do we are we putting in place um are do we have the right
supports do we have enough supports I think the answer is we have some of the right supports we could use more supports but I know we have limitations around that um and so without further Ado I'll turn it over to Jen thanks and I'm going to use a mic because I'm not really a Podium kind of
gal so thank you for having me um I want to go back a slide nothing gets me more excited than thinking about academic excellence and also assessment so like this is the perfect meeting for me to join so I appreciate you having me um I really do appreciate the sentence though and thinking about like honing in on the
word rigor right but before we begin I want to think about like our own lived math experiences as students and for those of you that were here the other last last week with us we all went around the room and talked about like what do you think think back to your own math experience maybe just a couple
years ago I'm sure for most of us right like what was that like for you how would you be able to describe that in one word those of you in the audience too you can think about this turn and talk to your neighbor logical oh sorry oh go ahead go ahead logical very
logical thank you anyone else popcorn teacher Leed thank you fun I love math great not fun I didn't oh that's fair too thank you thank you for being
real memorization thank you everybody gets to remember Sor uh I'll show what I uh frustrated I felt disconnected thank you I'd say very structured and I don't I can't like put
this in a one word but um for me personally there's definitely always like one way of doing things which is like math but you know one way of learning um frustrated in middle and high school and loved it in
college I loved it also I I like the problem solving yeah yeah I think just like the other day though there was a wide gamut right and and I think that does play into like our own experience now whether we're leading the school board or whether we're parents or you know whether we're teachers and helping teachers so thank you for going through
the exercise with me I'll Circle back to that but I want to go back to this definition I I absolutely love and I feel like we could spend like an entire year just thinking about this definition of academic Excellence so I appreciate everyone that put forth and and brought
this together specifically tonight that we going to tone in on rigor so I'm curious you know we went through this exercise too the other night thinking about like what does rigor mean to us and I think that was important to like land on something together um as I reflected on like how does that portray
how I support teachers how does that enter the space as we think about what teachers believe and how does that look for students too right because what might be rigorous to me might look different than maybe some of our peers so what does that really mean to us here was the list of um how the groups so we
had several different groups and they talked through their thinking on this but what is CH there was challenging but not impossible how many different Pathways do we have that deep thinking and then we talked through like what does that look like when kids are entering that space maybe for the first
time think about that first time when you thought oh wow this is really hard right and I need to persevere through this so what does that feel like kind of in your stomach you know thinking about how you're how you're entering that zone they talked a lot about like how does that feel how do you support kids
through that like it's okay to be wrong to make mistakes to learn and grow from that that's something I think that I'm working through with my own kids at home right like we know as a journey as a parent that's tricky that's tricky not to like you want to support but you cannot just go in and fix it for them so
we talked a lot through that we talked about how to get in that zone where it's like you're in the right zone for being challenged but you're not so overwhelmed that you just want to tap out right so how do you keep kids in that zone together um and then like the more that you do sort of like anything the more
you get better at something the better off it you are right and it's easier it gets so talking through that and thinking about as we continue to challenge our students and put them in situations where rigor is really increasing how do we help support them in that Journey how do we help parents
support their own students and their own children at home through that Journey um this comes into play when we think about the standards so here is one of oh how many did Ellen tell me there was 27 or 29 27 or 29 standards for fifth grade
the fifth grade teacher was with us that evening and thinking about like this is one of 27 standards when we think about this from like what would riger look like in this context so here is the standard read write represent and compare fractions and decimals right you need to be able to recognize equivalent
fractions you need to be able to convert them back and forth what do we think that rigor would look like in this context keep in mind when we talk about an MCA and this is one tool right to measure how we're doing and and I love the fact that we were talking about different types of Assessments tonight
that's sort of my jam but there's different categories so when you get the scores as a parent you'll see like my child is in the does not meet partially meets meets or exceeds and we get the aggregate then to say how are our students and prior like Sager schools doing in the various contexts right
because we can break it down to how are they doing in Geometry how they doing in algebraic reasoning but we have these categories too to Define what does riger look like okay so just play on with me here what would you think rigor a rigorous opportunity would
be for students to engage with this standard what do you think that might look like sorry I'm putting you on the spot say the question again what's that let's say the question again what do you think like a rigorous problem would be related to fractions and
decimals for fifth grade one of the words that came to mind the other night was it would be like a word problem right it would be a real life context okay the anything else the thought that came to my head was like something that engaged I know that's not probably the
answer that you're looking for but the rigor it was something that I notice like when you're defining it in the side above it's like engaging a student to keep them wanting to know
more that you know for everyone it's a little bit different and so engaging is what comes to mind when you ask what does the problem look like yeah and engaging I mean for someone who hates math to oh this is fun or I like to
problem solve like how do you how do you have something that meets all of that right right right right so when I'm thinking more specifically like in terms of an MCA because that would be tricky right like we want engagement in our classrooms all the time in this assessment though what would it look
like so here I'll show you an example and see let's just play this game of like where might this fall so keep in mind our different categories of the does not meet partially meets meets and exceeds levels right that we get the reports on so here's the first problem it's this is a this is an
MCA released example from fifth grade related to that standard we were looking at Abby catches 610 of the balls thrown to her during a softball game which fraction is equivalent to 610 what do you notice about this problem it's relatable it's relatable
yeah like for a fifth grader it's about softball all right cool cool cool cool it's about fractions it's about equivalency right what are my options for answering this one yeah multiple choice multiple choice got a little m I choice is there
probably one right answer probably right logically it would be what level of proficiency going back to this last slide do we think that this would fall in for an MCA related to The Standard that I have shown up here 5.2 point or 5.1. 2.4 like
converting your fractions yeah you're converting your fractions uhhuh it's real world right it's a math situation you can't comp fractions compare compare fractions I mean yeah so do you think it Fallen that does not meet partially
meets meets or exceeds for fifth graders I say partially yeah why I just have a fifth grader so right great answer great answer yeah
this one actually falls in the does not meet category because it's only about recognizing those equivalent simple fractions so even though that's weird to me right like it's a word problem right it's like that real life context it's still only Falls and that does not meet the other thing didn't know about MCAS
and maybe this is common knowledge to you it was new learning for me though was like the kids it it's adaptable so kids enter the space of taking the MCA and they get like a generally meets type questions first and depending on how they answer it goes up or down so
there's actually questions in the does not meet C category that if they get this correct but nothing above this that's how they kind of earn or get the score of that does not me level okay good job really close really
close Okay Okay so let's do another one you can't cheat now cuz you also you might know this one okay so there are 100 people at the beach of the people at the beach 80 did not go into the water what fraction of the people did not go into the water enter your answer in the
Box what do you notice about this one not multiple choice it's not multiple choice you literally have to text something that yep type something in m and it's a word problem so if you don't like to read then right another word problem I'm not going for that
equivalency this time right there's a little bit more thinking involved so what Lev go back to our little list here what level of proficiency do you think or what level of rigor do you think is in this question I would say meat and maybe even
possibly I'm I'm curious I'm curious if someone um gave 80 out of 20 or if somebody said forth right like yeah it's on the on the testing website where I get these from
it tells you all the acceptable answers and any of those equivalents would work uhhuh yeah so I'm C I'm curious I can't wait to know if it meets or exceeds or partially what is it yeah it's only partially it is so if you look at this
list here and I'll get you guys I didn't want to give away all the answerers so I'll get you guys the PDF of this but like if you look at this list now so all of these skills fall into the partially meets category and so it's like the does not meet and partially meets fits into that
partially meets if that makes sense so again if a student just gets this one correct regardless of the type of answer they give as long as it's like an acceptable answer and they don't get anything higher than this that only lands Us in the partially meets category okay so you might be on my pattern
now so which numbers are equal to two and 3 fifths select the numbers you want to choose what do you notice about this type of question multiple answers how do you know it's multiple answers like the numbers you got to be
queued into that good C does it tell you how many so not realistically right I mean you almost have to check out every single one kind of just to verify how many do we I mean I could put
we actually had to do these together the other night but because I don't have the 90 minutes you kind of left out we also had seventh grade ones so I think there was some like sweating in the room but that's okay we helped each other we had team teams of tables um there's actually
three answers on this one and this one is only at the meets and you have to get all three interestingly as well of the students now keep in mind not every student got this question on an MCA but of the students that received this one
across the state only 22% of them got this one correct I took out the exceeds for like the sake of tonight but there's also an exceeds for each one of these and so when you think about like here is the one standard so this is just like the snip shots that I took from the last one
but this is the one standard and here's the different categories of the does not meet partially meets meets and exceeds and again these are the skills that kind of build so like these ones fit into here and these two fit into there if that makes sense um and then these are
the release samples that mde puts out so that that's where I got those samples um and they have these for other other subject areas too as well we were just taking a look um and the whole point of that exercise was really to think about then how does that compare to what we have in our classrooms right now because
again when we think about that academic excellence and we think about rigor and we think about increasing those proficiencies in our students they can't experience right this level of rigor for the first time when they get to an MCA like we want to ensure that they're seeing that and if any of you have you
know those fifth graders at home or especially that seventh grade example too that that we showed the other day it really is like they have to be able to see that there's more than one right answer right and for some of us who say math is just one right answer that's a little unsettling you know what I mean like wait wait I kind of was used to
like and I liked like the it is just one right answer and there's multi M ways to get to that approach um the other thing that I think is worth noting is that as the um MCA fors and I think you guys talked about this earlier as MCA 4S are rolling out so science is the first year
for that this year so they're all switching from MCA 3 to mca4 the proficiency levels are going to be changing not like all over it's just the titles of them so they're going to be changing from that does not meet oops sorry from that does not meet to a beginning that partially meets to an
intermediate and meet meets in advance really the logic behind that from what I'm understanding is that certainly the does not meet doesn't say that you don't know anything about fractions but in this journey of thinking about how kids are understanding it and to what depth they're understanding it we need them to
get to hear and he there's some beginning level understanding sure they can find those equivalent fractions are they able to apply that in really complex ways not quite yet if that makes sense so when we get those as parents for a fifth grade MCA this year these are the different categories um that
they'll be listed questions about that keep in mind this was like an hour and a half presentation the other night so I'm really racing through it I apologize thank you and so really when you think about like certainly when you think about mathematical rigor right and we and we have it called out in in our
um strategic plan of course that procedural fluency is still important right but you cannot just like that three-legged stel will not stand up you cannot have that procedural fluency without really understanding deeply how that's happening and then being able to
apply that in deep ways if we want better results on those MCAS right so it kind of like needs all three components equally weighted questions about that any questions about the proficiency levels I'm so glad that the titles are
changed changing yeah yeah I do really appreciate that even that even that seemingly small update as a parent I look at that and go you know because it's it's kind of hard to get something where you say your kid doesn't meet something or only
partially meet something and to your point you know that's not what that means I mean really that's not what that means yeah um and I I appreciate the the journey that they acknowledge that kids take um whether you're at the beginning level
or at an advanced level um and everywhere in between I can appreciate that change I mean I MCAS need to be changed in a lot of different ways um in my opinion and need to be updated but so I'm glad to see I'm glad
to see that change even a seemingly smaller one yeah and I really appreciate to the progression the way that this lays out so when you're thinking about instruction right we're thinking about okay there's a starting point right kids are in a but it doesn't also mean that I have to like check out this list first
then check out this list right we can sometimes go and you'll know that if you you have those resources at home that your kid is bringing home not every single question that they're experiencing throughout the day is at that exceeds level certainly but do they have opportunities to be there I would hope so right that's why we get a
resource that is rigorous enough where I don't have to think about okay now what else do I need just to get to the meets level and I I also think it's interesting that you brought up that I didn't know until last week that the test is different for every child or every student and so what
I find interesting is it's you know we just got a report on fastbridge right completely different test but it's so interesting to like what would those report you know when we knowing that which I didn't realize that before so
apologies if that was communicated before and I didn't hear that um but I didn't realize that so when you're reading a report on on results and things like that not every kid is seeing the same test which I find fascinating and like
to a lot degree that it's customizable depending on how they answer things but there's so much perhaps room for error room for room for a lot of things in that so I found that really interesting that was one of the biggest things I
learned last week that that was happening it it's so interesting yeah yep and I think that that is new learning for whatever reason for a lot of folks right and that's okay
um these tools I'm just trying to help share with teachers right to think about like how do you lean in to the rigor right and how do we Define that when it when you when you want to layer that with your standards right because we're all teaching the standard we need to make sure that the resources aren't
stuck in these two left columns right like I don't think we can achieve the gains we want to see on an MCA if kids don't get to experience those other types of questions on on The Daily let's be honest Mrs Fon I have a question if they're changing the categories are they
also updating changing revising the cut scores um they're not like so I apologize they're changing the category titles they're not like changing the N like the scale changes so if you ever see a scaled score those don't really mean very much because those can vary as
far as like what these mean so um when you think about like growth you'd never want to go like scaled score to scaled score that doesn't really like work from year to year yeah I'm more referring to like and I know it changes from grade to grade but like meets is only and I'm this is just an example but when you
read a seventh grade score and it's a 750 and it says meets that only means that the student has answered 50% of the the questions correctly approximately that's what a cut score is and if you go on to MD website and you go under MCAS
it explains how the cut scores are how you read the score and what the cut scores are so I'm trying to understand if the categories are changing are they going to be changing the number that goes with the cut score yeah I'm not sure about that because this is new to Sciences this year um we're actually
going to be legged in getting the results because what they did is they built out I don't have the science ones loaded here but like basically they have these same types of things for the science and then they're going to go back in and assign the questions to the different categories okay thank
you questions or comments um I personally really really like um the word problems uh cuz in real life they don't say self for X they give you a problem and and tell you know and have you use
the the the accumulation of math skills that you have in order to apply to that so um I know it's you know from you know so many decades ago uh when we used to sit in a classroom and do one unit and
memorize it and do one pro you know one problem one after the other and that may have happened when you were there Bas don't one your answer um um now they're actually uh uh almost like doing experiential learning uh which is
critical and um I think a lot of kids get lost in the constant repetition but also doing it one unit at a time so by the time you get to a summative test like the mca's they may be getting an A in their class but they don't remember what they did in October November in that unit and
now we're building it all together like they do in the Collegiate Experience of the spiraling approach which is really really critical yeah the other thing that I noticed too with this kind of piggybacking on your word um problems also the advance includes making models
and I think that's something different for a lot of our kids like wait a minute drawing a picture is rigorous or drawing a picture is needed I just know the answer uh if you can't draw the picture though and make the model I should have left the advance the um exceeds example in here the exceeds example was to draw
that picture like you don't get exceeds if you can't do that for this you know for this release sample it proves that you understand it not just that you got lucky and guessed or you memorized an
answer and I get it I I have a kid at home who pushes back on that daily I feel the pain I just have a question yeah so like we talk about meeting this level rigor that you think would help with like standardized tests and stuff what can
teachers do like in the classroom daily to make sure that kids are like getting those skills and practicing that so then they get there yeah and my desire is that as we are getting newer resources that that's already part of what is the experience for kids so teachers don't
have to think about finding additional outside resources on top of that right so like my desire is that we would have that built into whether it's reading whether it's science right those types of experiences I mean again I Know It's Tricky for kids to think about like why do I have to draw the picture if I know
how to do the algorithm but again if you're not going to try that and show andove your understanding that way you're not going to do well on this type of thing and so helping teachers or having the resources right in their hands all the time that well again I'm not saying that every single problem
they're going to experience is always and that exceeds that's certainly not going to be the case like there's room in the resource to go throughout the Continuum I believe but that's my hope is that we'd have that already in their hands and that student experiences daily for them because again you can't just
prep for this like two weeks before the test and expect to do really well yeah anything else before I pass it back to D thank you thank you you suppose you don't want the mic that's fine you got it
yep so um I just wanted to go back to this particular stool um because this was one of the uh core things that we had conversation about when I was referencing earlier the math Vision that we made uh at a K12 level and that uh
those initial Sation that we had in the 2122 school year about what do we need to do um so that we can prepare our students for those different experiences and realtime experiences in the classroom to the question that you just
posed um that is exactly the conversation that our uh teachers were engaged in in uh assessing uh what resources we're going to help to do that uh resources that we're going to include that information so that we were not
having to individually because that was really what specifically we the initial conversation we had at the Elementry level is that that's what we were finding our our resource was so outdated that uh there was a lot of supplementing going on and that supplementing wasn't
consistent across our system so uh this this stool and and you might recall um for those of you that were on the board and those of you that might have been watching our earlier presentations uh one of our colleagues from uh the teaching and learning Department Gwen molden when we adopted the um Elementary
uh curriculum I recall her um talking about uh those components of uh the bridges curriculum and what it provided for us and likewise uh as we went into the CPM adoption that was the uh consensus from our teachers as well um
so uh again coming back to um our implementation process and we are in year two uh of our Elementary implementation and in year uh one of our Middle School implementation and as such we have been engaged in uh evaluating
how that is going and one of the things that we did we and again we talked earlier uh director zush talked about uh implementation science it was a part of uh her slide and about the three-year implementation science and we talked
about um and we have in the past talked about uh making sure that at different checkpoints along Ong the way of that implementation we're Gathering different data around our implementation to see its Effectiveness and so specifically at the K5 level this past uh we started it
right before winter break and then into early in mid January uh did some K5 math uh visits and just to see how our implementation was going how uh what were the challenges that our teachers were facing and we did this across our
system across grade levels and gathered that data and and the purpose of that was to truly help inform our future uh professional development activities our future staff meetings for example uh uh we brought that data and shared that at
each individual building level uh with the ad with the administrative team there to help them inform their built conversations for the rest of this year and moving into they're building instructional leadership team conversations and so that's where we focused our implementation check uh at
the elementary level in addition to that at the middle school level we also had those conversations with our staff uh multiple times we have been um throughout this year and year one of implementation but at the uh right at the midpoint of this year uh we did a
math survey out to our students and our parents uh of students uh that were engaged in our courses that we're using CPM as the instructional resource uh as the curricular resource and we also uh sent the parent uh Guardian survey out
and you can see there um what what we received in that uh bit of feedback um and we wanted to highlight here just some of the uh initial uh feedback we're continuing to evaluate this data set and we will continue to evaluate this data
set with our staff uh to continue to program forward and to make decisions about uh what adjustments we need to make in our implementation where we need to provide um a deeper experience for our staff and ultimately for our
students in utilizing the new resources again getting back to that alignment of having those daily experiences with content that is rigorous aligned to the standards that students have that experience so they don't get to the test and say I've never seen something as
complicated as this um and and that is really the work that we're engaged in you can see um the the strength of our teaching staff was noted um time and time again in our uh responses both from our students and our parents our
teachers have done a phenomenal job I think both in the case of our bridges uh curriculum as well as our use of the resource of CPM at the middle school level we've had very strong um professional development experience for all of our staff uh in both cases
starting the summer before implementation and ongoing throughout the school year and uh actually we're coming up on uh visits at the middle school level with the uh person who works with our teachers and giving feedback on uh their instructional
practices and answering questions for them about as they are becoming uh more familiar with the resource they're you know as you do it the first year you're learning as you go and uh giving them an opportunity to engage with the representative to help them uh better
access the resources has been key you also see uh that the challenges um uh we were encouraged in the student results to see group work and collaboration be uh something that students found value in I think the teaching and learning
committee found value last week when we presented some seventh grade uh problems and and uh the the difficulty and complexity um but we also are seeing the challenges of some uh stress I think we talked about a healthy uh there was a
lot of conversation if you go back into our presentation at the teaching and learning committee about what is that healthy uh dissonance that students need to uh wrestle with as they are uh attacking new content and material so those are challenges that we need to
continue to work uh to meet the needs of our students and then you can see uh also uh parents reporting improve math confidence I think uh if we take you back to our uh vision statement which in hindsight probably should have included in this uh presentation but math
identity and students seeing themselves as mathematicians was one of the key focuses that our staff engaged in as we looked at new resources we wanted our students to all students to see themselves as mathematicians that can do complex problems and have the confidence
to do so so um we definitely appreciate that uh that's been reported as uh something that's parents those that uh some of the parents that uh completed our uh feedback said they're seeing that from their son or daughter at home and
then um again we see the commonality of the math anxiety and students having uh the difficulty and the challenges with the new uh resource that we're utilizing uh we're not fully surprised uh that there are those challenges and we need
to identify strategies to work through um the difference in approach uh in terms of homework uh and problems uh definitely homework uh and work completion is a common uh challenge for middle
school students I will say um not new to this implementation um and so not fully surprised uh by that but definitely continuing to work through that with our students um we were going to have this uh
opportunity to uh engage you in reflective uh thinking uh just curious if you take a moment uh to reflect about through this experience that you've had I'll be it brief not as long as the 90-minute experience we took our teaching and learning committee uh
through last week but I'd like to give you a chance to just pause for a moment and what did you used to think about math and the new standards and the new approaches uh as compared to what you think
today for now um I can so um first of all I love the new way of teaching and learning um um I'm do other things outside of being a school board member obviously and one of them is involved in the National stem
and one of the struggles that we've had is a 70% dropout rate uh of kids taking hard sciences and math as they go into postsecondary Ed uh simply because they hit that wall that's what we used to
call it you know without the constant learning about how to apply it and the experiential learning they were memorizing and they realized they didn't really understand the concepts they would jump over to the next highest level skill that depended on them having an in-depth knowledge of those Concepts
and then they would all of a sudden think they were not good at math they weren't good at science they weren't good at that and um I'm hoping that this new method of training and what I've seen in the classrooms is going to help with that quite a bit um because I used
to think that you know the the Rope memorization and the repetition and stuff like that um you know was the only real way to teach it in uh middle school and Elementary and clearly um we have made massive improvements on that and
also enhanced you know you know so many decades ago being in algebra in high school used to be the Pinnacle and you would only take calculus and college and now it's algebra by 8th grade we're asking them to learn that much faster but we haven't really changed our tools
or methodologies of how to learn and uh just doing the same thing faster uh obviously wasn't working so um um as far as the MCAS goes and how they're actually testing in the last year or so um including this year and the new way
um I'm hoping that we can actually change that trajectory anyone I have so many thoughts I'm going to share a couple so it's not really like now I think I used to think um what
keeps swirling around my head is as as everything that has been presented I think it's really uh we have to be very careful about making assumptions um we we have to be very careful I I wrote like making broad statements um from something that
maybe you don't truly understand it it is it's not serving it's not wise I guess um and so I just think of you know when the bridge the bridges curriculum for the elementary school was being um
piloted I went or maybe it was the first year of implementation and I went to a couple of the math nights and I thought oh my gosh at you know it was like a 3-hour night and I thought in the beginning I was like oh my gosh I don't get any of this because it was so different from any way that I ever
learned and then I I'm a note taker so I took like five pages of notes and by the end I had to had to connect with um I think it was Jennifer Moler that evening and principal Molitor and I was
like is my like I feel like this is allowing for such a deeper understanding for a broad level and she said that is exactly what we're trying to do and so while um I am very far I've never been
an educator I never probably will be an educator other than being a parent so I guess I'm a little bit of an educator um I just really appreciate being taken through this um I think there's been a lot
of concern and I think that we have to we have to allow for this Ro we have we have to allow for it the so I don't know I I think that again I have so many thoughts but the
biggest thing is is like it's just we have to be very careful about making assumptions or broad statements um because they just lead to fear and and um yeah that's my do you
have something you want to say oh yeah I just wanted to say that I love how you're putting so much emphasis on the like confidence and like the stress levels cuz I've seen so many of my peers in myself struggle um with like just like knowing that oh we're not a math
person we haven't done well in math so we're just we can't do math but now maybe I can do math and I love the way you presented it I felt like I was in a classroom that was fun well uh Mrs baloney has to take credit for that thank you um I would just I have a question
can you go back to the slide with a stool on it please so my question slash concern is the word Concepts is mentioned multiple times on this slide students identify the appropriate Concepts um and then we
go down and conceptual understanding um my question SL concern is that if this math Vision was built in 212 2 previous to the Strategic plan being finalized in um July of last year where we really did
hear a very light loud loud cry from our community that our students they want to see them um receive you know curriculum that's rigorous and challenging and relevant and I think they want to learn a little content where um this slide
really talks about Concepts and I know that this curriculum also talks about Concepts so how are we infusing that fund foundational content into this curriculum so that we can ensure that when our students are going through our
math Pathways that they are set up for success as they graduate because an an electrical engineer um has to know the content you know a medical doctor has to know the content and I know and not every student is going to be I mean I understand there are people who struggle
and all that so where how are we infusing content into this yeah and this actually the stool wasn't part of our math Vision I think there's a lot of connections but the stool is actually from mde so I there's a online webinar I can send you the link where they're talking through like what is the
definition of mathematical rigor and how do we help support kids so that when I'm hoping I can get to here how how did they get to that advanced level or how did they get to that exceeds level and so they were really talking through that like absolutely I think where you had the content come in sorry I'm poing at
this one CU I was told I had to for the public or something um this one this is like this is where I think those Concepts come into play they're talking about like or the content excuse me the content comes into play probably more here is what I'm imagining right because that is like your computational fluency
right I need to know my math facts you are 100% correct and we want to make sure that kids I think to the point of others that he we talking through like I need to understand why that works and be able to draw that model again if you go back to the example and I should have
left the exceeds one on there now I'm regretting my decision to chop something um he told me how to um so so the advanced one and I can send it to you all or I can put it in the PDF I'm going to send you the advanced one was really about that fractional model um and I think that that gets to the
point of like certainly that bottom part right that conceptual understanding and how how to draw that model um I think what I see in the application part is every single one of those questions was a real life application right so how do you take what you know about fractions and equivalent fractions and things like
that without standard and how do you apply that in a way that isn't a multiple choice question and actually like almost every single one when you look at them I mean some of the relas examples I'll tell you are better than others I like some of them better than others it's not a perfect system um if
you look at the science ones just in a side sorry I know I'm my timeline here just in a side the science ones um the science MCAS this year are going to be more about the experiences where it's almost like they'll simulate a a uh science experiment and kids have to
decipher the data that's collected through that experiment so the ones that are released for mca's um for science aren't going to they don't have that interactivity yet built onto that testing 123 website um but to answer your point I think it's both um and this was this definition wasn't necessarily
our we should have put the math Vision in there it wasn't the math vision and actually I think to your point I think revisiting that math Vision with this new lens of we're defining academic Excellence like I I think there's a lot in here like this is just a run riger
let's talk about some of the other words here I think that could be whole another session um but yeah I think this was the definition that mde um gave on it and just talked through like if you don't have one of those legs it's really not a sturdy stool and that was how their analogy went through about defining
mathematical rigor and I thought it was relevant to our conversation around rigger in our district yeah and I think if you you know takes 610 if you don't know how to divide six by two you're not going to get to the answer of three fifths what that's that foundational content y for sure and if you don't know
the model that goes with that you're also never going to be able to do the exceeds uhuh Dr Johnson yes so um I got to spend some time in a sage class where they did some math um one of the things
with them is that they are restricted to Bridge's only math um and that was a concern to the individual teacher because a lot of those well all of those
students are Advanced and she is supplementing so this is statement to a question that also ties in with with CPM and some some things that I have also heard with
teachers doing modifications so is that something that is still ongoing within the curriculum is that something you're experiencing is that something you're working through is that normal is that part of the dip um
just trying to work through that yeah and I think you want to take the first part sure I'll take the first part I don't remember what the first part was but I'll say something um yeah so thinking about um we have a few friends if if I'm thinking about that like we have kids that are taking middle school
math as stage students so we have students that are coming over after first hour in math so we definitely do always use um the acceleration policy when it makes sense right and we've taken the number of kids through that process um to see like yeah are you ready for something more I mean I have a
current kindergartener that I'm assessing right now to think about where his right level of placement is so that's always an option um it's very like right I think about like our switch when we decided to say not every single kid just because you're identified from
a coat score means that you're ready for or needing a whole great level advancement right now not to say never right but it didn't make sense for all of those Learners in that space um I would say though really interesting it it kind of like perplexed a lot of people but it was an interesting
conversation we also saw the biggest growth we've seen in that Sage classroom over the past three years was when they stayed on content stayed on grade level content but got the opportunity to go really deep so it's kind of confusing right because you're like wait how are
you actually growing more by staying on this grade level but going deep versus accelerating I think somebody alluded to it like at a fairly surface level sometimes kids need that acceleration for sure we I mean we're a state we need to have an acceleration policy you have
a Schoolboard policy on acceleration and I all the process um so certainly that's always an option on the table for students when that makes sense um given where they're at but not every single student in that space necessarily you can be gifted and maybe right now your math skills don't show you need that
does that make sense yes and I and I'll take the second question uh related to CPM in in middle school and uh the word you used was it modifications yes y supplementation is probably a better word sure yep and and certainly that is
uh those are conversations that we are deeply engaged in with our uh by by level teams uh learning teams and our peer coach uh is working we have one the one one of our peer coaches is working with the Middle School uh Math teachers through this implementation and engaging
in what are those necessary adjustments that uh uh were considering and and needing to make uh Gwen molden uh is also working with that uh those teams of teachers and uh that is part of the uh process of a new implementation finding
what are those adjustments that are appropriate and collectively as a group of sixth grade teachers or seventh grade teachers or eighth grade teachers uh going through that process while still uh maintaining the level of rigor that's intended uh and part of because of the
nature of this curriculum uh that this resource that we're using in CPM and the um the the point that certain concepts are hit multiple times most concepts are hit multiple times throughout the year
um making modifications prematurely is something we're trying to be careful not to do until we've been through the whole series of course one at sixth grade course two at seventh course three at eighth grade so that we know the whole sequence of course um before we and see
and and I think a lot of our staff are seeing this and students are seeing this as well and reporting to their teachers that um things that they uh see early on they see it again they see it three times maybe four times throughout the
course or maybe even more throughout the course of the school year and so we have to be mindful not to make um unnecessary adjustments prematurely and I think that's a balancing act that we're going through in this first year of implementation and that we'll continue
to um reflect upon and take the feedback once again that feedback that we got from our students um and our parents and uh make those necess Neary adjustments and director Johnson I'll just close by saying that um there is there is no
perfect curriculum curricula is written at a national level kind of to that Bell of the curve if you will um and even curriculum that we might have had for four or five years if you get a cohort of kids that just push things or their
learning is in a in a space that you need to bring in a supplement that historically you never have had to do that's what good teaching is so um we're always going to find ways to supplement based upon who's before me today that might look drastically different than who I might have had as you know in my
class um last year so so yeah I think that's a a a very well Point uh wellmade point and then even in the long run we will continually be supplementing and maybe making modifications based upon that you know learner profile changing or the relevance of the kids needs that
that particular year sure thank you um one other question so just looking at the enrollment and your total number of surveyors I'm I'm going to call uh director's unsh up here on this she's
done some deeper the uh the remaining number of middle schoolers can you are all of those the eighth graders that are in advanced math or where are the remaining you're
talking about the P the um survey response rate for students no no students were not given the the students who were not given the survey okay what's so what's the question so you so
1,686 students yep were given the survey mhm there were 2,000 86 6th through e8th graders right so the 1,686 is only students who are currently
in a CPM class that's not everybody in the Middle School okay y so the advanced math is not a CPM class correct so the so the remaining are all 8th grade advanced math is that correct there's also
kiddos okay okay that's just the remaining mhm correct all right cool perfect thank you so I have a question about the implementation data so um thank you for
sharing this I think it's really hard to to assess from this feedback whether it was like overwhelmingly positive or negative are we able to get as board members like the um full survey results in common um I can give um so the the slide that
was given it was a very quick weekend turnaround time so I didn't have a chance to like fully dive deep but I do have that here tonight um just wanted uh to put forth that um our response rate for parents um I looked at there was a
question at the teaching and learning advisory committee about how many households it rep or how many yeah how many households the respondents represented um I did that analysis and that would be 11% so our our parents that responded to this um represent 11% of the households
of CPM students so that's um something to keep in mind um in terms of the student data um the top so the the numbers are not going to add up to the 1,686 because there's a lot of answers that didn't fall I mean students
responded a lot like I like decimals I like unit six so there's not um thematically um this isn't going to add up so um yeah don't try to do that I mean you can try and do it but it's not going to add up um but for student data um the number one is teacher support so
that was 151 students that um said that that was their um a positive I I also have a description and an example response for each um the second one was 88 responses that was collaboration and group work uh the third one was ease of
learning 77 uh um 67 is the next one they said that the thing that they like is the challenge level um as a positive um 33 students uh interactive
activities and then for challenges for students um homework and pra homework struggles um and stress that would be the top one at 234 uh test and assessment stress at 1:30 uh fractions and deals
105 understanding concepts 91 uh algebra and equations 46 in you don't need to go through them all today so I have all of them if you want to just send them that's perfect um yeah so I have that broken down for each of the questions and each of the
response groups um but yes in general um like for the parent one that I know that that's come up a lot the strong teacher support that was 67 responses the top Che challenge um was 25 responses so the number of um responses in terms of the
top challenges was um less than half of the top in terms of the positive responses um and again that only represents um 11% of the CPM families J on Bush have we ever before
CPM did we ever do a survey like this or you Bridges I was actually going to ask for Bridges if we could yeah I I I think the level of um feedback that and the process frankly um we we have made significant changes to our
implementation process uh with curriculum in in recent years and the steps along the way this being one of those steps that previously to this level I mean we we've always surveyed our families about experience at the end of the you know at this time of the year
we're doing that right now um we've done that historically for many years but specific to curriculum uh implementation this is not something that we had previously engaged in so I guess my question would be is we don't know
homework and stress and test anxiety prior so we don't have a baseline to compare it to that that would be a good point yes I would agree with that statement okay I think as parents as we take surveys though we know what it felt like two years ago before today right so
um you know I I having kids this stage will be very blunt to say that my feedback is not very positive and I know that this works well for many students for some it does not um and so you know I don't find it challenging um and
rigorous so when I think of rigor I think of like repetition and you know having homework atent home and the responsibility of returning it and I don't think I've seen homework for two years in math so um I guess you know the I'm curious just the general tone of of
the feed back and and just I've heard overwhelmingly not as positive maybe but um maybe that's just my circle of contacts I'm not sure well we can provide the the data set so you can take a look at yeah that would coming to the whole board if that's the will of the
board um I would like to see that as well and I will just and I would just add I'm going to be real brief here um there is no denying there's a level of frustration right and I understand that the implementation takes time but I think given the fact that the board um
approved the math Pathways prior to our new strategic plan being implemented and prior to even knowing that we're implementing the ccpm curriculum I'd like to make a motion this evening to bring the math Pathways to our March study session um so that we can discuss
the math Pathways were approved in December 11th of 2023 um but it'll allow us to take a deeper dive into this conversation of math and to really determine if the the math pathways are doing what they're
intended to do to inspire Empower and each student to reach their full potential in math and our community has expressed a concern about this topic and I think it deserves fur further explor exploration to ensure that our curriculum meets the needs of students at all levels of the math spectrum and
that each learner receives the foundational skills necessary to succeed in high school that's my motion can I get a second I sor that so to simplify my motion is I making a motion to bring the
math Pathways to the March study session and you said it was um the math Pathways was approved December 11th of 2023 December 11th 2023 prior to our new
strategic plan which was implmented July of 24 July of 24 correct M but we you're making a motion to bring this to the to the our next study session the math Pathways conversation which is really is a
conversation about bringing looking at advanced math because um the math Pathways we by redoing the math Pathways in December 20 December 11th 2023 we dropped off the sixth grade advanced math and the seventh grade
advanced math so I think given the fact that our strategic plan focuses on rigor and relevant instruction challenging and rigorous and relevant instruction I'd like to bring back and have that conversation um at a study session and we have a you simplified
your motion so do we still have a second second discussion um I have a question and this is to Dr Edwards um I know that we had discussion about sage and the concerns
about sage and we kind of heard that uh and we've also discussed um the fact that we're in the first year really full year of implementation and I do believe in the 2023 24 school years when we're piloting
CPM so I I I struggle to see or to understand if there's enough data or even in the first year so that we could have a more in-depth discussion before the data and the
actual um impact of that is is felt I I don't I I I I would be my concern is is it would be premature um because I'm not sure how much we
know um and we also you know obviously know that the the feedback from the teachers um that was overwhelmingly accepted um 100% of the board voted and it was discussed that teaching learning of the why and I don't know if we've had
enough time to digest that so I would be cautious of again retiga something without data and that's my concern and I'm not sure how the your department would be able I I don't know what we would do I think the point would be to
take a deeper dive into the fash bread scores and separate the advanced students from the regular students and to really look and compare like are we meeting their needs um this year versus last year um there's been a loud cry from the communities particularly around advanced math we do have a new
board um we have new information and we have a new strategic plan and in order to possibly make a change for the following school year the time to have the conversation is now I think that's passed but um I would
just question I could you please answer the the data question yeah so um first one response would be um the anecdotal data at this stage that we're hearing from our teachers as we look at where our
students are at at the midyear point in addition to the standardized data collected via fastbridge is um and this was a question that was posed at a teaching and learning in February prior to our presentation at um March meeting
regarding looking at student grades the feedback that our teachers have given is that they're what they're seeing collectively is that student grades as they see them are actually more indicative of and a more accurate
predictor of where students are actually at in their understanding of math concepts and especially to the presentation content earlier this evening uh a more accurate description of
student attainment of math skills as oppos so in previous uh D I say grades might not have been an accurate predictor because our proficiency scores if MCA being the
summative measure um our teachers have reported that it's actually a greater predictor now with utilizing the new resource of where students understanding is of math concepts so I'm not quite sure if that
answered my question so well uh you were you were going to a place of do we need more data okay I think MCA data this spring uhu and an opportunity to look at that data uh as a data set to do
analysis um once again this is year want of implementation um I would caution the level to which we would analyze that data um but again uh there's multiple sets of data student
grades are one set of data uh fast bridge scores another set of data MCA triangulation of all of that data and I happen to name three different data sets there are other data sets as well um that we could examine so I I think that
that that would be my attempt to answer your question I think I would tend to agree that we need more data before we would engage in that but so I think the ask is maybe just to revisit the conversation and and talk about what data Maybe could we use so can we use
grades and look at those or can we you know what other options are there can we look at the number of students that are opting out and that might be enough to fill a classroom um I think there's a lot of factors and that would be the discussion I would love to have
um personally I think asking our parents in our community to wait three years when they're extremely frustrated and the are these are kiddos that already lost two years from covid and now asking them to wait three years or seventh graders who have had four different curriculums now in math um that's very
frustrating as a parent so I think it is you know our duty as board members to consider the feedback that we've gotten can I ask a clarifying question on this um are you are you proposing looking at taking the quote unquote highest
students putting them in a separate class and giving them the same resource I'm struggling to understand what the ask is in terms of advanced math guess that's where like there we have the resource so are you talking about just
pulling the kids or doing the best in that class and putting them in a separate class I think we need more data which is why I'd like to go to go this have this go to a study session really focused on those math Pathways meaning like if you take your sixth grade Advance if you take your fifth if you
take your sixth grade cohort and there was 100 Advanced kids last year in the sixth grade advanced class is my understanding now they're in seventh grade CPM with no advanced math is my understanding so how are they performing are we meeting their needs or do we need
to go back and look at adding a revising a seventh grade advanced math um adding a class I mean we have 23 students opting out of CPM right now we're losing money in our district and and we have many students many parents
who are paying for math tutors and we're losing kids because we don't have advanced math options and so I think it even makes more sense given the fact that we did decide to keep stage sage in play in third fourth and fifth grade um it I think it even makes more sense for
those kids coming out of sage to have those Advan math learning options as they come into the middle school so new board new strategic plan um I think it's really relevant to bring it to a study session to have a conversation I I hear your question I'm
just wondering what it are you suggesting a to like we have a resource that is CPM so are you suggesting taking we would have a regular CPM and advanced CPM that would be the same C it's still the same it is our curricular research
so I'm I can you clarify what an advance would look like within our curricular resources actually actually that's I'm going to if I may just hold on that question what I'm trying to understand is the
discussion the the motion on the table is to bring back a discussion about math Pathways correct meaning um students who are accessing regular curriculum versus Advanced
curriculum I'm just trying to whittle it down to try to get an understanding what the ask on the table is what we're offering and what we're offering in the pathways are we are we teaching those foundational skills is the path that we put in place Meeting those foundational
skills to set these students up for Success can I ask a question go ahead so um Dr Edwards correct me if I'm wrong after this year there is no more advanced math there will no longer be advanced math in the middle school is
that correct uh the pathways beginning that that's being referred to beginning e8th grade students will make a choice in eighth grade so only follow pathway yep okay so and director ainson you're what
you're saying is to essentially be able to offer in advance right so for example Sage students right we talked a little bit about Sage right if those students wanted to choose in
advanced just saying CPM I understand again correct me if I'm wrong they don't have an advanced curriculum so maybe we go back to last year's they have great Advan just they have acceleration accelerate so to meet the rigger because they already know it
we advance them up in the curriculum so so that exists currently today so say we for the advance advance for any student for any student okay so say we just automatically so that that's I'm trying
to understand what getting back to Dr zumo's question what what exactly it's if we bring it to the I know the motion on the table is to bring it to a study session and we can discuss whether or not that's that's warranted or not but to to what end is it Advanced CPM
is it a different is it a different there is noan but the CPM is our curriculum so you're talking about a completely separate curriculum that's the discussion we would like to have we would like to understand different options for kids that are advanced in fifth sixth and seventh grade because
we've taken away those options right and we do have advanced classes in other subject matters and so we have a we have a strategic plan that says we're going to focus on challenging rigorous and relevant instruction we've heard a multitude of complaints or concerns from
parents um regarding their challenges with the CPM curriculum and I just think we need to take a deeper dive into the data to really understand um if we were to bring back a sixth grade advanced math would that help to meet the needs
of our most advanced Learners um would that help to level out the playing field of meeting these needs I mean I feel like we're getting too far into the conversation which is why I'd like to have the conversation um you know what I mean yeah we're just trying to get clarity on what to what
the conversation ask is yeah that's the ask so and I'm not necessarily opposed to that but in in two weeks what what kind of data will we have that we don't have today
you understand what I'm saying yeah I think if we can take a deeper dive into the fast bridge scores I think if we we have data there to support that right I mean we have dashboard scores from last year we have dashboard scores from this year mhm I mean if someone can come up and tell me that every St student every
Advanced student in sixth is now in seventh grade regular CPM they're thriving and they're at the highest level of their class then we're good like we're meeting their needs yeah and just for some context so the current fifth graders we do we did
last year and we're going to do again this spring is a universal consideration for acceleration so it's not like you have to know about that option as a parent right so we look at all those I think to your point we look at all those fastb scores for our acceleration process there is a certain threshold
there's a certain cut score right we're looking for um we did this last spring we're going to do it again this spring we've just recently pulled the data of all those fifth graders and then my communication goes out to them saying we have a couple options and we want to make sure that you know about those
options um and so we did that last year we test did a I tested a lot of kids I don't remember how many um I tested a lot of kids and there are some that qualified for that acceleration so we are universally considering especially that like that moving point right that
that natural progression from fifth grade to sixth grade so that's already something that was in the works last year it's going to continue this spring too my understanding is there's not an advanced option for our Siege kids though correct so those kids are considered just like anybody else would
be so all fifth graders now with the exception of the couple that are already in middle school bth right like I mean they're already advanced certainly they can we've had double acceleration before that's that's a thing if if that makes sense for them right still but still an
option right um but we are we will send the communication just like we did last spring of all the kids Sage or otherwise um because there's a lot of families too that are selecting to stay in their home school for a variety of reasons or our choice program the immersion program right so like we don't want to say just
for just like we talked about before not every single student in Sage does this make sense for in that moment um but yeah we we can universally consider everybody where is that on the pathways like chart I don't have it in front of me but that math Pathways chart for next year it doesn't show anything Advanced
for sixth graders or in this is part of this wouldn't be considered for an advanced course this is for our acceleration process but I don't want families to like only know about it if they know about it you know what I mean it's like we universally consider everybody now certainly that's a conversation cuz not all families will
say yes please send my kids to the middle school and and bump them up a grade you know like not everybody is interested in that um but certainly we universally consider everybody yeah it's an advanced it's an advanced pathway it's not it's no longer a course and and I think maybe that's where we're
interchanging some language here but per policy um if a student is is eligible for that advanced pathway I'm a fifth grader and I might go into seventh grade math versus sixth grade math right that's something that I can still
consider that that option has never gone away that's something that we discussed back in December um of 23 when we talked about these pathway changes so so I'm just which is why I'm just trying to get
clear um what if Dr Thomas we had that policy in place we've had that policy 513 I think it is we've had in place for years I'm saying that's not working right now that's that's the part that we're hearing loud and clear from the
community and and so the I'm sorry the Poli they're either not utilizing it they're not being tested for I don't know the the behind the scenes we as the board are just the what and the why and I'm saying what are we doing to meet the needs of all Learners we have a new
strategic plan in place and why are we hearing so many concerns um from parents about this the Middle School curriculum could it be tied back to the fact that we don't have advanced math in 6th and 7th and if we were to put that back in
place would that solve this problem that's the conversation I want to have and I'd like some data to support that how we do that that's really administration's job to figure out so we did talk about the Fidelity of the math program and the sage program uh was it
January or February I can't remember uh in the study session uh where we did talk about that a little bit um but I I got voted down in that I got to um I have to ask that this is a decision that I would think would be
between the parents and the teachers the principal the head of that department um if the parent thinks the child qualifies and they do qualify but part of the problem we had before and pro and the reason why Sage fifth grade
is doing uh more in-depth Bridges is is to is to really try to have some heart into the fatality of the advanced as well as the what we're calling uh gifted and talented uh but also the acceleration I believe was already
talked about and that's why I'm confused so what what you know what is the outcome of it and then again do we have the data uh now that we've it's still only in the first year and we have advanced eighth grade and we we don't
have that data yet so I'm so if I'm thinking about this properly because we still have advanced in eth grade our sixth graders were in fifth grade last year so are we only talking about current seventh graders that
are that are uh maybe at one point had an advanced option that was taken away and six gr we had 100 sixth grade advanced math kids last year right but they're in seventh grade this year correct so I'm I'm trying to break this down into the smallest cohort Pro
possible that if if we're requesting you to take a dive into how it's affecting a cohort of students what cohort is it because it's not eighth grade because they're they currently have the option well it's not sixth grade because they were in fifth grade last year so it's really only this year's seventh grad except for the sage
kids the sage children all those other fact about 150 kids basically so that's what I'm wondering is would it be possible for you to break that small cohort out cohort out of current seventh graders and have any kind of data that
would be helpful to us um to be able to compare their experiences from last year to this year if I Mak sense yep I think I I'm tracking uh and if I may be so bold is to say if we bring it to the March study session that would require us
to collect that data between now and next week and that would be a fairly significant and frankly here tonight I don't have real ideas necessarily yet um about what that
data would be um that we would bring back to you uh as early as a March study session might we be able to bring some data if that were the will of the board to an April study session for example um to to strategize what data could we
bring um we won't have MCA data uh uh available to us because that just actually happens in April when we come back from Spring Break um again I shared earlier we have some anecdotal data and observational data um we would have the
first data set that comes to mind is we have registration data from the students how many sections of students are in seventh grade going to eighth grade next year I don't know the answer to this question here tonight um how many of those students uh and have chosen that
path and comparing it to those that were in sixth grade had an experience and now are choosing that path in eighth grade um to go on the advanced pathway that they have the opportunity to do that's data that we could probably pull
together to inform uh a a brief conversation I don't know that we could have an in-depth conversation that would be a triangulation of multiple data sets I think if we had the number of students in fifth sixth seventh grade that were testing over is it 90% typically that's
offered for advanced courses because I have not gotten that feedback from the agage parents or from we've gotten several emails from parents and and a lot of communication from parents whose children are testing over that advanced threshold that we use for every other topic but we're we don't have available
for Math and if you look at the middle school registration there's no middle school advanced math offering for the those students so I'm not sure where the miscommunication is when we're saying yes we offer it but we don't um that's the feedback that I've heard they're not being offered it for the kids that are
testing over 90 I believe it's 90% correct correct I'm wrong I just want to see if I heard you correctly you're saying those families are reporting to you that they aren't being offered the advanced Pathway to accelerate because
there is no they're not there's no course but they are being offered referred the advanced learning Pathway to basically grade skip which is essentially a new course for them I have not heard that from Sage parents in fact
many are looking at alternative options so maybe it's a miscommunication I'm curious now but um so one of the data sets that I as as I'm listening to this conversation that I have not heard
reported to me from Mr kabek is uh what the conversations I know that Mr kabush a number was was brought forward into this conversation of the uh families who are choosing to not have their student enrolled that is 23
students which is 1% of our eligible students for that um and Mr kabek has had conversations with each of those families I have not heard him report and I will follow up with him
uh to find out uh what level of conversation this has been at at the middle school level that would be one additional piece of data that we could bring forward um should that be the desire but again aside from that I don't
know that we would have necessarily comprehensive uh data set to bring forward beyond that at this point you had a comment Le yeah I just wanted to clarify that so when I'm pulling those like fifth graders like we did last year yeah that threshold is at the 98th
percentile so not 90th um and that communication has not gone out yet to those families so that might be why other topic for other yeah yeah yeah yeah so I'm thinking like for the like right like you might be eligible and let's talk about let's have a conversation around what that might look
like they've gotten letters for English for Minnesota studies for science just not math then you're saying right because this is a different type of pathway right this is like thinking about ensuring that everybody knows knows that acceleration might be an option for their child and we certainly
do like we accelerated a seventh grader mid year um he was very um it was great it was the kid driving that the parents are like I I don't know if this is the right move do you think it is I mean but the kid was very adamant the teacher supported it and and it made sense the
data he knew a lot and so we we moved him at semester break so there's always that so feel free to send folks that feel like they need more you know my way like I I love the conversations like that those are fun to have yeah cuz I you know when I think about the families
who have opted out so to speak you know those conversations that principal kabush has had at the site level you know if if there are needs that we can identify for for them we can we'll continue to explore that but 1% of our
population you know and I'm trying to understand and truly trying to qualify quantify sorry all these people um and and where those conversations are taking place at the site level if there's if that's not occurring all these people coming to the board without
trying to address it where it matters first that's where I'm trying to understand like the numbers we have I wouldn't call all those people and and I'm not suggesting that that's the the the exact term or whatever but who are
we talking about how many are we talking about because to your point chair white if it's a band of of a cohort of kids it's not all these people let's have this conversation um to to address that
uh that so so I'm concerned to be able to meet the the if this is the will of the board to bring breadth of new data to the conversation that would satisfy what you
you're speaking to tonight honestly before we even have a chance to have the conversation which sounds like there might be some breaks somewhere along the line just from our own exploration tonight at the Das um so so that that's
my concern where we if this is the will of the board we'll figure this out but of what we should bring CH white um if I can do I my concern uh my concern is
when statements such as the community is um because I'm in contact with the community as well and I don't hear only negative I I actually hear overwhelmingly positive and um director
Mason you sh you shared you know you didn't know if it was maybe your circle you have a fifth grader and I I'm not saying that it is just your circle but that is that my concern is when there are broad statements like the community is upset
about this or or feeling challenged and I'm not saying that I don't agree that people are challenged I have also heard personal experiences of high highly challenged with this new curriculum and I you know I I am sensitive to that
information I think but to to to say that the overwhelming Community response I just I'm out there I'm not I don't hear an
overwhelming negative so I'm I'm concerned what bringing this forward in two weeks at a I'm I'm concerned about um where it would go I think the biggest thing when when you know you talk about
the 23 students that have opted out I I have been in contact with Mr kabucho just checking in I've checked in with with parents who have opted out um I I think that you know we have to always
encourage and remember that um parents to teachers that is the the closest proximity to Student Success and student achievement is in those conversations so I'm concerned about it just being
brought to board level that quickly especially when we're so new into the implementation of this I I hear the concerns about the um Advanced uh classes and how it looks different but
it looks different we have a a different curriculum so I'm I'm concerned about being too hasty I'm not sure what we could accompl accomplish talking here I don't know and
director Bolan I want to be real clear with what my ask is I'm not asking for us to vote or talk about CPM going away because I also just like you I'm out in the community and I do hear positive things about CPM from teachers and students but what I'm specifically referring to are the students who are
struggling on the high end of the SK of of the spectrum who are specifically struggling with the that we have don't have that advanced math option anymore that's what I'm referring to and so I want to be specifically because of our strategic
plan I want to I thought it was relevant to bring this conversation back to have a more dep in-depth conversation we shouldn't even be having it here to be honest with you and if we're looking at a coure her of 150 kids pulling those fast brid scores shouldn't take very
long I would think it'd be we'd pretty much be able to pull the data and have the conversation in a couple weeks and move on and decide where how we want to move forward to meet the needs of all Learners we talk a lot about hurting the minority and the minority this or the minority that there is a minority of
students of cohorts that are not we are not meeting their needs right now in our district director ainson when you share that there are students that we are not meeting their needs my ask of you is if they're coming to you are you asking them to reach to their teacher and their
build 100% okay because that's I mean that's really where the conversation passed the start and I don't I mean we as a board are in charge of
curriculum that's our role so I'm just saying I think it's worthy of and I'd like to hear from other board directors besides myself and um is this the will of the board can I ask can I add a contextual piece to this So currently we do have seventh grade advanced math so
that specific cohort that you're talking about that would not work as a study cohort because we're phasing it out so we do currently have seventh grade advanced math but they're being taught CPM yes they yes in advanced so that's where I'm just logistically the co that
150 that you're talking about specifically they are currently in an advanced course because they're all together in one class is that what you're saying they've been kept together yes they've been kept together in one class they're in yeah it's relevant I think it's still relevant data so I I
think we just at this point I think we need to go around I mean I think per Robert's Rules right the mo was raised and we have a second so we should we should we should goward and so we should the board meeting one last question because I what I just heard is
brand new to me so there is currently an advanced 7eventh grade math option is that what I'm hearing yes they were in advaned as sixth graders because we previously had identified them so they stayed in an advance what
is true is that their resource their curriculum and they were a part of that study that we presented the data around is our CPM resource and how many seventh graders are we talking about I
think 15ish would be my ballpark so before I call the question what what data does the board expect by the end of March and is it
possible to pull it together because I don't want I'd rather have no information than bad information or incomplete information I'm all about the data but if it's not there it'll be a it will be completely not productive um we can and and what so
what what questions will we be asking of these 150 cohort I'm I'm I'm not opposed to this I'm just confused as to what we're going to be able to accomplish in March that we couldn't accomplish tonight that that's my that's my concern from what I understand with your motion and what I was advocating for was to
bring back the discussion around the pathways option that are Prov that are options to parents right now the pathways shown on that sheet do not show advanced math for our Siege fifth graders sixth and seventh graders so maybe we just need to revisit that
conversation to understand truly if that's not the case um so maybe that's where to me that's a different question that that's a that's a clarification of what we're going to do going forward not picking out cohort and getting all this data that's going to take you forever and you won't be able to do it in two
weeks that I can understand that was my concern I can pull I can pull data I just need Clarity on what I need to pull and for what purp the only reason I was asking from data because data drives decisions right so if it's just a conversation I'm fine with that and I'm
more than happy to have the conversation I'm also happy to pull any data I just need Clarity on what you all need from I'm hearing two different things I'm hearing from director Mason that she wants to know what's the plan for
these that was my Cort that truly was my motion uh as opposed to I hear you asking how are the kids that would have been in advanced math currently doing those are two totally different asks one seems simple enough it's a clarification
question one seems like a deep dive that I don't know if Administration can pull together an amount of data that would be helpful to us in a in a week and a half that's I'm I'm I'm just yeah due to the timing I think bringing just the conversation is would be maybe we start
there we could start there yes because that way then we could possibly take a deeper dive if we need to director France I don't want to have a conversation without the data and I don't want to have a conversation without the feedback from the teachers and them being prepped and I'll just be
honest with you a week and a half with everything else that we got going on with the budget cuts and things like that that's not doable to me but I do think that we do need to revisit this I don't believe that March is the time to do it that's my and and I would like to
make sure that the um again the same data that was used that which is very indepth with a lot of feedback from teachers on why these new Pathways and why the preference to acceleration was made needs to be the
foundational piece of which we're going to Pivot off of and if we're not ready to do that which I would assume in a week and a half we're not going to be that's just my feeling then then I would ask that we you know basically like we do with a lot of study sessions say when
can you be ready uh with a more robust discussion about how we're doing if you're seeing the results you wanted to see if you even can see the results like I said it's been a year we've only removed one and
we're still phasing out the other and it's our first year of CPM so to me that would be incomplete but I mean it's just that I don't want to sit there and have a discussion on something where we're just pontificating with with no
rationale no data behind IT director fence you know that the rationale I'm sorry really is the rationale is that we have a new strategic plan and this the pathway change was done before the Strategic plan was put in place and the community was loud and clear about
rigorous relevant um challenging instruction which to me lends back to the advanced math conversation so so I I'm not saying we ever we never did that so but go ahead chair sorry so that I'm going back to your
question so if when would that be a reasonable timetable or even a not slightly unreasonable if we're not talking March I I I do believe we would want a data set that includes standardized
assessments MCAS spring um fast Bridge uh and analysis of the first year of data possibly grades I mean truly a a a year in review
a year in review of comprehensive triangulation of multiple data sets would be in my opinion if you're asking my opinion the wisest thing to consider um short of that comprehensive set of
data I think we are at risk of doing something that frankly the field of education has done many years over try something and we walk away from it before we've actually implemented it and director
Edwards are you saying that the MCA is getting the data at once because we have access to the at once data and using that data in the spring because we wouldn't want to wait till the fall to get the MC no I'm not suggesting this would be a fall um I also because teachers do have access to
it almost instantaneously correct we could utilize um the data we have to be mindful of it because of the embargoed nature of the data we would have to be cognizant of
that so we're not trying to review the the uh CPA results is where I'm struggling like we're trying to understand the pathway options for students going into middle school or fifth graders in sage and students going
into Middle School that we don't offer so those kids wouldn't be in CPM most of them anyway now so that's so we could use old MCA data for last year I'm just trying to understand like how many kids would qualify and you know what what are
the offerings that we have for them and again a different uh piece of this is um I think the conversation that was shared by director bullan and D director white um with regard to the amount of
feedback uh I I I don't stand here tonight before you prepared to share any of that until I would have an opportunity to engage with Mr kabek at the middle school level and his staff who have been engaged in the
registration process throughout the months of January and February with families and say how significant is this concern um I thank you for that uh thank you for bringing forth the motion um I will not
be supporting the the motion as it is right now um I think again as director buen you know stated about painting broad Strokes I don't think that's fair um I you know we can't unless somebody
talks to every single member of this Comm I I hesitate you know you know talking about the community says X or the community says y um this pathway this particular pathway was supported by Math teachers and
recommended by Math teachers teaching the actual classes um and so I take a lot of stock in that I am in no way in no way dismissing um Family feedback on this positive or negative AB absolutely not
and in full transparency I have a daughter who was in the CPM pilot last year and is in in is in acpm class this year as well as an eighth grader so I want to make that very transparent um but I I I can't support
this motion right now well we have a motion in a second on the table chair white I think we have we have the motion actually like as you discussed has there was been two different clar you know clarifications
of the motion so we need clarification of the motion in that's my ask what is the clarification of the motion because the motion is to bring to director Mason it's been too different
um it's been two different statements the motion is to bring back the a conversation to our much March study session session regarding math Pathways and my reason for bringing it
back is because of the timing of it was previous to when our strategic plan was adopted and we have a new strategic plan in place and the the conversation really is centered around the Strategic plan and are we meeting the needs of all
Learners that's the the motion that's on the floor and if we need to amend the motion if somebody wants to amend the motion I'm you obviously have the right to do that but I think we just need to go around and see if the motion has support to move forward at this point um director ol said said you know stated
her comments and I don't if we want to go on the table or Dr Johnson yeah I'm in full support that's I'm good with that D bullan I do not support it coming back for the mar
Dr France I do not support it and plus our previous strategic plan also said we're going to support all Learners so I I don't like that even being in the motion but no I don't support it I'm not going to support something based on speculation and in Endo with with no no
full data and director Mason yes I'm supportive of revisiting the pathways and well I I I would be except it's in March that that part needs to be amended or I'm a no because we're not going to get any
reasonably effective data in 2 weeks that's my that's my hang-up so if this can wait longer and somebody wants to amend it to so be a later a later date you're telling me it's a full data sets May is is that what I'm hearing from
you with all they at least at at the earliest May to have a full full data set I can amend the motion to bring math Pathways conversation to our may study session I will second that motion is there a discussion on the
amendment I I would actually say June if they're not getting the data until May um that's just my thing I it just didn't doesn't seem to make much sense if I mean May or June isn't going to make that much of a difference I
don't know if we have Clarity on what data we're going to get so challenge if we're waiting for this year's MCAS which I don't think we need to wait for um of course but you know I think we can use other information what I understand that's a
good point um if I can qualify it's not just the MCAS it's grades it's fastbridge it's other assessments yeah I I I I don't stand here tonight under having a full understanding of what would be data that would help inform
that conversation I I'm I'm making some uh statement about the types of data that I think would be helpful um and the concept that triangulation of data is necessary to to truly informed decisions that's what I was speaking of so I um
but if if the I would if the motion included the specific data that would need to be brought forward um that would be helpful chair white yes sorry to interrupt but um a current schedule there's not a work session in June it's just a retreat we moved it to June there
would need to be addition of a work session thank you for that to Big Clarity actually that's a good point would we rather do this at a retreat that's something that we could actually do a deeper dive instead of at a study session dedicate I'm just throwing that out out the top of my cuff I have I
think for transparency on this topic with our community I think it would be better in a study session except we could we I'm I happen to agree with director France that a retreat setting would allow for a deeper dive into a more
accurate cord of data if I'm not if I'm hearing everybody correctly so we have a we have a motion on the table to amend the original amendment to move the the requested study session
topic to May is there if there's no further discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed n nay motion fails 4 to
three now back to the original motion uh whether there was a first and a second to bring the study session bring this to a study session in March correct all in all in favor signify by
saying I I opposed n nay motion fails 4 to three can I make a new motion can I can I ask a clarifying question yes um do you need a vote to bring something to study session or just a motion in a second we
don't need a vote at all we don't need a vote at all so can but based on what I'm hearing tonight the board will the B the boards will the board this is going to happen I think it has to be later rather than sooner and I think the best option is a
is is a June Retreat study session whatever you want to call we can add something to the calendar that's that's up to us so um just so that we have the right kind of data that that we are going to have to have in order to revisit this like
you said is reasonable reasonable to do um um I will I will I will certainly know put forth that would we bring this back either at a study session or what are the we have one
Retreat date in June is that what I we have a retreat date in June that's normally reserved in June for is that date already set well it is but it's something that we change every year based upon availability sometimes staff
um especially at that time of year you name it but it's it's kind of just a placeholder we can do we're the board we can we if we want to schedule another study session we can so can I make a motion to add a study session session in June to discuss the math
Pathways second second any discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed nay motion carries 61 I will get you back I'll work with Dr
Thomas and vice chair bullan on a date in June and try to get that out to you at a reasonable Advanced time and as well as the administration so they can get whatever data they need and if there is specific data director aison that you'd be interested in if you get that
to me so that I can flush it out sure and we can go from there all right thank you sorry my voice is about had it um next in the agenda uh the school board meeting dates for 2025
26 uh as presented I'll accept a motion to accept those dates Name by director Johnson second second by director Mason there's no discussion all favor signify by saying I some discussion one of course no I just have a question I
think the October date was on Columbus Day is that okay to have it on that date yes okay and then I can't find my paperwork because I had one other date that looked like there was a conflict sorry drawing a blank I went through them last night um November 10th Martha November 10th
that's um November 11th or 10th or something like that that is also I think a holiday November 11th so we're good with the 10th that's okay that was the other one I believe that I was I had a note on so okay so as long as we're good to meet on those dates then those are the only questions that I had sorry can I make
the work anyone else uh I had a question on uh December 8th where it says the study session if needed prior to regular meeting shouldn't that be after would we have a study session after December 8 we typically only meet once in dece if needed session if needed
would be after the regular meeting correct not before actually we usually do it before but yeah we usually do but we could do either again we if we want to do it afterwards we can make we have plenty of time to make changes um can be the same have we ever done it before in the last couple of years no we usually
have the study session and then as soon as we're done with the topic for the study session we go on board especially if we're going to vote on what we talked about in the study session oh sure okay thank you that's what that means okay thank you anyone else all right all in favor signify by
saying I I opposed motion carries 70 moving down to policy we have policy 4113 this is a first and final reading uh my understanding is there's a very insignificant one sentence change uh director Herman you want to speak to that chair white members of the
board this is in relation to uh change to legislation that's why it can be read um and approved in the same meeting um legislation did expand the definition Under Disability so you see that reflected in the changes in the packet is there a motion to approve
policy 413 is presented so made by director bullion second second by director France discussion yes one question director Herman um was it a change in legislation I or was it only
msba added the sentence to their model policy director Johnson it's my understanding it was a change in legislation but I can double check on that um based off of reading their policy newsletter but I'll double check okay that yeah director Johnson I can
confirm that that exact verbiage is from legislation yes I I saw that it was in the legislation I just didn't see when I when I read when I read it it didn't say that it was updated um so I didn't know if you had additional information um
from msba it sounds like you do so um that they got an update or something like that so yeah Dr Johnson that's my understanding if that is incorrect I will follow up with the board to correct that appreciate it thank you further discussion I did have a question yeah so
I did see it added to msba too so that's helpful I was just also looking through msba and I'm curious the protected classifications for everything else mostly follows mba's ble policy but for one and four they were added
um so I don't I don't know if there's a reason for that I know one is covered basically in I'm sorry four is covered in eight in msba I was just curious what that means especially the age classification too
director Mason um chair white I'm not aware if we can discuss any of that since this is just for the legislative changes of first and only reading um I just don't know if that's acceptable to have that discussion here or not I'm happy to answer the question but I'm just not aware
it's a very good question I honestly don't know I think we're voting on because because of the nature of the change we can do a first and final right today CH correct I just didn't know if we could talk about the other parts of the policy that are not related to
legislative change in a first and only reading that's where I I think that's just the change goes back okay um director Mason I'm happy to follow up with the board to answer that question thank you director Herman motion a second on the table there's no
further discussion all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carry 70 we moving down to administrative reports are there any administrative reports tonight no you guys had a lot of FaceTime tonight so we'll move down to board reports I
think we have a student council report I'll just try to keep it brief um I'm going to wish everyone a Happy woman's History Month of course um for those who celebrate hopefully every everybody um and then just congratulations to a lot of our sports teams and clubs mock trial Deca boy
swiming dive basketball wrestling they all made to state or Nationals and it's just a really great year so congrats to those teams um we have a Laker leaders talent show March 21st 700 p.m. that you guys should all go to so we got some great performances lined up um so just
have that on your calendar if you're available um in regards to student council we're just um like we're kind of recovering from our snowball week we had a really successful week great engagement thank you to those who came to some of our events um and right now we're just preparing for spring events
and kind of working on our year-long standing committee goals I'd like to highlight the development committee for completing their two-year-long project and installing updated feminine hygiene products into the women's bathrooms and yeah that's all I have tonight thank you
thank you are there any board reports um yes I'll just U mention very quickly um the West Metro uh board uh and staff and families had a retreat an all day Retreat about 3 weeks ago um as
I mentioned before um they have hired the district has hired grace badier young to do a strategic plan um and so uh basically we're outlining our goals in March and April um and so I'll have more to share after that but I just wanted to mention the retreat and it was
lovely they had families come in staff members um the um most of the board members were there and are the new superintendent so it was a really great day so thank you yeah I just want to Echo what our our student rep said you know wrestling made State took six uh
boys swimming went to State took third our girls outline won sections and took third um girls Nordic ski for the first time in school history uh gymnastics qualified five individuals most in school history um and
uh boys basketball uh Wednesday at Shaka so pretty um I attended the early childhood education committee and I will say that was my first meeting and I was just it was so awesome to see these itty Bitties
in our school district um they're doing some they have a really awesome imp parent parent engagement um committee so it was really exciting to see some new Fresh Faces there they're very engaged they created a book swap within the building which was awesome um they have some great fun events planned and one of
the things that touched my heart so much was they do something called Art to Remember so they have they take the art that the little the kiddos create and then the parents can buy things like a coaster or a coffee mug and it just it really touched my heart of all the memories of when my kids were little um
earlier they stole my thunder that there's 30 staff in the um ECS EC E I can't say that sorry it's too late early childhood education ation committee they raised $115,000 for Polar Plunge Special Olympics and we know a lot of that money came back to our district so thank you
for all that um and that's it so thank you Dr bullan oh we've there's been a lot going on we um day at the capital today um I think if I wanted to share a
funny from the day was one of our one of our legislators said if there was only a magic money tree and I thought well let's get to work that's my own I guess that was my only report
okay um no updates all right well we have reached the end of the agenda our future events are as listed uh study session on the 24th here at 6:00 we're going to try out slightly different Arrangement we're going to be up here see if it
works kick it around a bunch of different options this is going to be try one we'll see if it works if it doesn't work we'll we'll keep working until we get it right um and then the events that are are listed spring breaks coming up and district office will be closed on April 3rd and 4th there's no
more business to come before the board I will entertain a motion to adjourn so made by director bullan second second byor Johnson all in favor signify by saying I I opposed we are adjourned