and realizing that even though I'm pretty familiar with how we use those dollars here in Rochester, I'm about to learn a lot about uh formulas and the technical way because the devil is all going to be in the details. But I appreciate, madam chair, the support the board is going to give me because that will be uh over we have to report to the
legislature by October 2026 and so it will be a significant draw. But the board also has said as part of my goals and review that they want Rochester to be playing significant role in the state polic the efforts that impact us and as a district with a significant number of
students uh who live in low-income families, this is a big deal for us. I will certainly keep the board apprised. We have our first meeting in uh very early September. >> Great. Thank you. >> Can I just comment on that? Please do. I think that that it as a member of the
legislative committee, it also aligns with some of our legislative goals and it's something that we've been actively advocating for and it has come to fruition and seeing you on that task force is even I think more helpful to RPS. >> That would be it'll be great to work with the legislative committee on that
effort as it moves forward. >> All right, let's move on to our consent agenda. Items 5.1 through 512 are um on the consent agenda. Would any board member like any item removed for separate consideration? >> Move approval. >> Second.
>> It has been moved and seconded. All those in favor say I. I. Any opposed? The consent agenda has been approved. And we'll move on to our focus topic which is the graduation rate analysis and overview of 9th grade on track.
>> Oh, >> and we have the sound. >> There we go. Just as my colleagues Angie McAndrews, our director of positive behavioral supports, and Dr. Peter Ruck, uh, our director of research and evidence, come join us. As board members know, we try to schedule an update for
the board as soon after, uh, we receive a data set from the state or the federal government or our own analysis as possible. It doesn't always fit the board's calendar. Um, graduation rates in particular are a data set that requires quite a bit of work at the
state level because it's at that level that you find out where kids who left the district um, ended up. And so this is the opportunity we've had to schedule for the board and update on our most recent graduation rate data. As the board also knows, we are trying whenever
we schedule one of these reports on the data to also talk about what we're doing to improve our outcomes on the data. And so there's a lot going on within Rochester public schools around helping all of our kids uh succeed as they move
through the grades and graduate on time. We've chosen tonight to focus on one new initiative that we've spent really almost a year planning and that will go into high gear this fall that's focused on 9th grade students. Uh and so we're going to get an update on the numbers
and an update on the launch of that new effort that is only weeks away from uh going live. So, Peter and Angie, thank you and we'll turn it over to you. >> Well, good evening. Uh, happy to be back before you this evening with even more data on student outcomes. Uh, so this
evening we have, uh, sort of a two-part presentation for you. The first part's going to focus on outcomes and a little bit of statistical analysis, which I don't get to talk through frequently enough, so I'm looking forward to it because I used to teach it. Uh and then we are diving into some of the upcoming
uh stuff for four year graduation rating. >> I just went through my preview slides totally throwing me off out of the screen. >> Oh, >> statistical analysis is uh the joy of life. People who don't agree are folks
who can come speak with me cordally. But it is it's great. Uh part of why we do it is it provides insights into uh how our operations are going and how our students are performing with a degree of scientific certainty that simply looking at a data set without any statistical
analysis would not give us. And I'll go into a little bit more what I mean by that. So on the next slide I have an analysis of the factors that uh change the odds of graduation. They affect the odds of graduation in four years for
students. based upon characteristics that they have in their first quarter of ninth grade. Uh the statistical procedure here, the goal is to be able to say given everything we know about this kid, if we hold all of that constant, what's the impact of this one
thing on their odds of graduation? Does that make sense? And so that's where we use a procedure called binary logistic regression. The reason I mention that is not to be all jargony. The reason I mention it is because uh binary logistic
regression is a procedure that requires the use of what's called a reference category. So in the next table for example you will notice that the uh student race or ethnicity white is not in the table. That's the reference
category that we use. Um generally one uses whichever the biggest group is in terms of numbers as the reference category and then um other groups or service statuses or whatever it might be is then uh everybody else that's
um so we contractors that's to remove them from consideration. The last bullet point I'm going to keep uh or last number five art and a science that's why I haven't been replaced by AI yet. statistics still I mean yet statistical analysis require it's it's much an art
in a science and it's about knowing when the numbers converge in a way that you can be confident in the results um this analysis just to produce this table on the next slide that you see y right there >> yeah back sorry >> I can do it
>> thank you um just producing this one lovely table was about a month of work on my part um it was with a few random days in there devoted to other tasks. Doing statistics analysis well and making sure that
you're confident in the results takes time. Um it wouldn't take that long next time because a fair amount of that was extracting data, but nonetheless, it's more time consuming than folks think. So on this slide, you will see all of the different characteristics of students
that we tested to see whether it changed the odds of graduation. Um and in the so you've got the condition on the far left. The second to last column says significant question mark. If it says no, that was not an
item that appreciably impacted the odds of graduating from one of our high schools in four years. Um if there if it has a three stars and a yes, that means that it was very impactful and the change in odds and the margin of error
is given in the middle. The only one that has a cross symbol is special education services. If we were reporting this as science findings, we would say no, not significant. It's because it was just on the border of a minor factor.
And I know it's something that we spent a lot of time delving into that still seemed worth reporting, but even that was really a borderline. As you can see, by far the single most uh impactful characteristic that a student can have in the fall quarter of
nth grade to predict their on-time graduation is participation in any school related activity. Doesn't matter what it is. If they are in something, it increases their odds of graduating by about 140%. Uh improvement in the odds,
the baseline odds. Now a good question is can you add up the odds and uh see the cumulative impact. The answer to that is no. Using this type of statistical procedure you can't add items together. All you can do is say
what the separate impact of each individual item would be. Can I create a formula that would um factor in all of these items and spit out like a risk score or something like that? Yes, that's absolutely doable. But that wasn't the purpose of this project.
Other than that, it's what you would expect. Um, housing instability very much associated with a drop in the odds of graduation. Low-inccome status measured as free reduced lunch. Um, if you were proficient on your M eighth grade MCA in reading, you were way more
likely to graduate from high school. Um, infractions dropped it. 90% attendance uh for the entire school year. I'd have to look up how many days you have to drop below for it to be under 90%. >> Is it 18? >> It's like 17.6.
>> And then interestingly, it wasn't an F in English, math, or science. It was an F in anything. That really popped. Um that was heavily predictive. So, moving on to our graduation uh rates. Graduation rates in the state of Minnesota, are a lagging indicator,
meaning we are just now talking about the class of 2024. The reason that that is the case is because it takes time for the state to tabulate how many students and where they ended up which relates to um some of those numbers at the end. Our
graduation rate has largely been stable between 85 and 90% for some time. The students who did not finish fall into three categories reported by the state 116 continuing those are students that can be something like a student who's in rail and is continuing an extra couple
of years. It can be a student who maybe missed a credit or two and literally will finish it over the summer. Um, stuff like that can factor into graduation for students who are listed. Dropouts are those that we actually recorded as officially dropping out. Our
dropouts are disproportionately student uh male students uh students who identify as black or Latino uh students who uh receive uh ML or uh housing assistance services the uh factors that
uh we've discussed before on this haven't changed. And then the unknowns that is a student who stopped showing up for school with us and never showed up anywhere else in Minnesota within uh the time frame of analysis. So that can be students who moved out of state, never
told anybody. There's all sorts of reasons. Um, but they are genuine unknowns. We do not know what happened to them. We have no record. Neither does the graduation rates over time for our classes uh from our various high schools.
I know this is pretty hard to see on uh the screen, but it is included in your uh board agenda items so that you can reference it as well. The Rochester public schools rate on the far right is relatively stable overtime. You can see some shifts in some of our other
schools. Um I can't speak to any demographic changes in the Vinc population. I haven't looked at that specifically. Um, as for ALC's rise in graduation rate, um, I spoke with a couple of folks down there who said it was really
focusing back on, um, in prior years they were still dealing with a lot of lingering pandemic effects, kids that miss substantial school. Um, so some of this is they've really gotten back to had good four years of ALC. Um, and a
deliberate uh, emphasis on tracking credit attainment and getting students Beyond that, I don't know that I could speak to more details from the ALC. I'd have to turn it to them, but I do know those are in place. A demographic category, you can see the
graduation rates here. Uh, an item to note, these are all percentages. Uh, some of these groupings of students have very few students in them. uh for example other indigenous people's students which is a new code in our
system as of 2023 um we only had the the rate there is 0% we only had I think three students who fell into that group >> not like that's an explanation that's satisfactory of course but it is important to keep in mind that with some groups a small shift in headcount can
account for a large shift in percentage for other groups you know that's just we have hundreds or thousands of students by service status again relatively flat over time depending on the status a notable increase in our health graduation
however and we've had quite a bit with that I will uh turn it over all right so I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about the freshman on track um initiative that we are working on. I wanted to kind of back up to last spring just to give you a a review of uh how we
got to where we are today. So, in the spring of 2023, um there we go. Um there was just kind of a general Yeah, sure. There was just a general curiosity about um a program coming from the University of Chicago
and the network for college success um that focused on something called the freshman success framework. Um, and at the time I was still the principal at Kellogg and our high school principles were exploring this, but I had sat in on a couple meetings discussing this data um with some interest about how the
eighth grade experience and success maybe impacts how students do at high school. Um, and so um, uh, Dr. Ruck and Dr. Pel had talked about looking at our own conditions and seeing if alignment existed and in fact it did and that was what Dr. R was sharing at the beginning
of this presentation. Um so there were quite a few indicators that we saw that connected um that showed uh significant success uh increase in success and likelihood and the one that really stood out was the extracurricular activity um
participation and then also the eighth grade MCA score as a predictor. Um, so then during the last school year, we spent some time meeting with representatives from the University of Chicago team and our RPS lead principles exploring what this could look like and
what uh how we might get ourselves trained up to understand the methodology behind this work. Um, and after a few meetings, they our principles had committed to building out teams to attend the freshman success institute. Um and then we also had decided that um
the our community schools would partner with cradle to career to do a co-design that would really look at um gathering student and parent voice in terms of what they see as indicators of freshman success. And through that work they had
identified some themes and barriers. And so I have those listed there. um student motivations, support systems, personal agency and advocacy, teacher and staff motivation and attendance were all things that were part of the brought up during those conversations during the co-design.
Um and then this summer we did the deep dive and we took a team of 15 people to Chicago to participate in the National Freshman Success Institute. Uh we formed teams at all of our buildings and those included um a variety of teachers, administrators. Um and then we took uh
Peter Kristofferson as our data gur guru to come along for the ride and help us make sure that we were making sense of our own local data as we did this work. Um we kicked off the week learning um of our the week of our learning by hearing from the cradle to career folks who hosted our codeesign just to kind of
prime the pump with the student voice at the forefront of our thinking as we left for Chicago. And then we attended the 3-day institute. Um there our learning was just aligned to really really specifically the freshman on track framework. Um and then
um what we found as we learn more about that framework is that it really um aligned with the observations that we were seeing um based on the information that was provided during our codeesign. Um during that three days, we focused really um specifically on the
transitions that happen from 8th grade to 9th grade. Um making sure that nth graders will have a strong start. We also talked quite a bit about attendance, agency, and investment in the educational process for our nth graders. And then early intervention, so talking about actionable data that'll
help us get get the results that we're looking for based on the uh the indicators we know to indicate or to predict that success. Um, and then we talked a little bit about our team structure, and that's something that we still have some we have some planning to do in the coming days.
So, our next steps really are to reconvene that team in August. Um, and I think we I think it's next week that we pull that team back together. And during that time, we'll talk about what the structure of that team work will look like. Um, and actually defining on track, we'll use some of those indicators that you saw that were
predictive of that success. uh but also specifically looking at how we'll gather data on um uh grades um and credit attainment especially um prior to the end of a grading period. It's important for us to know um how students are
progressing before we get to the end of the period so that we have an opportunity for that early intervention. Um, and then aligning our grade expectations or grading expectations to support those early interventions and then working with uh Peter's department to make sure our dashboards are ready
for our teams to use that data actionably. And then um the National Freshman Success Institute is actually a five-day institute. So we do the first three days of learning during the summer and then they send us back to do four or five weeks of work and then we go back to Chicago and at that time we'll be
able to go and actually see the freshman on track work in uh like in full force in Chicago schools as examples. So we'll do the first day observing the process in other schools and then the second day we'll be talking through our progress and any hurdles or dilemmas that we're
experiencing here locally. Um I wanted to just clarify um talking about the grading expectations. I think when we talk about grading expectations, it's really important that we have clear processes and expectations in place in our buildings specifically so that we
have timeliness of grade reporting that we are um using the data to target students who are at risk and then also to inform students and families about their progress because we want to make sure that they know uh how their child is progressing also. And I think the important thing to me um
was just making sure that we saw this kind of crosswalk between the data that we looked at locally, what the research from the University of Chicago said and what our codeesign pulled out from our um students and families that were participating. So the codeesign really showed us that each of these components
overlap. So specifically students who are engaged um are attending and invested um in their learning. that's fortified by a strong start and solid understanding of expectations and places that kids can turn for support during their freshman year. Um, making sure
that we have adults to check in uh with students makes an a significant difference in their attendance and their engagement. And students who are engaged can see a pathway to the future. So, they show up, they work harder, and they perform better. When they perform better, they graduate. Um, and we see
this as not only an initiative to enhance graduation, but also to improve attendance. um and which is the reason that we have connected this so tightly with our attendance pilot that we're running for the state. And we also hope to improve engagement by getting kids more invested in their education and the success during their freshman year and
then subsequent years. Um and I think that's it. Super. >> Um thank you Peter and Angie. board members, if I could just take one step back and sort of maybe house this work
um uh in a little more of a conceptual frame. Um and of course I look at Dr. Marvin who was a high school teacher. Um, high schools in the United States still uh, despite decades of thinking about them differently do have a certain
element of a factory model in them in which we put uh, students into a relatively uh, large uh, building even where we have smaller spaces like the uh, alternative learning center here in Rochester. It still is bigger than uh, many middle school environments and certainly elementary schools. And we
really expect them to navigate it on their own. Um, and what Chicago public schools first found and made dramatic progress over 30 years was that that's a recipe for kids who may have been relatively on track in middle school and elementary school uh, getting severely
off track and not recovering. And so the core idea of nth grade on track is that you are watching those students uh like hawks and engaging them with relationships and supports and you're intervening early because many efforts to raise graduation rates were focused
on 12th grade. They were focused on kids at the end and that needs to happen. In fact, I'm looking forward to talking with the board about a new effort we're also also launching next year to re-engage our students who have disengaged from school. those students who have I don't usually use the term
dropped out. They have left school but um we're launching and Willie Typton is going to be leading that work uh for us. So we never give up um and we never will. But the great insight of this work was you need to start as that student is going into that very very different
environment. And Peter shared the fascinating research analysis that he did of these predictive factors in RPS and I think there's a lot for us to learn from that. The thing about the bag data or behavior, attendance, and grades, is that it really is a
flashlight, those are early warning indicators that help us identify those students in their first semester of nth grade who are at risk of being off track. So, while we know, for instance, that a student participating in a sport or a theater production in nth grade, as
Peter's work showed, is associated with being more likely to graduate on time, we don't necessarily know which students we most need to connect to that until we really know those students until we we see that. And so, the bag data is really an an early warning system. and in
Chicago and elsewhere um they have connected those kids not only to academic supports when they've realized for instance they don't read well enough to do high school work they've connected them relationships when I was doing this work 20 years ago in St. call where we uh had a serious graduation rate issue
and made some good progress. We surveyed our uh all of our high school students. We found out that half of our nth graders at the end of nth grade said, "Nobody in this school would miss me if I didn't come back next year and I don't have anyone in this school I can go to with a problem." I will never forget it.
48%. By the end of senior year, it was 89% said, "If I didn't come back, somebody would miss me and I have someone who could go to problem." Well, what happened? First of all, we lost some kids along the way, but eventually kids find a place to connect. There's
there's great staff in our schools. Our kids are resilient. Eventually, they find but the problem is you can't wait for them if you're a fragile learner, you can't wait for them to find that teacher, that coach, that activity if they are uh likely of getting off track. So the big insight of that ninth grade
on track work is don't wait. And of course I'm pretty sure every middle school person out there is saying yeah we need to start in middle school and in elementary. And that's true. So there's a lot we're going to be doing at those levels too. But this nth grade work really is saying this is a student who has just crossed into a fundamentally
different learning environment and we need to have a different level of support um for them. And so as as Angie mentioned, she was uh our principal at Kellogg when we were having these discussions um and we looked at um our graduation rates. First year I was here,
we had good gains and then that year we had about a 10% decline and this year we've gone up a bit. And as the principles uh and I and others got together to talk about that that year, that cohort and you saw it in the data here uh where things didn't head in the direction we wanted. uh that led to this
discussion of starting earlier because a lot of the discussion was about what are we going to do and there were compelling stories of our principles could identify individual students who were so close and who made a decision to go work full-time or who just had more credit
recovery to do or summer school to do. Um and and and so this this was a this is a story of not not at all shifting focus from those kids at the end of the spectrum, but being more intentional about them right from that moment in nth grade. So thank you for letting me kind
of add one more thing quick. Uh one thing that was different about our data other than the extracurricular piece that was pretty substantial uh was the eighth grade MCA reading score being a predictor. Uh that was not the case for the University of Chicago. In fact, while we were at the National Freshman
Success Institute, they had indicated uh despite educational outcomes for students in middle school, they were not predictive factors in nth grade. Um, but we really need to make sure and we, you know, we've talked to the people at the National Freshman Success Institute about the importance of us using the
extracurricular involvement in the eighth grade reading MCA scores because we do see not only are those uh sign or are they statistically significant, but they are very statistically significant here. And so that is a little bit different. I have appreciated the fact that where we started with this project
was looking at what what does our own data tell us because lots of times it's easy to look and see what model they're using, but if that doesn't mirror what our experiences are here uh in Rochester for our kids, then we want to make sure that we're fine-tuning that and making sure that we're looking at the right indicators.
>> I I think final point, Madam Chair, it is important um and Peter didn't do the disclaimer, so I will. That finding is a correlation, not a causation. So, it's not that putting any kid in any extracurricular raises their chance necessarily by 134 percentage points
because it could be that kids who are just really engaged in school are also more likely to participate in extracurriculars. We think there's some causation there. We know the kid has but we also know it's we don't want to suggest that extracurriculars are despite the fact we have an activities director here um that they are the magic
bullet but we think there's something there. Same thing with the eighth grade the the eighth grade MCA score. um all of those things. But th those are important because they start to take us to solutions. We don't want to just admire this problem, especially for our kids who are most likely not to graduate on time. >> All it tells us is how strongly two
things are associated and what the likelihood is that the association is due to random chance or whether there is something there. But beyond that, you need a theory of action and theory informed evidence-based reason to explain the story.
>> And that's where the research comes in. Director Parlo. >> Uh, thank you. Excellent presentation. I have probably three, uh, questions in total. Uh, I'll just mention this once and then refer to it as BLR, binary
logistic regression. Um, so I was curious in terms of student condition, why sense of belonging perhaps were not one of the items listed. Um so the we have panorama results at the individual
student level. Uh the reason that we did not use uh individual student panorama results is it's a self-report survey that hasn't been validated against um you know any any type of rigorous testing to tell if it's a good measure.
And so we'd be introducing a highly subjective measure that is often based on how a kid happens to be feeling that day into uh and also something that we only have data on about a would only be only about twothirds of the students
that at high school. >> So not a factor in this analysis, but with five essentials we plan to. >> Okay. >> But didn't you do your first year analysis that showed exactly what director Barlo is saying? you looked at the panorama data and the belonging was predictive of
>> yeah as a whole the belong correct yep thank you for reminding me of that I can't believe um yes the first year we had our panorama data um and there I can see the slide in my head now we're talking um we looked at the statistical
relationship between those scale areas the overall sense of belonging the overall sense of school safety whatever the other one was um and how that improve the odds. That was substantial at that point. >> It didn't include some of these other
factors. >> We could certainly do that in the future for sure. >> Uh second question, uh was there any reason uh under continuing students was was there
any reason GED well were GED students included in the graduation rates for five, six year students? Uh, I am not an expert on when a student becomes eligible for a GED program. I know there are a lot of rules about
that. I don't know that I could speak to it. >> My understanding historically is that the state of Minnesota would calculate that in the analysis they run after the cohort. And so that that kid would count an RPS student who left us but got the GED should be counted as a graduate even
though they got their GED independent from us. um far fewer kids take the GED than than used to. But if if the state process is working effectively and they usually get that from workforce centers and other places, then they then in
theory that person would be credited as a graduate even though they didn't graduate from Rochester public schools, but we'll look into that. It's a good question. >> Yeah, but it might not necessarily be counted in the four-year rate because they it would depend on when they complete their >> you don't become eligible for a GED
program. So you're not eligible for high school. >> Okay. It would >> I don't I actually don't think that's true. Like we have some kids who are so credit deficient that it's not likely. So they aren't necessarily >> they aren't necessarily not going to be able to graduate with their GED in four
years, but it it would be difficult. >> Yeah. >> Okay. Then final question at this moment deals with the freshman on track. >> Um just a belief in my end. um most of
the um student condition and also new term bag data um r would ring true also for our elementary and middle schools. So why are we waiting until
freshman to address a problem that we know statistically is already in existence before they even hit nth grade. uh and maybe long term we plan on doing that. I'm just curious as to um just want to bring it up to light and
maybe hear if uh that's under consideration. >> Well, I actually think the when freshman on track and the freshman success institute um at their inception was specifically around these the outcomes that the University of Chicago is finding within Chicago public schools for freshmen. Uh but since that time
they've actually expanded and are now piloting some program programming around middle school and elementary school on track. So identifying like what those uh factors are predictive factors are and how they might be able to put some early indicator uh warning systems in place to
help um catch them sooner to keep them on track. >> Yeah. I mean we know that if by third grade you're not reading proficient then that sets into motion certain things. So I think that would ring true as well and it seems like you're already uh aware of
that. Thank you. If I might madam ch uh it's a powerful point uh director Barlo and yes we the student engagement and early warning systems need to exist at elementary and middle part of the genius of starting in nth grade and I say this
as a former high school teacher every level has an human tendency to say we wouldn't have this problem at our level if the people upstream had done their job >> and that's it's it's never that simple but it's to a certain extent true and part Part of the genius of the nth grade
was you have the privilege to serve these ninth graders, whatever their level of preparation in your school. And so you can't just say if we would fix the middle school or the elementary school, we're going to shift the nth grade. But you're absolutely right. We need and we
have some very exciting things going on in our middle schools around uh student engagement, early warning systems. The attendance work has a strong emphasis on middle school. We are likely, we have not finalized plans because we're looking at the finances. As you know, until very recently, we didn't know if we're going to have a big budget cut due
to the federal decisions. We are likely to pilot small group intensive tutoring in our middle schools this year, which is something I've been very excited with a focus on math. Um, we got to make sure we can cover that cost, but that would be a powerful academic and relational
support. uh and we would pilot that at middle school uh for exactly the reason that you uh highlight and I I think for sure within a couple of months I'll be able to let you know it has to do with where our federal title funding and our state compensatory funding from uh the
allocation for this year is is ending up and we think uh we we think it's going to be possible to do that but we should be able to land that plane uh in the near future. >> Thank you. Although, superintendent, I think we would we would be remiss at this point in the conversation not to again reiterate that just because we're
focusing on this in nth grade doesn't mean we're not focusing on factors in middle school and elementary school that we've talked about in the implementation of our strategic plan, in our mental health supports, in in our academic uh MTSS. I mean, MTSS is really this um you
know, starting in starting in kindergarten. So, you know, just because the spotlight is on this today, let's not forget all the other work that that people are doing because I don't want anybody doing that work thinking that uh you know, we're we're prioritizing this over other work, >> director work.
>> So, I guess what I'm seeing with this chart is it's impossible to land on one single variable and say if we only fix this, the problem would ninth graders would all be on track always. because there there are so many things, some of which we can control, some of which we
can't control. But it seems to me that a student who is proficient on reading in 8th grade is going to more likely feel better about themselves because they can read, they can comprehend, they can understand the material. Therefore,
they're going to be perhaps less likely to drop out unless there's another factor that interferes with that like, you know, are they homeless or are, you know, low income or something else,
you know, and so how can we as a school district make sure that we I don't want to say look at all these factors, but take into consideration that there are those things beyond our control that we can't, you know,
it won't get fixed during the school day, but what what can and the students who are maybe more likely to be proficient in reading in 8th grade, they're going to feel better about school. They're going to feel, oh, I'd like to participate in some
extracurricular activities. So, it's really hard to say which is first, the chicken or the egg, and you have to have both um in order for this to succeed. But one of the things I really appreciate about this kind of data is that it really shows to us where we can
make improvements and what are we doing well and how do we approach um as director Barlo mentioned um dealing with some of these issues at a much younger age which we're already engaged in. Thank you chair Nathan for
that. Um, so I think it's just a really um I find that I don't necessarily understand all the statist statistical stuff about data, but seeing it in this kind of format I feel as a board member
really gives me a lot of information for how we can improve our system so that all of our students can succeed. It's not easy, but doing something well has never been easy. I think the only thing I might add to that is just to call out one particular
item you you mentioned which was the intersectionality of multiple barriers at the same time. >> Well, thank you for stating it that way. That was exactly what I meant. >> And that is reflected here. You know, you're never going to find one kid that only checks one of the
>> Dr. Marvin. Um, I'm grateful that a number of you have pointed out how the work that you're doing now already is informing the work that's going to be done in the middle school and specifically in 8th grade. Uh, you know, talking about grading expectations and attendance and that type of thing. Uh,
because you're absolutely right, we don't blame middle schools for sending us some nth graders who just aren't ready. But um back in the day, ninth grade was in junior high and we weren't seeing the
kind of challenges with those kids that we're seeing now. So anyway, I'm excited about the work you're doing. My question is, can you uh with the data that you have, can you I'm impressed that you know how many kids aren't participating in
extracurriculars. We know that's really really important to their success in school. Is there any way you can do correlations to figure out why um this number of kids or these particular kids aren't involved or is that going to take
the kind of work that Mr. Ruffin has done with perspectives project and just asking them >> quantitative analysis like this is really good for forming a or it's really good for testing a theory. It's not good for forming a theory. >> Okay. So to form a theory, we need to go do some qualitative data work and talk
to our kids. >> Okay. Thank you, >> director McLaclin. >> Um, so I should explain just first of all, thank you for the bag reference. I did not understand that in any way. I was like looking at this picture. Now I get it. Thank you. Um, and I want to
give a little bit of context for the reason I asked a bunch of questions kind of behind the scenes about this is that my prior work in my work life was probably what we would call freshmen not on track. That I was in the juvenile delinquency system and seeing ninth graders come in and they were not
attending, not learning, not participating. And I would see them in ninth grade and think, "We need to fix this." And then I would continue to see them throughout their high school. They would drop out. They would do different things. they would not graduate. So, wanted to put some context about that.
Um, but that relates to one of my questions that I added in the um the document we can share with you. Um, is mental health or chemical health. Does thatffect fact is that something you can track or is that something that we can include in this or not?
>> Historically, our uh we haven't had systematic data at over multiple years on those items that we can really rely upon. I think moving forward we will with some of the really important work that Grim Sarah Clark
at this point it's not a a status that we track within Skyward that I could like drop into a status model >> and then related to Dr. remember this question a little bit about the extracurricular activities. How does that does that show up in Skyward? Because I'm thinking about kids, you
know, like in ninth grade they start still might be in youth hockey or they might be in fencing in a different group or something else that they're doing outside of RPS. >> Fant really important question. It is only those activities that are sanctioned and run by a school.
>> So if there is MS anything with MSHSL or an officially sanctioned club or whatever that gets logged but you know it's an group of students. If it's a community based team, we would make a record. >> Okay. So, that could even expand that data.
>> Possibly >> there could be more kids involved and it would be even a bigger number. >> I think some of our, you know, some of the 21st century work that's gone on in our community like a lot of that is speaks to exactly that. >> Um, I made another note here. Now, I need to
understand what I mean here. Um, one of your slides, oh, this the data slide has two different columns that I didn't the change in odds and the give or take. Can you explain what that means? >> Sure. So, for example, the way you would interpret the housing line item is
holding all else constant, experiencing housing instability is associated with a 41% decrease in the odds of graduating in four years, give or take. The number of times I have been drilled to read that interpretation is crazy.
It's telling you the stats model has settled and converged on 41% being its best estimate, but that anything plus or minus 9 from that is within the margin of error and should be considered just as >> um switching gears a little bit talking
about the student voice. The other part that I bring to this discussion and my interest in this is um having a student who was in ninth grade when the pandemic started and how that impacted him >> and the things you talk about about involvement and that kind of thing and
what you know how that stopped a lot of those things and how that impacted his graduation. Um, but I guess my question then relates to is there any thought to going back to students like that who have graduated but want to talk about their experiences to improve it?
>> Uh, there are Dr. McGloin so many reasons I would love to build a vehicle to connect with our graduates. Um, finding avenues for improvement is is a great example. Um, how are you doing?
What are you finding out there uh in in the world? How well prepared did you feel? What could have made it better? Um, I will also say I think it'd be great for uh helping raise funds for their alma mater too, but that's not the primary >> at the right time. >> Yeah, that's not the primary purpose.
So, I agree with you that is something we do not have that right now in RPS. Um, there are some some school districts that have done a great job of creating ongoing ways to be uh connected. I was
just up in the cities and talking with uh an assistant commissioner who uh has been very helpful to us in our adventures with getting funding for PEK. Um and her she and her father went to Washurn High School and this weekend they had the 100th year anniversary of
Washurn High School and some famous graduates like musician Jimmy Jam came back for it and I said how did you pull that off and she said because we have kept up the Washurn alumni uh connection for decades. Um so that was just it was
fun to hear about a place where they had invested in that kind of connectivity um at the school level um was there. So yeah, we'd love great idea for us to consider. >> And then one of the things I added in my questions that I don't think you touched on is that so thinking about the high
school experience and the team that you're developing and I love that work, but how are the classroom teachers going to know what what are you doing to educate them so that they can be part of this process without being part of the full team? So there will be a regular uh team that's assembled to take a look at
data and then based on kids that they identify through the early uh warning system they'll uh put in place interventions. So those interventions might be collect like connecting directly with students to ask them questions about extracurricular involvement. It might be identifying that uh maybe reading is their gap and
figuring out what type of reading intervention might need to be in place for them. um might be attendance specific and so we could uh look into you know what the gaps are um to getting them to school to provide those supports. I think the idea with the freshman on track model is making sure
that we're looking at that data and making actionable um steps forward for those students before we get to the end of a grading term so that they haven't lost a credit and they don't don't fall behind. So it's really heavily focused on looking at that data um in advance
and the teacher role in that would be first of all some participating on the team um to look at the data but then some of them being the interventionists um specific to like the relationships or their content that they have established with those students or don't and uh need to establish them.
>> Do you see it as something that's already on the individual classroom teachers radar or is this going to be new to them when they come to back to school in a few weeks? I think for some of them it's on their radar because it definitely has been a conversation over the last year. Uh but I think the the
broad uh view of the initiative will be new to them as their principles roll it out during their back to school week. >> And so just so I understand it, the team will take the approach to look at the data and then if a student is flagged through what you call the early warning system, they reach out to the teacher and partner to help the student.
>> Right. And it might not just be teachers, counselors, social workers, n nurses, equity specialists. Yeah. variety of uh of people um within the school system. >> Awesome. >> Thank you, Superintendent. >> Yeah. Um director of the point about classroom teachers in this their role is
so critical. We know counselors have a key role, administrators have a key role, equity specialists in places, but if it doesn't touch the classroom, it really is missing the environment in which many students either make that connection and really embrace learning
or check out. And um a a paradox that I've encountered is that sometimes the teacher with whom the student has a great connection, a fragile student never knows that they are actually not going to other classes because they always come to their class. Mhm. >> And so until you actually have the early
warning system and then I've been in those situations where say he's always in my class and he's always well that person needs to know that this student is getting disengaged uh in other environments because they may have that connection that can actually be uh
transformative. Um, and that's where the early warning system, you know, becomes really important, uh, to to bring that that teacher or that coach into the discussion and say, "Hey, you may not know it, but this student didn't earn a credit for semester 9th grade." Um,
that's not just that's getting used to high school. They'll get it. No, no, no. That that is a wait a minute, you didn't earn a credit. And because you know people are busy and have you know high as aspirations for kids and so you can
explain one zero away in a way that may be well intentioned but that could start a snowball effect you know for that student. Yeah. And I would add maybe from a parent or just an observation perspective, it's not just being present there in the class, but engaging in the class. You know, that if if kids are in, you know, a kid is engaged in a certain
class with that close contact of a adult that can make a connection with them, but is not in the others. I think that's also something that would think I would think would be a red flag as well. >> Dr. White. >> Okay. I have most of my questions got
answered. This very thorough um question session. Um, so I got my first question is those 55 unknown students. Um, I asked because you did reference what a dropout consisted of. So I believe what
you said is that they have enrolled and you didn't see any couldn't find them at any other enrollment after they left. So they maybe verbalized that they were leaving. So we had some form of communication with them. Uh, what what is the unknown? What does that mean? So,
the students that are unknown, we likely didn't have any communication with them. Um, they likely just stopped coming to school and attempts to reach family or whatever were unsuccessful and they did not show up at any other Minnesota school. >> Okay. So, with that, what what
differentiates the dropout from the unknown? Because it sounds very similar. >> A student who uh is counted by the state as a dropout. I actually also don't like the term. Glad you mentioned it, but it is the state's term. um they actually filed a paperwork to withdraw and we
have record. >> Okay. So, uh in mirroring just some of the the things we've said here already, obviously the early warning, even the things that we're measuring or have probably been true for these students for the duration of their education
um probably, you know, from from early on. Uh you know, being low income, you know, having housing instability, these things don't just appear, right? These are ongoing factors for the families that have difficulties with them. So, I just mirror the thought that, you know,
I'm glad we're doing something, but I need a little more convincing that 9th grade is soon enough. U is isn't too late, right? Because we do have data that shows if they are better prepared earlier that some of that data changes.
Um and uh to director Marvin's point, there are some districts that because of these disparities and these issues uh have changed their schooling or back to older schooling model, right? So um there are still places where seventh and
eighth grade is just one space or seventh, 8th and 9th. And I don't and I know that's a much bigger conversation, but um it is something uh to consider if you know uh ninth grade is too soon to put kids in into this bigger environment
or is there something we can do um in that eighth grade um to better prepare. Um so my personal experience was we had a almost like a whole month of high school prep where like we kept going back and forth to the high school. we were we pretty much knew exactly what
was going to happen on the first day of high school. Um so there I think there are some ways to to help these um help these students. And then my last question is do we have any data um of the kids that don't even make it to high school? Because I've heard that argument
as well. There are some kids that due to the intimidation factor of the school um now I believe the young people say they're over stimulated um are not even making it you know not even showing up on the first day. Do we
have any data? Is there a decline between who's leaving eighth grade and who's actually showing up ninth grade? So are we losing some kids there too? Um because if that's the case then freshman on track really ignores the kids who
never can get you know who who the high school experience is too intimidating. >> I could speak to the eighth to 9th grade uh question at the very least. Um we do not lose very many students between middle and high school. There are absolutely school districts in this
country where even the official opt dropout rate is an undercount because they lose so many kids in middle school. Um we're just we're not one of those. Um so we don't lose a whole bunch of kids uh that go from 8th to 9th at any given
point. Do we lose zero? I never say never in a district of 16,000 students, but I would say that would be the exception based on the data I >> happen to be the attendance person too. So I can speak a little bit to this. We
don't have um I wouldn't say the most significant number of our students that are 15-day drops, which would mean they have 15 uh consecutive days of absence. Most of them are not coming from elementary. Almost none of them come from elementary. Most of them don't come from middle. Most of them are coming
from high school, specifically students uh 16 and older. Um I think the idea behind freshmen on track is not that no other grade matters. I think that we are I mean we're doing a ridiculous amount of work at each grade and uh each uh
building level to make sure that we're identifying what those early warning s uh signals are and that we're responding to those with interventions and with additional supports and different like differentiating our programming to meet those needs. Um the idea with the freshman specifically um is looking at a
different model for how we uh look at that data and and how we make that actionable. So trying to change that model a little bit to set kids up during that freshman year for success because their uh success during the freshman year is is a very good predictor of
their uh their pathway to graduation. So um it's not that we are not looking at their academic performance or attendance or behavior any of those other indicators in other buildings uh but making sure that we're looking at it uh using that particular methodology in nth grade and seeing if that we can if we
can make some impact there. And then you had another question. >> I feel like I missed one of them. >> I do have a followup. Um, so in the trend, I know you said that it's it's majority male, black, Hispanic boys that have the dropout, reported dropout rate.
Um, were there any other trends with that? Are they dropping out at the beginning of the year? Is you know what I mean? Do we know I mean I know the obvious twin trends, but are there any trends that are fixable on this side of the table, right? Like we we know what
that trend is. Um but is there anything that can be done um that you know any data that's like well if if we had these supports or if we did these things that we can actually any actionable item Am I making sense >> here? I can I can speak to our d our
specific 15-day drops. Um the other question that you asked was about transition in a 78 program. So I'll come back to that. Um, I spent a lot of time this year looking at our 15-day drops. And that's actually some of the work that Willie Typton's going to tackle this year. Um, and I don't think that
there's a lot of rhyme or reason to it. I think that, um, and in almost every situation when I would engage with those families, there was some sort of compelling story about what was going on. Um, sometimes it was a result of kids not feeling connected and engaged in school. And many times in those
cases, we would be able to get them back to school uh by making sure that we were having conversation with somebody in the school that could help address the concern that they had. So if a student wasn't feeling safe or if they weren't feeling connected, if they were having issues with the teacher and leaving middle of the day and not participating. So there were a lot of those things when
they were school specific that we could intervene on, but the reality is a lot of them were other complicating factors too about um unmet mental health needs um and oftentimes families that weren't sure really where to turn. and we can offer support and guidance, but also we can we respect that there are there are
times where those resources are beyond what the school can provide and we can support that, but we can't get to the root of some of those uh the mental health concerns and some of the uh family trauma that kids are experiencing. So, um, other than the fact that we see disproportionately that
the kids who are 15-day drops, um, are students living in poverty and oftentimes students of color, uh, there isn't like a obvious pattern that helps us identify like how can we we can be more preventative. Um, and then to the transition question that you uh, well,
you didn't specifically ask about transitions, but I wanted to just make a statement about this in terms of a school that maybe would just be seventh and eighth grade or, you know, just be a couple grades and be able to focus on needs there. There's actually a lot of research to support the less we transition kids, the better off they do
so that they're able to learn systems and know who to go for for support and what kinds of things are available to them, families and students within a school system. So we like to limit them on number of transitions. In fact, there are schools even just in our region who have gone away from some of those models
because they see that those transitions are really difficult for kids to navigate, especially when you have like a seven eight building or a five six building and you have kids coming, they're either transitioning in or transitioning out every single year. And so the less we can do that the better. So I think the grade system that we have
established is um good based on what we know developmentally about kids. Dr. McLa, >> I'm sorry. I did have one more question that came to um my head while we were doing the presentation. Um Dr. Buck, the
um student condition of Latino is no, but the data for Hispanic Latino students graduation rates is not great. Can you explain that for us? uh the when you account for all of the other factors
in the list, the factor of being Latino was not significant. So what that means is uh at least according to the statistical model, the student conditions that really uh were strongly associated with any given student
finishing after you control for everything else are the ones that are listed there. If you only look at uh student race, ethnicity, or gender, or special education status, whatever that might be, you're going to see some pretty big differences, but those
individual characteristics, which is what the state reports on for graduation rates, don't take into account any other factors. >> Got it. >> And that's why we use the statistics model is to try to separate out some of that noise so we can get a little closer. >> So, if I understand what you're saying
is that the Latino students who are referenced in the graduation rates likely have some of those other factors combined. >> Yeah. >> Okay. >> It gets back to that idea of there's no student in our district that's only one.
>> Thank you for clarifying that. Um I I want to give you give you a chance to expand a little bit on um this issue of what um happens before high school because
as we as you've talked about the attendance um initiatives and it it does sound like that we have a different kind of early warning system for our elementary and middle school students because we're monitoring whether or not they're in school And we're not just
monitoring that data. You're doing extensive outreach to parents and families. Is it after a certain amount of days or um and the goal is obviously to get them to come back? So c is is that a am I describing it right? Is it a
different kind of early warning system? >> Let me just before I let Angie give the real answer, let me free her up to be really honest. Um Madam Chair, we're putting that in place. It has not been in place adequately. Um, in terms of that earlier intervention around attendance, um, as, uh, Angie mentioned in the update we did for you on
attendance, we have over the last year done tremendous work to clean up the data set and the information systems to be able to identify that with precision. Um, that that's not to say there's nothing happening, but I want to be really honest. When I talk about our attendance
strategy, I talk about it launching this year um, in a very concerted way. We're part of the state pilot. Year one for us really was understanding these factors we've been talking about tonight, putting in place not just the the the the data but the systems to inform
people at the classroom and school level of which kids need intervention because you know if the data is sitting I remember when I first started doing this work in St. Paul, we didn't have anything like the software systems. And the principal at Johnson High School, I can't believe she did this. She was a passionate educator. She wandered around
the school with a list of the uh ninth graders who there was predict prediction they wouldn't graduate. And she showed them the list and said, "Do you know you're on this list? I care about you. I want you on." But she showed them the other kids on the list, breaking every
data. She's retired now, so I can say that. Um and the kids usually are like, "What?" Um, so I want to just I want to be really honest. It's not as though people haven't cared about attendance, but post pandemic, I think a lot of us expected to return to the norm that
existed with attendance. This is not unique to Rochester. And it is time to conclude that the the good old days are not going to come back unless we put in place very different systems of of both convincing and supporting kids and families that attendance really matters.
>> Yeah. And I I would say and all of that is very accurate and I think that um we've learned a lot this last year about um how we look at our data and how we identify who are the students who have the the greatest need and then what our responses to them are. Um uh we our
attendance coordinator that we've hired, Kate Marorrow, is going to be working with our admin and clerical staff in the next couple weeks, making sure they're trained and understand like what the processes are that we're putting in place. But it wasn't like nothing was happening regarding attendance last year. our buildings. Um, one of the things I'm probably most proud of is
that in every single building, there's a regular attendance team that's looking at their data um and identifying who those students are. This year, we'll do it with um we'll be able to prioritize those students and we'll be able to uh speak more intelligently about where
they're at in terms of their consistent attendance rate. Um and there are really clear processes at the elementary and in the secondary. But our hope this year is that we can enhance um uh inbuilding interventions for students when they are dipping below that desired consistent
attendance rate of 90% and work on that student engagement at the building level before it becomes a truency issue that involves the court system. We really would like to make sure that we're doing that work with kids, not that we're sending we're asking somebody beyond our school to do that.
And when I think about this list of um student conditions and I see that it's a 43% uh change in odds for uh attendance in high school. If we can keep them in school in elementary and middle, we can
probably start to address a number of these other factors before I mean that's to me that's that seems to be the key and why we're focusing on attendance is we need them in our buildings so that they can access our interventions and get that sense of belonging and
establish their relationship. So I see these two pieces as the attendance and the ninth grade on track working together to achieve you know all these outcomes >> which is the reason the freshman on track is kind of our innovative uh pilot for um our attendance work is to
identify how can we leverage that attendance metric but to help us make sure that kids are successful long term. One of the big things that we're doing right now is some tier one things around attendance. So messaging we have a a couple videos that'll be going out at the start of the year. our SRO uh officer Ryston is one of those in the
video and Dr. Brian Lynch from Mayo is another one kind of sending the message about the importance of attendance. But I think we need to speak more clearly about it to our families and explain like what like what is the mark that we're trying to meet and and how explain to them how important it is for kids to
be in school. And so we're hoping that that'll be not not to the point of being annoying but maybe borderline uh talking about attendance. >> Dr. Father, >> thank you. I just had a brief comment. Uh uh I as a local pastor recognize that
it isn't the u total responsibility of the schools to do everything uh and that uh the community itself has responsibility
and um as I've sat here and listened um I would like to offer um uh that I'll the I'm actively considering reaching out to o other local pastors to to convene a
community discussion where we can share this information, gain community support. So, uh there's no lag in uh what's going on and why, but everyone will have opportunity to know
expectations uh because it's unfair. I believe to um and I've been on the board for a number of years to always reach this point where we're uh looking outwardly instead
of inwardly. I mean, I know it's tough for uh staff and or superintendent to say, well, you know, and I'm willing to do that and and and so I'm willing to uh uh offer to do a inward look and see
what uh local pastors can do to encourage uh family uh support. uh because oftentimes you find yourself speaking or referencing community need without necessarily uh having
um uh the true pulse point on the why. So just to put that in play, not really uh I there may be a a need for the experts, if you will, >> to to support that, but just to say that's what I intend to follow up on that. It's a great idea.
>> Dr. Worth, >> and just real quick, I I believe you mentioned when looking at the data that you it's not to be added like together, but as you as the more we talk and we look at the data, it it is kind of all right added together. You know, if I was
a community member or parent looking this and I fall into three or four of these categories, it could be very daunting. So, I don't know where I want to go with this, but I guess my concern is that even though it's not to be added
together, I feel that the people in these categories fall into most of all of these categories, right? Which would put your child in like a negative 200% chance of graduate, right? If you're falling into five or six categories, can you better explain why it's not all
added together if you meet multiple categories? Am I making >> We'd be delving pretty deep into statistics theory about how works, but I could in terms of but that's not to suggest that we're not talking about uh like I think I
mentioned I might have mentioned before the intersectionality of multiple barriers. That's absolutely what we're talking about. When I say they can't be added together, I mean uh to I mean that specifically in terms of the math behind
the statistics. You just can't do that. In terms of the barriers themselves, absolutely. >> But the the the hopeful point, Dr. for White Horn is that just as the accumulation of risk
increases the danger of a kid being off track, the accumulation of supports increases their chance of being on track. Um, the organization that I was privileged to lead for almost a decade before I came to Rochester, uh, Search Institute before I got there, the
research we did was on developmental relationships, which is very relevant, but the work I inherited was on what they call developmental assets. And what they showed was that the more um supports a kid has, including a kid facing extraordinary challenges, the more likely they were to be on the other
side of this trajectory. So there's a hopeful side of that accumulation reality that is uh important and it's one reason why um you know, everyone likes to say there is no silver bullet, which we know is the case, but that the more of these supports we can layer on
for our kids, uh the more likely they are to be on the on the path to thrive. Thank you board members and thank you or look forward to more updates. >> Thank you. >> Next item on our agenda is a monitoring item staff development plan and budget review. And this is a meets a
requirement in policy 425 that the district staff development plan be reviewed by the school board annually. >> Thank you chair Nathan. I want to ask our chief academic officer, Mona Perkins, to come up. Our director of elementary um education, we have to get the titles right since we've changed it.
Now, Heather Clevet, and director of secondary education, Heather Wilman. The only thing I want to say board members is that um having a separate policy and a report on professional development as opposed to curriculum as opposed to assessment I think is in part um and I
would guess uh director workman and director Marvin uh probably had the same experience. Professional development was something we really didn't used to value in education. you know, an individual teacher could go to a workshop um and it was something that was not uh considered
important to plan, considered important to invest in. And and then when people say schools never change, this is one of those areas where I think uh it's there's been dramatic change over the course of my career. I remember I remember being given my book, my classroom, and it's like good luck. And
now the planfulness that these leaders uh dedicate to thinking about professional development or PD as we call it uh is a complete paradigm shift from not that long ago. So I'm glad we have this opportunity to learn about the plans for the years ahead.
No. >> Thank you for having us. Uh we are going to go through the PD um kind of the plan and the budget together. Um, the one thing we that we did tonight that might be a little different than what's been done in the past is we didn't just look
at the dollars that were set aside specific for professional development, but we looked at kind of our professional development as a whole. And we want to report on the big things that we're going to be doing this year regardless if it was paid out of PD
dollars or other funding streams. Um so PD is defined as structured professional learning that results in changes in teacher practice and improving improvements in learning learning outcomes. Um one thing we've learned over the years and research supports this is that it's not a oneanddone. It's
not about teachers coming in and sitting down for um a quick PD session and then we expect them just to implement in their classroom. It has to be followed up with a lot of coaching and revisiting. And so it's all this is all part of our the overall plan.
I think this slide is just kind of reiterating that that when we think about effective professional development, sometimes we think of that one session that you might take in room 26 and you go you get that um that training and then you're done. But really we're talking about
collaboration, ongoing work, development of common assessments, vertical conversations, coaching, sidebyside work in the classroom as well as some learning. So as we think about that, we just wanted to frame that in that broader context of
effective professional development. And then we also wanted to to just draw attention to the fact that if we're doing this right, you should be like, "Oh, this is really making sense because it's connecting with our strategic plan. So as you see our focus areas and our
goals, that should really connect really tightly to the strategic plan. And then on the next slide, you'll see our overall goals for the year. There are several of them and as mentioned there's a lot of strategic planning being done to the development for our
teachers. Um number one MTSS as we've been talking about already tonight is a huge focus on the tiered system supports um with a deep focus on literacy. We continue to have that deep focus there. Um, number two is really refining and
continuing to sustain our evidence-based structured literacy practices and that spans K through 12, actually early childhood 12 that we're working on that and providing support and staff development. Um, number three talks about our alignment of standards. Um,
there are many state standards that are coming our way. Um, some of them overlapping and so we're working hard at that. Uh, number four is enhancing student mental health supports. We also have deeper learning that you've heard about integrated into our curriculum articulation cycle. And so that
continues to live through that. Um and then number six is about our language supports. Um there's a lot of deep work being done there um in our tier one instruction and in teacher collaboration. And then best practices for language acquisition and dual
language instruction is another focus. And then finally aligning our behavior supports in connect classrooms with best practices as well. So these are many focus areas that we are are doing this year. You'll see some of these areas are embedded into much of what we're going
to share like MTSS falls under many of these categories. It's kind of an um so we'll just kind of go over the highlights of our upcoming PD and our PD budget. This is not an exhaustive list. So, just just so you're aware, we don't we're not going to share every little
detail. And I think I already shared like this will include P dollars, literacy aid dollars, some third party billing dollars for for special ed, and um and then some grants. So, we're grading all of that to really provide some solid um PD. So, these are the
buckets that we're going to talk about today. So, we've got literacy that we're um planning on spending about $760,000 on this year for professional development. Um some work around the um we haven't landed on a main yet call anchor or real standards. We're trying
to um really align the work on K12 within each of the areas. Um I did not include elementary science in there because we've got the elementary science implementation. I pulled those dollar amounts out. to look at it separately
even though some of that work will also be the standards alignment. Then we've got our math pilot, the student mental health, multilingual ed, and then special ed um and all of our other items. Those are kind of the big parts.
>> Okay. So, the first big one um as Mona had mentioned is literacy. Um and we are budgeting 760,000 and part of that will come from literacy aid and then others from professional development dollars. Um so many focus areas there. One of them being um the redact training that
we're providing to our our teachers. Um we are currently in our phase one of that training. Um and phase one is supposed to be completed by next July 2026 and then we'll be starting up our phase two training um that includes our fourth through 12th grade teachers um
and we'll have an additional year to provide that training. Uh we also are lifting off a pilot of the uh ESP our education support professionals literacy training through the state. We just had a training with our trainers today today
here to plan the schedule for that and we approximately 400 ESPs that will be engaged in that training starting on back to school week. Um our elementary and secondary sped curriculum will definitely be a focus and there will be support with rolling out new curriculum
um and training along with that. Um functional phonics and morphology is a curriculum we also um purchased last year. In year one we focused a lot of the morphology pieces. This year we're going to dig into tier 2 supports within it. And so our third through fifth grade
teachers will be offered training in that as well. Um along the lines of tier 2 supports, we also have um resource maps that have been developed by our literacy specialists and coaches. And so there will be some professional development about using all of those
tools in our classrooms to support students. Uh a new screener um has been selected by the state called Cathy. Uh that will be for our fourth through 12th grade students. will be an additional screener that we'll be learning about. Um, and then we'll be bringing some
professional learning to our teachers to prepare for that. And the target date for for rolling that out is winter. So, we have some time to do that. Um, and then we're going to continue to work on aligning um our standards with our curriculum and making sure our teachers have support in rolling out the new
curriculum. Paul Whitney Wisdom was rolled out in elementary last year. And there are many other areas um across K12 we're working on with um and then Mona kind already talked about the anchor standards the real standards was calling them which
prioritize the standard and we're working with teachers on which assessments will help to inform their practice in in all tiers um to support students too. So those are lots of areas in literacy that we're supporting our teachers. I just want to add the read
capy. What that is is the um it's the new dyslexia screener that's required by the state for starting in fourth grade. So that's why it's an additional screener. We didn't have anything specific for um for dyslexia screening
once kids got past. >> All right. So we already talked a little bit about the anchor standards or the real standards. Um, and we just wanted to to make sure you knew that we're looking at identifying those and prioritizing those in we already did in English language arts. So, this year is
really our implementation year at the secondary level. We're looking at what does our scope and sequence look like and how will we um analyze our common assessments and look at student work, but then we're also doing that work in social studies and in science. So, it's
across the disciplines um with the the real standards Okay. And then elementary science. This year we're lifting off our Amplify science curriculum in K through five. And so there will be there already have been trainings for our teachers in the spring. And then this year we have
another training um by Amplify. And then we're lifting off our own support of teachers in that. And so we'll be on it will be ongoing collaboration and support. Um there will be some curriculum writing because within our amplify science as we know any curriculum doesn't necessarily fulfill
all of our standards. So we have some revision and um writing to do there. And then just continuing to support our teachers in in rolling out our standards um elementary math. I think I shared at a a previous meeting that we're lifting
off um some pilots as we as we get to know our new standards. We're going to be trying out three different curriculums and so there are 30 teachers that will be engaged in those pilots. So they will be getting some support there. Um it's approximately 21,000. Um many of
our the vendors we're working with have given lots of the professional development to us for free of charge. Um and we're starting to lift that off um next week already with those initial trainings. >> We've got student mental health um and
we've got $24,000 there and 10,000 of that is from the demonstration project grant. And so we're they'll be working on mental health screening, tiered interventions, brainbased readiness to learn, and universal mental health documentation. >> Right. And then in multilingual
education, as you know, we've been working really hard on co-eing. And co-eing doesn't just happen without training and support and collaboration time. Um so there are some dollars set aside for co-eing teams in both elementary and secondary. And then
transl languaging. Um so there's some professional development in trans languaging. It's a requirement for our multilanguage teachers and we also open that up for other teachers um to be part of that and that's 71,000 set aside for those pieces.
>> And as our um as our newcomer programs kind of start to expand into other schools, we're expanding the number of teachers that are doing the co- teaching. So, it's really important to bring them along and make sure that we've got some some good PD for them because we want people to
feel confident and they need the skills to be able to support the kids. Um so, so this is really really exciting work. And then in special ed, we've got um a lot of work with our intensive programs. Um and then we've got dollars set aside
for CPI and Ukaru. CPI is um that's around deescalation and restraints whereas UKO is more of a it's an alternative to CPI. It's trauma informed hands-off approach. And so that's used in more of our um most intensive setting
threes and fours. Um, I added the deescalation for Jenna teachers on this slide, but it's not it doesn't really fall under special ed. It falls under special ed because we're really leaning on our our the lead the special ed folks to help with the training. But that's
for Gened teachers. Um, we always do some professional development for related service area providers that they have stuff that's really unique to them. So, get what they need and speech pathologists get what they need. Um we did purchase a new um literacy
curriculum for um secondary special ed. So we're going to be doing some PD around that. And then um we just kicked off some a big training for our connect programs in early childhood through 8th grade and they will be doing a lot of
work with a a board certified behavior analyst named Wendy who we brought in. She's incredible. And we just had our our first kickoff with those buildings the other day. Um and that's really trying to look at behavior differently and work on um our kiddos that are in
the connect programs. We want to get them really to engage and engage academically with, you know, so it's not just all around behavior and there's ways to do that. So we want to align our approach to behavior with best practices. And then we've got um we have
about 11 teachers that are working with they're licensed teachers, but they have an hour of field placement. Um, and for for reimbursement and all other things, we are going to partner with an organization called NOVA who will help them through a portfolio process get
their specialed lensure. Um, and so we're we'll be working with hopefully all 11 will sign up for that and that starts this month as well. And then we have some additional items that are are actually basically on an annual basis that we fund through our
professional development dollars. So um the budget for that is 295,000 for this year and that includes our teacher orientation that we start lifting off next week. Our back to school sessions that are offered for all teachers in all areas, not just teachers, certified
staff. Um and then we have our school improvement plans. Um there's dollars attached to that. So schools can be working on the the plans that they have, the goals they have for their sites, and do some professional learning around those lines. Um, every site has a staff
development chair um that helps to figure out their budget and make sure that it's aligned um with their uh skips as well. And so that's something that we budget every year. And then we have our winter professional development day that is February 16. So we set aside funds
for that for our teachers. The next slide um provides the dates basically for all of those different um items that I talked to you about. It also includes curriculum adjustment days. Um those days there are four in the year. The dates are um up on the slide and they
are sight directed and central office supported and very often our sites are aligning those days um developing their teachers to support their school improvement uh goals. So those are the dates. I think that concludes our
presentation. Board members, any questions? I'd like to build on what Superintendent Pel said about this is great to have this information because to me I hope the community understands that
this isn't just an individual teacher building some individual skills which what it seemed like it was in the past and sometimes they brought it back to their building and sometimes it really was just a you know a individual experience but I really see the connections between what you've planned
not only in the teacher but in the curriculum I mean that this is where we're doing the material development and working through making the material useful because as you've said before, especially with Whiten Wisdom, it's not useful just off the shelf. So, I appreciate the content of this report to
to show us that. >> Director White Horn, >> um just real quick, and I know we've talked a lot about the uh student mental health. Uh I see that the funding is low. Uh is that is that I'm assuming that's directly impacted by some of the streams of funding that we lost. Um,
I guess my only question around that will be, you know, what what are our plans to increase that as we know that that's an area where we need a lot of support. Um, and I know we're doing what we can with the dollars that we have, but are there any more inventive ways, you know, because it's a big issue,
right? And all of this data we keep bringing up student, you know, >> well, one thing to consider when we look at the dollar amount is where the dollars are going. So if you've got a classroom teacher and we need to pull them out, they'll have a stop. If you have mental health practitioners that
need to come out, we don't they might not necessarily need a sub. So some of these costs don't necessarily indicate it's less professional development. It just means there aren't like there might not be sub costs with it or consulting costs. Does that make sense? Because
because there's actually a lot listed of what they're going to do. Um but we there's My guess is there's just not a whole lot of subs that will be needed. >> Superintendent. >> Uh yes, and um it it's a very astute
observation, Director White Horn. Our current strategic plan, which we're finishing this year, really put the emphasis on identifying the measures to identify kids who are struggling with mental health and putting in place uh
the staff teams to do it. It has not had a major investment on professional development for staff who don't directly provide services to kids struggling with mental health, but that could potentially be a very important focus going forward. Um, we've really been
focused on the providers, our clinical social workers, our mental health screeners, our folks here in really phase one of that work. When you think about the future of our mental health work, and you know, next week we'll be getting together for the our first discussion of the next strategic plan.
One of the things that certainly as I've talked with uh staff here and staff in our schools, the idea that uh our our general ed teachers, our special ed teachers, our uh uh ESPs could benefit
from professional development on issues around mental health has come up uh repeatedly. Um so essentially we've we've focused initially on putting in place the measures and the experts but uh so in the big picture $24,000 it is not a lot but you can see what it costs
to do the literacy work. Uh so I think it's a very important discussion for us to have uh going forward because we can't we say this about literacy all the time too. We can't intervene our way out of all these problems. We need to have classroom teachers ESPs understanding some of these. not going to be providers
but um it's an important thing for us to be thinking about as we go into the next phase of the mental health work >> and and just to clarify so I the question was behind the reason why I related it to the funding loss was was there a compensation rate so since we know that we lost all that funding I
just didn't it didn't look well reflected that we were you >> you know since we not going to be able to do some of the things we had anticipated doing with mental health I would be hoping that we would beef up, you know, who the staff we currently have and give them the knowledge. Even
though we can't, we don't have the funding right now to hire the number of mental health professionals we need, it's still it's still a need. Um, so I just thought that would be a good space that we could invest in to kind of compensate for the loss of the some of
the things we originally planned for. >> One thing I wanted to to add, I was just thinking about how we haven't necessarily much about our instructional coaching and I know that we have coaching and support that goes on and is embedded into our days as well and that's
something we don't quantify in this because that doesn't cost us extra dollars other than having our instructional coaches a huge part of how we do all of this because much of what is calculated if we just talk about literacy that's calculating when very
often we need to pull teachers out so we can work with them and that's going to be the sub But what's really beautiful is that we have coaches that meet with us with the focus on professional development and they come with us every month to these sessions and then they bring that to
their site and that isn't an additional cost. So that doesn't show up here and so there's much embedded staff development that isn't called out in this budget through our instruction. >> Thank you. >> Hearing no other comments. Thank you
very much. So, board members, to keep us um on time, I have some recommendations for the next two prep for action agenda items. For the policy committee recommendations from the policy committee meeting on July 16th, I'd like
to uh recommend that we skip reading the detailed briefing until our August 19th meeting. And unless any board member has any pressing questions about any of the policies and procedures tonight, we do have our Q&A document that is available
for board members to ask questions. So, I would ask if you do have any, please submit them um in the next week and then we will have time, the policy committee would have time to look at them um and bring back some feedback on the August
19th meeting and then we won't m uh miss out on one of the weeks of our three-w weekek cycle of briefing policies. Does that sound okay with everyone? >> Yes. Okay, great. Then I'm also going to uh recommend that we table the next item, the school board goal development
for 202526 to the August 19th meeting given that we have a number of action items and a close session. Um we've already discussed uh the draft. The draft is available to you. It might give you a little bit more time to think about it and consider it and then we can have our full discussion at the August
19th meeting where perhaps we'll keep it as an action item and see if we can just do that all in one night. Does that work? So, I need a motion to table uh this item to the August 19th meeting. >> So, moved. >> Second. >> It has been moved and second to table this item. All those in favor say I.
>> I. Opposed. We shall table it to the August 19th meeting. Thank you. So, back on track. Our next item is an action item. We've reviewed this under prep for action at the July 15th meeting. And the resolution um I will read it and ask for a motion and second and we'll open the
floor for any additional information and discussion. Be it resolved that the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve a cooperative agreement between Mayo High School, Dover Yota High School, and Lord High School for girls hockey beginning with the 202526 season.
>> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded. Are there any questions or comments? Director Whitehorn. >> So I I have one question here. Is this to be an ongoing um co-op or as the um
you know is this this permanent? Is this is this just until numbers come up? I was just a little bit conf I went back over that data and it looks like at some point Mayo will have enough girls to have their own um team and will it will still be Mayo's girls hockey, right?
Even though it's co-op >> superintendent. Um and I we have our Mayo activities director Dan Christopher here. So Dan, correct me if I get that wrong. Co-op would be for two years. And so it is time limited. We'd need to renew it. Um, and we would certainly be hoping at that time that there would be the participation numbers that would,
you know, enable us to we'd love to have a team in every school, but of course that is not something that we control. >> And I just have one comment. Uh, you know, one of my neighbors, in fact, right across the street, uh, they have
two daughters who, um, play hockey for, uh, male, and, uh, over the years, uh, I've observed them over the years, you know, the commitment they have, the dedication they have, and
I'm I'm proud to be able to cast my vote in favor of this because it would be a shame to deprive them uh, of the opportunity to continue to play hockey when they've made such a huge investment timewise and otherwise to support their
local school and to um uh you know be a great um student in our district. >> Superintendent, >> uh I appreciate too, Director B. I just want to say because I know that we there are um opinions on on both sides of this
issue as there often are with a co-op. I do want people uh in the community to know that we very authentically did investigate with both our conference and our region the possibility of a co-op of our three high schools. Um it was
unanimously rejected authentically. We pursued that uh for reasons that do align with state high school league rules in a definition of a co-op. Um but I want people to know we authentically did look at that option. I also uh would recommend the board approve this option for the reasons Dr. Barlo you just
cited, but I do want people to know we authentically looked at that other option as we would continue to do should circumstances change. But we can play these sports because we're part of a conference and a region. And so um just as our votes on region and conference
issues uh matter, uh the the votes of our other school districts uh matters a lot as well. Director Mccclofflin. Um, kind of piggybacking on Director Whitehorn's question. It was clear in my mind that this was going to be two years, but now
that I'm looking through the background information, it talks about a minimum of two years under the state high school bylaws, and the resolution doesn't include that language, and I didn't see it in the presentation either, but I could have missed it. Is it something that we would entertain an amendment to
the resolution to make that more specific? And then I guess the question is what happens after the two years? Does it come back to the board for further decision or how does that work? I don't I remember us talking about the lacrosse co-op, but I don't remember the time frame or if we revisit it.
>> Superintendent. >> Uh uh again, Dan, correct me if you would come back to the board. And so the two years we think is a prudent amount of time at this point. I think uh as as as you are want to do uh Director Gloin as an attorney, you've caught you've
caught an uh error that I would uh hope the board might be willing to uh fix by uh adding the two-year time frame to the resolution. >> Can I ask a question? Is that two years specified in the official form about the
co-op that goes to the Minnesota State High School League? >> Correct. So the act so the actual document okay >> will say two years. >> I would suggest as the attorney if we need to call that out um we either amend the resolution or include that document in our um in our um assembly so that
people can reference that if they want to see the official language. >> I will entertain whatever the board would like to do. I would if if should the should someone want to amend the resolution um it could
be uh amended um beginning with the 202526 season for a 2-year period. >> So move second. >> It's been so moved and seconded. Any discussion on the amendment? Hearing none. All those in favor of the amendment say I.
>> I opposed. So the resolution has been amended to read. Be it resolved that the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve a cooperative agreement between Mayo High School, Dover Yota High School, and Lord High School for girls hockey beginning with the 202526 season for a period of
two years approval. >> Second. Okay. So, the new the new uh resolution has been moved and seconded. Any additional discussion? >> Oh, director Marvin, sorry. >> Further clarification. Thank you, Dr.
Pel. There was a question too about whether Rochester was going to be paying for students from other schools or school districts and the districts or the families cover the cost including the sports fee. So it's no additional cost for us >> and I the other districts
>> the other districts >> or the families they're going to decide how to do that >> and the name of the team is representative of all the schools that how they do that or will it just be male high school? >> Yeah. What will we call I mean now we always say like JM Century
>> still be called. >> Yes, ma'am. >> And I guess I'd like to comment. We did did have some community feedback about this um agenda item. Um I appreciate the support of the students. Um there was something else I was going to say about
it and it lost my train of thought. Um I think it's important for our students to be able to continue with this um work that they've been doing over their um their youth sports now transitioning into high school. Um but I think it represents a fair way to um assist those
students in uh continuing to play girls hockey here. And I've also appreciated the feedback we've gotten from the athletic directors about the the broader issue of girls hockey participation and your willingness to work with the um the
youth the youth leagues and the youth teams. One of the suggestions was even to have our high school players go and meet with the youth teams to show them that how much it's worth participating in in high school hockey. So it's not that we're just signing a co-op and leaving it. there are still strategies
that you're thinking about to increase these numbers so that we don't have to face these difficult decisions in the future. >> Director McLaclin, I got the rest of my train of thought back. Thank you. Um I think what also was significant to me in the further input we got from the community is that these students have been playing together already and
practicing now that it's not like it's just a random combination of students who have never met each other, never played together. That they have and that this is just continuing that effort. Oops. All right. Hearing uh no other comments.
All those in favor of the amended resolution say I. >> I. All those opposed? >> Thank you. The resolution has passed. >> Move on to our next action item, which is the approval of the 202526 student
handbook. Um this is also an action item. So we'll read the resolution and see if there's any additional information and discussion. Be it resolved that the school board of independent school district 535 does hereby approve the 202526 student handbook which will be accessible in a
downloadable PDF format and available on the RPS website. >> Move approval. >> Second. >> It has been moved and seconded. Superintendent. Do we have any >> Well, certainly you all know that if you you do have any questions, our lead on this uh Angie Mandrews worked with
Jackie Peterson, but I think uh we're ready to approve this. There has been uh very good work done on this. I just want to hearken back to the fact that this board had a very important discussion a few weeks ago about our discipline data and about the new strategies that we are launching this year with a positive behavioral supports team and I want to
note that in this handbook it very clearly identifies the criteria for both in school out of school suspension and that those criteria are quite specific not so specific that they can't apply across a school district of 17,000 plus students but that we take those criteria
very very seriously that this board had that discuss discuss of suspensions last month, not because there was a government agency forcing it to do so. It had it because we care about those issues. We are committed to improve. You have approved uh suspensions as one of
the 10 top indicators that will shape our strategic plan and our school improvement process. And uh this handbook is our uh language on the page that describes how we expect our administrators to implement those
suspensions with precision and that we will continue to work. There was some discussion as board members will recall about the difference between level two infractions where there is discretion in our current strategy by design. Uh we want uh very tight implementation of
suspensions so that we're sure that they are rare and that they're being assigned for very clear criteria um and that we are uh progressively restoring students to school in the unwelcome event that a suspension has to occur. So uh I know
this handbook uh is a long document. Uh, one of the things that we've talked about next year is creating videos, websites, short ways to make it clearer to kids and families and staff um, what this handbook really means in practice.
But the handbook matters. Uh and so Madam Chair, I didn't want to uh let this go by without underscoring the fact that we take the criteria possession of distribution of drugs or alcohol, possession of a weapon or incendiary device, a level two events that results
in bodily or emotional harm or a major disruption to the learning environment. We take those criteria very seriously and that other uh behavioral incidents which are a normal part of growing up in adolescence for many kids do not result
in suspension and should not. >> I I since we're not going to have a presentation on this, I just want to compliment um Angie McDrewers and Jackie Peterson and anybody else who has participated in this. I know you've worked with MSBA um model student
handbook and uh it's it's as you said it's a long document but I can already see we're doing whatever we can to make it all user friendly and I know that there were a number of questions submitted by board members or suggestions that I know you'll take into account before um you know making the
final thing but it doesn't substantly sub substantively change any of the content it's really just suggestions as to how it might be more readable or more accessible. So, barring any other suggestions from board members, all those in favor of the resolution say I.
>> I. All those opposed, the resolution has passed. Thank you. Moving on to other business. Uh, the current version of the ABCD is available in the agenda item and the upcoming agenda items for the next few meetings are being displayed on the slide. At our
next August 12th study session, uh our focus topic is the new strategic plan. We will have a monitoring item which is a report of the superintendent evaluation for 2024 2025 leadership component. That'll be part one reflecting our close session this
evening. And then we'll also have a close session that night which is will be part two of the superintendent evaluation for the leadership component. Then at the August 19th meeting on a focus topic, we will have the 202425 fastbridge data analysis and literacy plan update, a monitoring item which
will be the report of the superintendent evaluation leadership component part two close session. A back to school update. We'll be discussing our schoolboard committee assignments for the 2025-26 school year, the superintendent goals for 2025-26,
and the approval of the school board goals for 202526 as we discuss tableabling to the next meeting. Any other items board members would like to raise for consideration for a future meeting agenda? Hearing none or upcoming dates? As we mentioned, just want to remind everybody
that the August 12th study session starts at 6:00 p.m. and the next three regular meetings on August 19th, September 9th, and September 23rd all start at 5:30. The next item on the agenda is close session for the superintendent
evaluation for the 2024 2025 leadership component part one. This is a close session pursuant to Minnesota statute section 13 D05 subdivision 3B which allows the board to go into close session to evaluate the performance of an individual who is subject to its
authority. While in close session, the board will engage in a confidential discussion of the scheduled annual performance evaluation of Superintendent Kent Pel. In addition, pursuant to Minnesota statutes 1305, the board will summarize our conclusions regarding part one of this evaluation at the August
12th study session. Pursuant to the law I have cited, will someone make a motion to go into close session? >> Someone moved. >> Second. >> It has been moved and second. All those in favor say I. >> I. Any opposed? The board moves into close session at 5:53 Yeah.
All right, board is back in session at 7:47 p.m. The clerk Marvin, will you read the list of people present in the close session? >> Members present were Kathy Nathan, Karen Mclofflin, Stephanie Whitehorn, Don Barlo, Julie Workman, Jeene Marvin, and
Kent Pal. >> Thank you. And hearing no other business, this meeting is adjourned at 7:47 p.m. >> Thank you.