e e e [Music] come okay this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday June 18th 2024 in room 137 of the Edison
building the board acknowledges this site and all RPS sites are situated on the ancestral land of the Dakota people and we honor the Dakota Nations and the sacred land of all indigenous peoples present at this meeting are Schoolboard members superintendent Kent pel a
non-voting ex officio member and assistant school board clerk Miss Lorie Sam Miss Sam would you please call the role here here here here here here here at this time we
offer the opportunity to say the Pledge of Allegiance I ALG to the flag of the United States of America rep for which it stands one nation under God indivisible withy and justice for
[Music] all item 2.1 is approval of the agenda are there any changes to the agenda move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the agenda all those in favor say I I I any opposed the agenda has been approved the agenda and
documents for this meeting are available online at Rochester schools.org assembly comments to the board it is important for the school board to hear from our stakeholders regarding issues that impact our students staff families
and schools we welcome communication via email phone call at our community engagement listening sessions and here during comments to the board the purpose of comments to the board is to give community members an opportunity to provide input directly to the school board about issues that fall within our
Authority the board and superintendent do not respond directly to the speaker's comments during the meeting but may follow up with the speaker if requested and appropriate persons who want to make comments to the board must fill out the online form by 5:00 pm on the Monday before the school board meeting to sign
up for a time slot the form is available on the RPS website and on the assembly main page a reminder that policy 206 anded procedure 206a set the time place and manner procedures and restrictions on comments to the board by participating in the public comment
period each speaker agrees to abide by this public comment procedure should a speaker or meeting attendee display any of the prohibited conduct the school board chair will call the person out of order if the speaker or attendee persists in the conduct they will be required to leave the meeting
failure to abide by these rules could forfeit the speaker's right to participate in comments to the board at Future meetings speakers when your name is called please come to this table if you have written materials for the board please provide them to the assistant school board clerk prior to your remarks
and she will distribute them to board members choose a microphone to speak into and be seated please direct your remarks to the school board you'll have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed right here in front of me please begin your remarks by stating
your name our first Speaker this evening is Danielle teal for e e e e e e
e e e e e e e most of your comments via email thank you next item on our agenda is an
information and Outreach 4.1 retirement recognitions um prior to the meeting tonight uh we had a wonderful reception for some of the RPS teachers and staff who are retiring this year they total 78 retirees and they represent 1, 152 hours
of uh years of service um we had some lovely conversations with them where they shared some of their Fondest Memories of students and experiences and as the superintendent uh said during our event We wish all of you could hear how they spoke about our
students and their relationship with them and it was just so evident that their legacy and the contributions that they made are going to live on not only in in the students impact but with their colleagues and what they've what they've done with them and for them through the years so we congratulate and thank all
of our retiring employees for their hard work and their dedication to our students and we wish them the best in their future endeavors item 4.2 is board member committee updates does any board member have updates from their committees uh since the last meeting or any other information to
share Dr brother uh yes thank you madam chair um I'd like to just touch briefly on uh the Minnesota State High School league of which I've been a part of uh representing the Rochester Public School
Board uh for the last several years um and it has been quite a a journey um in that during this past um cycle three five years uh Co interrupted the in-person opportunities
to meet and after the passage of covid uh the online uh Remain the preferred though there is good news um in September of this year uh there will be a area meeting uh to be held here in
Rochester I think that'll be a great opportunity for uh Rochester Public Schools and uh who may become the new um District representative for Minnesota State High School league uh it's only
fair to mention at this point that uh Mark quizley has served and represented uh all area schools uh uh as a board member uh of the men mhsl and I have just by virtue of that
dependent almost exclusively on the input he would provide because he had a front row seat so to speak uh now that he's retired it will require more uh of an active role uh on uh the person who serves as the board
representative uh as well as the uh agency itself mshsl uh they are more deliberate now and actually involving and engaging uh local board members uh it's not not
uncommon for there to be in bylaws um the establishment of positions but not necessarily the support to allow those positions to fully function so I'm excited about what uh uh will occur moving in uh forward in September I am
aware that this is part of our consent agenda uh as required uh we are annually required to reup s to speak and I fully support um uh our effort to do that for those who may not be fully aware what
the mshsl is it serves over 600 schools U throughout the state school districts throughout the state of Minnesota uh addressing areas ranging from Fine Arts to Athletics and everything in between and one of the
main goals is to ensure that there's a supportive uh safe respectful inclusive environment for all students focusing historically from 10th 11th and 12th grade but there is a uh revision of their bylaws that would actually extend
that down to 9th grade it's odd in that High School actually begins with n9th grade but nth graders haven't been a part of of that uh that soon will change uh pending approval by the board and that provides my update regarding the MS
hsl that's great and thank you we really haven't um had an update in a while and it's timely that it's on the consent agenda tonight so thank you any other committees for no okay we'll move on to our consent agenda item 5.1 through
5.14 would any board member like any item removed from the consent agenda for separate consideration move approval second it has been moved and seconded to approve the consent agenda all those in favor say I I I any opposed the consent agenda
has been approved our next item is a focus topic student mental health update this is an information item related to one of our strategic plan districtwide initiatives for strategic change or dis superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan we can see
that we have got uh three colleagues coming up we'll give them a moment to get set and I would just also say each of you take a mic since we have enough mics and nobody needs to pass them tonight as board members will remember during the nine months that we spent developing our strategic plan um a
number of issues emerged that were not previously major priorities um for many school districts and one of them was mental health and well-being and so that has since become a core initiative uh in all of the work that we are doing and I know board members have been looking
forward to this update tonight on that work in progress um it's exciting to rec uh recognize Connie grimsrud who our director of student services Sarah Clark who's our mental health coordinator and I'm excited to have a chance to say hi to Amanda Meyer who's now in our lead social worker uh position and so thank
you for all the work that you've been leading um this is a topic that um is of great interest not just within our schools and Community but globally and so uh we know this will be one of many updates and the months to come and we'll turn over to you to get
started thank you uh we have a power point you have the clicker right in front of Amanda and it oh there we are great so Dr pel did a wonderful job
of introducing us um we'll just go through quickly again I'm Sarah Clark mental health coordinator for Rochester Public Schools I'm a licensed professional clinical counselor which is a very unusual role for a public school to employ um I was in private practice up until this current year when I chose
to come to this to the school district full-time I've been working for the school district for a while but this is full-time here um and have been happy to lead our mental health work through the Strategic plan indeed I'm Connie Grims your director of student services and I'm happy to support our mental health
efforts uh through the office of academics and um really excited to welcome Amanda here hello I'm Amanda Meyer I am the uh new lead social worker um I've been with the district for 11 years as a school
social worker there we go so as we get going talking about our mental health work I think it's important that we do a little bit of grounding in what we talk about when we're talking about mental illness and mental wellness and when we talk about how we're supporting students I want to
be clear that we don't just support students when they become ill this dual Continuum model of mental health is really a a wonderful way to illustrate the full spectrum of how students and really all people experience uh the variance between mental illness mental
Wellness flourishing and languishing and what I really want us to know here just very briefly is that we support students in all areas of this so a student may have a diagnosable mental illness but could be flourishing and that they still have purpose and meaning in their lives
and they're still able to engage in rewarding social Connections in the same way that somebody may not have a diagnosable mental illness and could be struggling with aspects of being able to flourish and we really want to provide interventions and supports for all students in all
areas so Connie is going to talk very briefly about the wonderful staff that we have who support this work that's right we have many staff working across the district and you will see some of their titles here working within the mental health realm we do have school
social workers um there are 44 School social workers currently employed with by RPS uh Amanda is one of those and we have five clinical social workers who support our students who have mental health diagnosis and are receiving more
intensive Mental Health Services from mental health practitioners who is also on that bottom of the list right there mental health practitioners work is directly tied to a student um who has qualified for an IEP in special education with diagnoses in mental
health to receive intensive supports we employ 32 mhps in our district we could not have those mhps without our clinical iCal social workers so we are thankful that in this District we are able to provide that support we have four chemical health counselors however we
are not fully staffed yet it is very challenging for us has proven challenging for us to find licensed alcohol and drug counselors in our community though we have successfully hired three this school year with a fourth that was just interviewed last week we have about 48 school counselors
providing mental health support for our students um in roughly the tier one tier two level across all district buildings in um our district and we have four student resiliency Specialists that currently work only within our three
high schools and I think it's important for us to note that the role of all of these staff members is to Provo Provide support and skill development we do not provide mental health therapy with the employees that we employ within the school district and that's important to
note because we are a school School District not a mental health Service Agency and the goal of all of these staff members are to reduce barriers in accessing a fair and appropriate education so we did do some surveying of our social workers and we did this last
year too and I think it's important to touch on this again just wanted some of their perceptions about what they are spending their time working on and when when we talk with them about the concerns that they see in our buildings the top concerns that they see with our students who are experiencing challenges
to their mental health are depression anxiety symptoms associated with trauma and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder that pretty closely reflects National Data around what students are dealing with we're not seeing high levels of students with psychosis or any
of those more severe and pervasive mental illnesses but more of the mood disorders which really do create many barriers to accessing education so we do have some when I mentioned before that we don't provide therapy we do have some Community Partnerships that are able to pick up
some of that um slack in terms of providing therapy we have a partnership with three agencies in town who provide School link mental health therapists in our buildings and we've also have this school-based mental health scholar program which launched this year and
Connie will do will do a great job in talking about both of these Partnerships well you see our three Partners School linked mental health therapists our therapists who co-locate in our buildings which means that we provide the space for them to work to meet with students these students have their um
diagnosed conditions that a family is working through those agencies to support and for whatever reason there has been a barrier to accessing that support outside of the school day so we collocate those staff here they are not our employees and they do not require a
um an IEP or Special Education Service these are for all students to access based on their um qualifications with those agencies we are there our therapists are in 14 of our schools however we have had interest from every one of our schools to Lo to hosting a
therapist within their buildings we just are not we do not have um the people power to provide um those Services right now through these agencies though they are trying very hard to hire every day and we are supporting some of that through our school-based mental health Scholars Program which we're going to
talk a little bit about um these staff Wellness consultations we know are offered through our EAP um we have got those our um therapists provide some staff supports um Family consultations are provided through our school link mental health
therapists and they do get come into our schools to provide some of our staff development in terms of our Scholars that was our big celebration last year when we received a Federal grant for $2 and5 million doar to be able to provide Master's level social work um
experiences to our staff and community members to advance their education and obtain master's degrees um to then become um employable by a school district through our licensing agency pby as school social workers um we know
that we have seven right now that have just made it through year one and are entering year two their final year where we provide their practicum experiences within our schools and five new Scholars that are starting in their foundational year um next year for the school year 2425
eight of those 12 Scholars identify as black indigenous and or people of color and that was a priority that we received the grant because we made that a priority to um offer those scholarships to that specific group of people as prioritization for the scholarship and
we are supporting increased needs for Stu at least 125 students it's probably more than that but we know that those Scholars are interfacing with at least that many more students than potentially we would have been able to provide without them and we created two new Social Work positions we have a lead who
is helping who is a grant manager and helping me to support all of the financial um obligations for reporting back to the federal government um her name is Lindsay Lawler and she's done a great job this year and we were able to hire and employ Amanda Meyer's job
through the um the program otherwise would we would not have been able to increase that FTE this year so we're going to move on and talk about the initiatives and the work that we've been doing this year to advance and create a more robust mental health system for our students we tackled four
initiatives which felt like a lot um but we did a lot of really good work for all four of all four of these initiatives the four are Universal mental health screening uh tiered interventions so when we think about the mtss model tiered interventions being able to provide mental health interventions to
all of our students who have needs um mental health literacy and Universal mental health documentation I'm going to provide a quick definition to all four of these and we'll get more into what we've succeeded a little bit later Universal mental health screening is really a movement that looks at
providing screening to all students for potential issues with their mental health in the same way that we screen students for vision and hearing concerns we acknowledge that those two May create significant barriers to a student being able to access education we also acknowledge that mental health problems
might create a significant barrier to a student being able to access education so we are endeavoring to come to a place where we can screen all 177,000 of our students for potential concerns with their mental health this is not diagnostic we are not labeling any student with a with a mental health
disorder we just want to be able to say hey we're seeing some initial problems and then connect with parents and connect with their teachers and connect with the school building and say what are we seeing what kind of supports could we provide the student that might prevent this from ballooning into a
larger problem certainly we understand that somebody might just be having a bad day when they fill out the screener and we accommodate for that and we are able to follow up and do a little bit of validation of those scores um so that would be Universal mental health screening our mental health literacy
goal is around providing what's called mental health literacy to our middle school students this is a very nent thing a very beginning thing that we're doing but mental health literacy comes out of the public health literacy model which is that everyone should be able to understand their own mental health and
the four components of mental health literacy are how do I stay mentally healthy what are the things that I can do to maintain and support my own mental health how do I know when I'm starting to become mentally ill what are some signs of illness that I can look for how
do we reduce the stigma of mental illness and what how can we increase help-seeking behavior that would be I'm noticing that I'm getting sick and I know who to go to for help and I know how to ask for help um our tiered inter ventions like I said follow an mtss
model we did a lot of work around building tier 2 and tier three interventions this year so that would be for the students for whom our Universal work is not sufficient and they're showing signs of needing some additional support and then finally Universal mental health documentation is this idea
that we want all students to have documentation that allows them to be portable and this work is really going to come out of recent legislation that allow social workers School social workers to build for their services so that that's kind of a brief overview of
the work that we're doing these are the schools that were our partners throughout the year and they were amazing Partners in kind of working through the productive struggle we have Dakota middle school middle school right fit Kellogg Century leap uh Bishop rail
Gibbs Bamber and Longfellow all worked with us this year they opted in this was not a mandatory goal but they chose and they said we prioritize our students students mental health and we really want to make a goal and have some tangible work towards this work and we really appreciate all of the work that
they've done so briefly we're going to talk about some achievements that we've done this year and I'm very excited to tell you all about this the first the biggest lift that we did this year was completing a successful Universal screening Pilot We screened um students
two times a year with two separate screeners so that we were able to make a very well-informed recommendation for a screener that we would recommend our entire District adopt when we are moving towards Universal mental health screening it was a small subset of of students we asked each of our partners
to select 30 to 60 students that they would screen and go through the entire process from obtaining consent to with from parents to administering the screener to looking at the data that they got back communicating to parents about the results of the screeners and
then analyzing the data and triaging students into interventions um we were able to screen 300 students and the data that we got was really helpful in determining interventions for students in the pilot schools that we that we um worked with and I would like
Amanda to tell just a little bit about the work that she did at rail with that um as one of the schools who chose to participate in the Universal screening pilot my experience in ministering the um screeners were it was way easier and less time consuming than I
anticipated uh I chose to give give the screeners to identify students who scored at risk I then created groups and taught a mental health curriculum provided by the district using the screeners we were able to identify students who we may not otherwise have been able to make connections with and
provide interventions and services one student in particular would likely not have been identified and with using the screener he participated in group received group and individual support and skills and stated many times he looked forward to group and found it beneficial
another success story that I got permission from a social worker from Gibbs to tell you about is work that she did in looking at the screening data that that they completed at Gibbs and thinking about most of the students that they identified through the screener
were already receiving Services through our special education department and they were able to look at the data from the screener and adjust some of the goals that were on students IEPs to more closely match the struggles that they were exhibiting and that we were able to see on the screening it was she was very
excited to tell that story to us as well and I was excited to hear about it um so that was a successful pilot we now have a screener that we will recommend to move forward which is called The Basque three best um it gave us some very good information and is divided into
subscales that allows us to see students who might be exhibiting concerns for what's called an internalizing Disorder so those would be disorders that of of the mood like depression or anxiety if you were to look at me you wouldn't know whether or not I was struggling with those externalizing disorders so those
are disorders that clearly are more visible they are disorders that you can see in terms of potential conduct disorder or hyperactivity things like that and then there are the Adaptive scores which allow us to see whether or not a student is able to have um healthy
social connections with others so th that is the screener that we use and all of our sites Universal recommended that that was the screener that we move forward with uh the second achievement is tiered intervention training we were able to give six sessions to all of our
um skip Partners this the 10 schools nine schools nine schools that I mentioned six times a year on um tier 2 interventions like the one Amanda mentioned around depression and anxiety helping students develop skills to manage the symptoms of depression and
anxiety as well as um managing being able to deliver more culturally and linguistically appropriate services to students and being able to progress monitor the interventions that we are giving we are also doing work with Jill Dunn around resource mapping for our
tiered interventions the work that she's doing in mtss strongly aligns with the work that we are doing in mental health additionally we have tier three training that we have given to a select number of our staff members in the neurosequential model in education which I referenced in the companion document and neuro
feedback uh both of those allow students to receive interventions that are directly B brain based that allow them to create new neural Pathways around specific skills that they need to grow in order to manage their mental health
symptoms of mental illness um additionally I create we created an intervention steering team which is guiding Us in um developing strong procedures and policies around vetting interventions and determining the procedures for which we administer
interventions we did some brief work in aligning what we see as important with mental health literacy with the curriculum that is already being delivered in our health classes and we did some foundational work in developing a universal documentation protocol which will be supported by the Legislative
work that has been done in getting Su uh social workers to be able to build those are our achievements um and with every initiative there are gaps opportunities and challenges that's right and there's a list of them in front of you we're going to just talk briefly about them
there are competing priorities for our staff so when you look at mental health screening and um all of the things that we tackled this year that we just talked got to talk a little bit about these are still School staff and they are competing priorities there's lunch duty and there's bus Duty and there's crises and they're they're needing to shift and
pivot quickly to meet student needs within the day um tier one instruction we know that we have got strong seal being delivered universally across our early childhood through fifth grade grade in our elementary schools but we don't have those things still uh present
in a universal Way Beyond fifth grade um we have a bit of a funding model mismatch in the fact that we know that at any point in any given year 20% of our adolescence may experience a mental health Challenge and that's a lot of kids and you heard about the amount of
staff that we have access to so there's a little bit of um there's higher need potentially than what we have currently staffed addition we've got the need for um continued Community Education we know that in our community we are still learning about what what good mental
health looks like where our resources and supports are how we talk about this as our community and with one another to destigmatize and Sarah couple more yeah uh I think continued opportunities for families to engage in this work I think
will always be an opportunity in this work families need to have a a strong voice in the work that we're doing around supporting their children and there is always a need for increased opportunities we're thinking about family engagement events and more opportunities for families to both learn about what their students might be
experiencing or tell us about what their students might be experiencing it needs to be a feedback loop from both of us um as always the the need to reduce the stigma of mental health struggles is a persistent need in this work we know that the field of mental health is still
a relatively new field and yet we see the impacts of students mental health every day in our buildings and we we need to continue to do work to talk about it in the same way that we would talk about having a cold or having a a physical illness and finally we have an
opportunity to expand staff understanding of trauma responsive practices we're doing some of that work this summer with book studies uh Connie and I had the opportunity with a couple other staff to visit some school districts in Colorado who have been doing this trauma responsive work for a
little bit longer and you'll see there a link down there and I won't click on it right now but it is a of a fourth grade teacher who is able to speak very very intelligently and eloquently about why she needs to be trauma responsive in her classroom and we also have teachers who
are passionate about that and we want to be able to give them the access to the knowledge and the training so that they can also speak with with the same understanding that this teacher does around why trauma responsive P practices are so deeply important not just for our students who have experienced acute
trauma but for all of our students those would be our gaps opportunities and challenges and for next steps we intend to continue on with screening we will expand the number of students that we are able to screen next year um along with that we'll be developing some triaging procedures so that it is a
little bit it flows a little bit more easily when students are screened in as potentially having a struggle with their mental illness for how we can get them into and then exit them from an Intervention when they're ready to be done we're going to continue to expand
available interventions and training opportunities we have expanded tier 2 interventions that we are vetting right now including interventions around developing executive functioning for students which we know is a great need um as mentioned before we are doing some neurosequential model book studies this
summer and we're developing a foundational course for for staff members to be able to participate and we are also increasing the number of Staff members that are able to receive neuro feedback and biof feedback training which again is a a highly evidence-based practice for helping students learn how
to regulate their disregulated uh bodies and finally we are going to do a lot of work around Social Work billing and documentation because we know that a this is a legislative thing that has changed and we are aligning with legislation and B it is highly important
for us to be able to have social workers that are able to document the services that they provide also generate add Revenue which will be exciting for all of those thank you and now if we have any questions we would love to answer them Dr Marvin
thank you so much this is so impressive um not only you're doing a lot and um in such an organized intelligent strategic way for all of our kids a question I have this district and every District
continues to struggle with uh the effect potential effects at least of kids and screen time especially on cell phones have you dug into that at all I've actually just started reading the book anxious generation which talks about exactly that yes and there are impacts
and I think we are working to mitigate some of those impacts with the work that we're doing thank you director mclin um I've always been curious about the school like mental health therapy that I've heard about it but can you help me and maybe you can
just talk about this um how does that initiate does it initiate from the provider side the school side the family side you know thinking about it's to reduce and eliminate barriers but how do people all those get connected together sure well I can talk a little bit about
it you want to fill in the blanks we have we can a referral can be made anywhere so a parent can make a referral to their building administrator or they're building emotional me mental uh well-being staff member um they teacher can make a recommendation to a family or
inform about a resource um uh in general therapists are not coming to us in order to find children we are are connecting them to a an available resource that's an opportunity um we are obviously obligated to provide the services that
we need our children um with disabilities to have access to and so it's not a replacement for the services that we're required to provide in order to provide fape for students with disabilities but it's more access to all students both general education and special education and there's no limit
to who has access to that support within a building but you're right it's not not a super well-known resource it's kind of a Hidden Gem and their um case loads fill up fast and there are not enough therapists to go around in every building so it does there is not um an
there's an there's an inequality in that and that we are not able to provide our community right now can't fill all of those positions for our students in our community in that process then is there any sort of um holding place for weight list for something like that sure and they do
keep weight list within each of the buildings there are weight lists if they hit that and we um Sarah's in constant communication um uh monthly with our school length mental health agencies and talking about how we're problem solving right now how to consider some of our
Scholars some interns trying to expand this with the required amount of supervision that will still allow students to have access but that we know that the quality is appropriate for meeting children's needs I think I'd also like to add when we're talking
about referral uh a couple things first we never refer students to mental health therapy without the involvement of Families First parents need to be informed and they are the ones that can consent to that those services and the other piece is that we work with our
therapists very heavily in becoming embedded members of their school Community often they attend and um back to school nights or open houses or conferences just to be a familiar face for parents who are coming into the building so that they can say hey you're
the school Nick mental health therapist I think my child might need to see you and then they maintain a case load they're really really wonderful Partners in that thank you Dr Baro uh couple quick questions um our Community
Partners uh the mental health therapists the three [Music] um which are identified are they required to be uh compliant with District policies and practices um I'm curious along those lines we have a memorandum of
understanding where they that kind of governs the the partnership between us they are not governed though by fura because they are not school officials they are acting as collocated therapists so there are certain levels of confidentiality that um govern them that
are more restrictive than the than what a typical School staff would be complying with okay so then um similar to our SRO who aren't necessarily required but it is uh rpds practice to
ensure that those who are working or placed within our schools are ad depth at dealing with uh children uh can the same be said regard regarding our mental health um uh Partners absolutely they
are all Master's level clinicians they are all licensed through their appropriate licensing boards and they go through a fairly uh Hefty background check process before we and final question is it possible I know you were able to disaggregate uh
information regarding the uh mental health Scholars uh is it possible to or or are you at that point of being able to uh offer any information regarding um the impact whether it's our females or males
or eighth graders or 12th graders I mean do you have any measurements metrics along those lines as to where the needs are and uh are there strategies then that are being designed to identify or
address a particular grade and or uh age and or Community I think the Minnesota student survey is a really great resource for that we would see that in some age levels particularly in 11th grade our females are struggling more with signs
of mental illness than our males are um and are we able to create policies and practices around that I think the the short answer is absolutely yes and our ongoing work around interventions we'll hopefully do that thank you sure are you
wondering also director Barlo about the demographics of students who are receiving our servic part yeah I think we could obviously don't expect folks to have that off the top of their heads and we would need to aggregate it but I think that's a great question I actually don't know that and I would be interested in uh we have to yeah I
wouldn't expect you to but let's and we'd obviously have to do that in the aggregate but it's a really interesting and important question so thank you for that because I would be interested in that as as well we can get back to you on that go C have a um I have a lot of questions could
you uh could you elaborate on the distinction that you were drawing between skill development and mental health therapy and and how to draw that line yes absolutely and I think I will draw on my uh clinical practice
experience to help inform that if I were sitting in an office seeing someone for therapy we would talk a lot about very personal details of their life we would talk about who who they were struggling with at home maybe what their background
is um where they came from in life potential trauma triggers all of those things and then we would use that information to not only develop some skills around that but maybe heal some past experiences that they've had skills development really looks it's it's more
like I'm going to look at the symptom that is presenting right now and give you some tools to manage that we're not really looking at when we're talking about skill development curing per se anxiety or depression we're saying we can use some deep breathing when your anxiety is coming up
to manage those symptoms and get you back into the classroom and then a therapist might then follow up with what's the cause of the anxiety and how do we re resolve those kind of deeper seated issues does that answer your question yeah that is helpful thank you
thanks director Garcia hi I have a few questions so I also want to um sort of reference uh the question that director mclin was asking um and I would say like it's an imperfect practice Because unless you're at a place like Fernbrook or Family
Service Rochester in the outpatient World about how you do a referral because we know that school based U mental health workers exist it's kind of on the therapist to just sort of understand like oh you're of school age might there be schooling to Mental
Health Options and it's more like asking the family to kind of look into that um whereas I could just walk over to the school based mental health manager and say do you have openings at this particular school because I know that this kid goes there um so that which
kind of leads into one of my questions so you mentioned that the community uh some of the partners aren't able to staff enough to provide the services that are needed are there other things that we're also missing and and being able to provide services so not just
lack of outpatient like community staff that are collocated but are there other things that we might need um if I understand just I want to make sure I understand other things that you think that as a district or as school staff that we might be be needing
to fill in a gap yeah so we asked our the retirees one of the questions was if you could give a million dollars to donate to support any cause in the school district what would it be and so if I was giving a million to support mental health um obviously I cannot create outpatients uh human beings or
people that are maybe um applying to be a a mental health professional within the school district are there other things that you would ask for if you have the money I think space would be a a number one priority I know that there are buildings who are just bursting at
the seams and are struggling to find appropriate space for therapists um in terms of other barriers aside from the people capacity I'm thinking of two things space um we
was I was I just also attended a region director's meeting today um for region 10 and we know that new legislation also is going to ask our schools to be able to find space for secondary students to access their own therapy outside of
school outside of Staff but with location but it's again dependent on Space it's not that we're required to do it but we're required to take a look at our space coming up forward that was that was the first thing that I was also thinking about and second chemical health we have such an incredibly
enormous need for chemical health supports and Dr Buel thankfully has decided to use our support Personnel Aid funding that was just given by the legislature last year on July first to use our pot of funds for chemical health specialists chemical health counselors
in this district and they're very hard to find and um I think that that amount increases a little bit for next year in its second year and we hoping to fill but even that our our current chem Health Counselors are saying we're getting in the middle schools but we
can't get as far as we need to go that's what we need to hit really hard in terms of prevention and awareness and building knowledge and so that would be that would chemical health would definitely be a priority excellent I also wonder too uh just from my personal experience
of like working with a kid who the staff at the school were super accommodating like we there's not school link mental health and and I didn't want to take them out of class or like away from the school cuz it would you know then it would be like a 2 or three hour event for just you know a 53 minute therapy
session um they offered the space they somebody moved out of an office to offer this kid space but then we couldn't connect we spent about 15 minutes doing the can you hear me oh you're Frozen so the Wi-Fi also FYI um is a
problem um when those things are when we are able to do that I I was also I have a couple other questions I was also wondering um so there aren't School psychologists it looks like in in the district so are you referring out for psychological evaluations often yeah so
the E they're on the EMW staff what you saw there are not just people that are those are folks that are connected specifically to being able to support students both General Ed education and special education in this District we do employ School
psychologists they are specifically and only right now for supporting children with disabilities in the evaluation process so that is definitely something that we could enhance we could definitely take a look at how we utilize our school psychologists but currently
we employ 18 School psychologists and they don't find their way onto this grid right now because they don't get to provide the supports to students outside of the special education identification process I see thank you that was way more than I expected to see in the
district um um and I also had a clarifying question so you had said that you're not seeing like increased levels of like severe and persistent mental illness like schizophrenia do you mean that you're not seeing it because in the sense that like we aren't treating it in the district because somebody else is
doing it or you're just not seeing it at all I think what I meant by that is that we just simply don't identify students who have severe and persistent mental illness in that way we are not a diagnostic agency aside from the work that our clinical social workers do um
with our students who are receiving special education services if we are seeing students who have an increase of symptomology that might suggest that they typically go elsewhere for treatment and that would not typically be something that we ask our school social workers to intervene with because
that's kind of beyond their their scope of practice here sure yeah um yeah because I think in the outpatient world we are seeing a lot of that so I'm like wow that's amazing that you're not seeing it in school it would also reflect our care and treat who are headed to care and treatment and or getting those Services outside of our
district that we continue to support um financially okay just one it's like a cluster of the questions about the assessment um so how early are we remind me how early are we doing the universal screening is it like prek kindergarten
kindergarten through Beyond 12 Amanda was able to screen students at the rail program up through age 22 excellent yes um and are we using that data for anything besides the immediate need of the student like are we collecting data
to show that there's a particular subset of professionals that we might need because a lot of kids are presenting like with this type of thing um and I'm thinking like budget in the future I think that would be the hope I think uh to remember this was a very early pilot and the purpose of this pilot was really
just to hammer out procedure and to determine the screener I think eventually we would love to be able to use that information for th those purposes the other thing to keep in mind is that there is proposed legislation that suggests that we may have to destroy all Universal screening
information after 60 days every time we screen a student so that legislation may impact the way that we're able to use that data interesting and I I mean I say this just in terms of one of my other day jobs is that I think that in the
outpatient world even maybe within Mayo to it's like we recognize the need and I I wish that there were the resources which includes the funding to be able to just sort of wrap around like we have you know like Riverstone Family Service Rochester beautiful day counseling
flourish you know a lot of people in those spaces understand the need and some of us are doing the work with students we know go to the district but maybe we're not sort of crossing paths or doing a lot more of like the consult Consulting with um and I feel like if we
were just more integrated um and it was more interdisciplinary like outside and across school I think that that would be so helpful to the students um so I I absolutely appreciate the work you're doing and I think it's a huge undertaking and it's so so needed so thank you for what you're
doing and I think I'd like to go back to where this started because I remember the study session that we had in February of 2023 when you came before us with um some pretty in intensive self- assessment and um you looked at what the
needs were of the students and I think that was a pretty heavy meeting because we really did see the data of why our students were struggling and you also did a pretty intensive assessment of what you could provide for those students and um but I left that meeting
very hopeful because of uh your intentionality and your commitment and the plans you had already identified right at that point so the fact that we're here now um with this plan and these successes I appreciate that most everything we've done in our strategic
plan has started with a very hard look at what we're not doing right and um even though it's hard to hear and it's hard to share um the fact that you were committed to that from the beginning and um in all the kinds of presentations that we've had with you um
you know as director Garcia said I think this weighs heavily on all of us because we do know that before we can get our students to academic success they have to be in the right place to be able to do it so um I'm grateful for um not only
your commitment to just individual students but you also see the systemic um approach and and how you can bring everyone along and that graphic of all the schools that we're willing to to participate and pilot and who have already found success I think bodess well for where we're going to go from
here so thank you again any other comments or questions great thank you very much thank you for your workk you could I suggest a five minute recess before the next item you can suggest a
five minute recess we will return at 6 35 p.m. how's [Music] that e e e e
e e e e e e e e e e come
On's a stor you're waiting for me we're just going to watch you tell board's back in session at 6:36 p.m. the next item is a prep for action item the approval of the long-term facilities maintenance plan uh this will be an
action item on the July 16th regular meeting superintendent pel thank you chair Nathan and in interest of time I'll go directly to chief administrative officer John Carlson who is ready to go all right well thank you uh superintendent Mel and chair Nathan and board members uh we are here for our
annual discussion about the long-term facilities maintenance Revenue uh this uh source of funding is defined in Minnesota state statute 123b 595 and it explicitly uh talks about how these expenditures or how this Revenue can be
used on expenditures for um capital and maintenance projects for deferred uh projects and health and safety projects and some accessibility projects this is not funding for new construction of facilities or explicitly for Energy Efficiency
projects annually uh if you're paying attention uh reading uh different stories about school districts right now you hear two things they're approving budgets and they're working on approving their ltfm or long-term facility maintenance plans for uh the year ahead uh this is due um by all districts we
need to submit our plans that our board approved by July 31st to the Department of Education uh this is the first step in setting um one of the components of the property tax levy that we will get to you in September of 2024 uh this is
driving the uh pay as you go portion uh for 2025 uh and really uh coming up tonight you're going to be asked to approve a School District budget for the 2425 school year this is the first component now as we work on the 25-26 school year
budget so within our plan I'm not going to highlight within the uh attachment you were provided there's uh projects at nearly every school building that we own I just wanted to highlight uh a handful of the larger projects so wrapping up construction right now there's funding
in the plan to finish the John Marshall High School project it's been going on since the summer of 2022 and will be wrapped up this year although as you look ahead uh there are some more projects coming on the exterior of John Marshall High School like tennis courts um track and Stadium at Kellogg middle
school this is the kickoff to their two Sumer project actually started uh before spring break and they were able to work on some nights and weekends and around students uh without impacting their day to get a jump on it before school it out this summer uh a very significant project
coming is the Mayo High School uh indoor air quality project along with some other ancillary projects like parking lots and surfaces and and continuing to address needs at that building uh I should say that project is in design so we have started working on
it uh and then projects behind that in Q the where we have not actually started design our Education Services Center also commonly now known as Phoenix academy uh for a potential project there in summer of 2026 and then Willow Creek Middle School getting an indoor air
quality project in the Summers of 2028 and 2029 so at this point I'd open it up for any questions Dr Workman it's it's not really a question I'll start with a not a question first um I'm always just really incredibly amazed at the
wonderful job that this team does on keeping our facilities maintained roofs aren't falling in and how you allow flexibility so that if you need to adjust a project because something like asbest in Tiles at Mayo High School
comes along that you could deal with that so my question really is do you anticipate any of these summer projects needing to have a longer summer um than what we are currently doing by state law yeah right now we're using um some flexibility and statute
that can allow us to change our calendar slightly um from year to year if we need to and we bring that to you a year or two right now we're planning to work within what we think is what a calendar that might be recomended to you in the future thank
you so I think I ask you this every year what's the average age of our buildings in the district I want to say it's right in the 30 some uh years I have the spreadsheet open but I don't actually have the
average calculation in front of me so sorry you can't do it in your head I can't do it in my head I have every listing of every building and what they year what year they are built and how many square feet but I do not have that uh right now well regardless 37 years is
um a um mil an achievement um and I think it's because of what director Workman said is that you are on top of the repairs and maintenance that is needed um I think some people might not understand um where you get these
project ideas so how do we know that all of these projects are needed and when can tell us a little bit more about that very good um part of this was driven by a long-term facilities assessment that was done several years ago before the last uh 2019 uh building
construction referendum to give us the um input or the data as to what uh problems needed to be addressed over the Long Haul part of it is from urgent needs that show up uh from year toe part of it is from um input from our own staff and um getting their um IDE ideas
of things that need to be repaired that maybe we're not seeing but most of the things we are aware from uh years and years of planning and looking at the assessments that we've already completed right I think the other um item that uh people might not have seen if they look
at the agenda item is the um the uh graphic about the debt related to paying for these and I think if people look at that they see the work that you do um to ensure that the tax rate stays relatively stable across all the years
it's just the mix of um where the funding is coming from in order to pay for this but I think for taxpayers um the fact that you're able to manage this with a steady tax rate and achieve all of these projects without wild fluctuations of increases um is is
really also something that we should we should point out um as people are concerned about their their taxes absolutely agreed we we did some thoughtful planning and some replanning over the last uh couple weeks on this to uh come up with an option that we thought um obviously address the needs
didn't need to be addressed but in the order that would keep property taxes as stable over the Long Haul as possible while it's not a mandate for me or a policy that we have to do that we feel it's um uh prudent to do that as we think about the longterm tax
implications any other questions board members we will have one more opportunity to address this at the July 16th meeting thank you our next item is 7.2 and other prep for Action the amplify science curriculum quote superintendent Pi up
thank you chair Nathan as uh board members are aware well aware we have had uh major progress made major progress on um adopting a new literacy curriculum for our elementary schools this year which we have funded the initial adoption of from various sources including our federal covid funding and
as I shared with board members when we had our literacy update we also are in the midst and have selected new curricular resources in science which are important because Minnesota is transitioning from our state's uh academic standards and science that were passed in
20109 to new standards that were passed in 2019 that said the tight Financial circumstances that we continue to navigate led me and our team to conclude that we could not afford to purchase new
science curricular resources this year given the other priorities and the financial challenges that we continue to navigate I'm pleased pleas to report though that as we put together the final budget for the year that you I hope will approve in your next agenda item we
concluded that in uh tightening our belts and reallocating some resources we are able to fund the purchase of some important new curricular resources from our final um uh remaining covid funding which must be expended by federal law by
the end of September 2024 um and so this is exciting because uh before we know it in the spring of 2025 our students will be taking the MCA tests in science on new standards and I was quite concerned about not being able to move forward with new curricular
resources for our teachers in grades K through five in science we've had a working group of teachers that actually has been working for almost two years to look at different curricular models in science they Dove deep into five different curricula and they uh selected one from a company that I've actually
known well for many years called amplify um and they piloted that as uh we just heard in our Mental Health update we are fans of going slow to go fast in Rochester Public Schools and trying things small to see what works before we take them to scale and so we piloted
during the 2223 school year and the 23 24 school year um several of the units in the amplify science curriculum it's a curriculum that emphasizes um helping kids understand phenomena like sunlight and uh weather and learn the science by
investigating those phenomena it uh seeks to expose our students including our youngest students to having engaging and realistic experiences that actually Mirror Mirror how scientists and Engineers do their work they investigate those phenomena um with Hands-On
activities um and the science resources include both print materials and digital modeling tools and also simulations that actually the students um engage in and all of that comes together um as is outlined in the board agenda item
tonight in uh somewhat greater detail our kinderg gardeners in the units I'm hoping you will approve the purchase of tonight we'll be looking at plants and animals and sunlight and weather our first graders we'll be looking at light and sound and animal and plant defenses our second graders will get into plant
and animal relationships and the properties of different materials third graders will begin looking at environments and what it takes for living species and plants to survive in those environments they'll begin to look at inheritance and traits of species in fourth grade they'll be getting into the
Earth's features and energy converion and in fifth grade they'll beginning to look at ecosystem restoration and modeling matter these are not a comprehensive these do not constitute a Comprehensive Science curriculum that covers all of the Minnesota academic standards there are resources that we
need to add in the years ahead but these are valuable Rich resources that I'm hoping you'll approve the purchase of there is as board members are aware a time-sensitive nature here to this that we need to approve the purchases and make the purchases sufficiently in advance of SE September 30th to use the
Fed ederal covid funding that uh expires at that point so the matter before you would approve $846,000 who are out there watching this in the middle of summer we are not going to roll this out at the same moment you are rolling out a new literacy curriculum we
are going to stagger the science implementation to fit with the literacy curriculum which I know many of you are voluntarily and uh in some cases with compensation spending the summer working on so we need to make this purchase now but we will not overwhelm you with the implementation of two brand new
curricula at the same time in September um but we do want to secure these resources um we also as I mentioned a moment ago we'll need to look at other resources to make sure we're providing students with access to all of the new Minnesota standards but this would be a very significant step forward with really
deep rich um science uh curricula for our students that our teachers endorsed after piloting it and so we are not asking for a vote on this tonight um we are putting it in the prep for Action category we will do in the fall um I'll
work with the executive committee to schedule an overview of where we are with science in the early grades and this curriculum um we'll fit that into the boards uh very full schedule in the fall and we're hoping in the meantime you will approve this at your next meeting to enable us to move forward
with this purchase director cook um yeah I I I love reading the descriptions of the different grade level um kind of inquiries that uh um will will be
possible with students adopting perspectives of different scientific and Engineering roles um but one of the thoughts I I couldn't um Escape as I was uh reading
this uh is in in other areas in recent history inquiry based curriculum have uh in hindsight been seen as lacking a sufficient amount of explicit
instruction certainly in literacy um maybe in numeracy and I don't know that any of that applies to Scientific curriculum but I just wanted to um pose that question um to you and maybe either based on what our thought
of as best practices and what types of curriculum are most efficacious um or what was learned in the trials if that's if there was I don't know whether that applies or not and whether that's a concern that was uh considered yeah I appreciate that
I will refrain from the very interesting discussion we could have about literacy and those because it'd be really interesting but then we'll go down that rabbit hole the um the the the shift in science instruction really began with the Next Generation science standards which were B which were rooted in work that the National Science Foundation
funded and was very rigorous work around conceptual Mastery of science so you understand the Core Concepts but that did not ignore the process of science the capacity to measure to do experiments to recall information and so
I think we're not um uh going uh to the extreme of kids just asking questions and not learning facts or learning processes that it really is a combination in which there is actually a
narrative a story but that the curriculum is quite intentional about making sure students are mastering the Knowledge and Skills that are required to understand the phenomenon so it's a really critical point I'm glad you're making it um there is a constant tension
and we have seen this this year in Rochester Public Schools on some of our deeper learning teams which is a separate effort but there is a tension between getting students highly engaged in learning and very active but not mastering academic
content because you can have students very very interactive and excited and not learning new Knowledge and Skills it sounds paradoxical but it's actually quite easy to see happen and because student engagement is really important
and not easy as a teacher you can think you'd hit it out of the park with a highly engaging interactive uh lesson or unit or even course and then you look at the test scores or you look at your own test
probably better and you realize wo they didn't Master the foundational skills uh or the foundational Concepts and of course it's a both and that we're aiming for and that's why truly interactive deeper learning has Mastery as its first
component um it's it's tempting to jump right to Identity and creativity but if the kids are not mastering that content it's not really deeper learning it's highly engaging learning which is much better than boring learning but it does
not actually get into that zone so it's a it's something I know this team really looked at and thought a lot about the initial frankly the initial push back on amplify was that it's a really heavy lift I mean it's a heavy lift for teachers to learn the science to learn the content and then like most Elementary science curricula it's very
kit heavy like we're the the company sends us the dirt and the blocks and the things that the kids are actually using which is part of the reason there's a continuing expense but in order order to make sure you're not just guiding kids through the activity but you're really
sure they're mastering the foundational concept that teacher needs to have a deep understanding of that conceptual Mastery so that it doesn't just become good activity management um so really a really important point that I think I think these units do a nice job I will
be honest one of the resources that the team also looked at uh was a purely video-based resource in which kids watch a short video like about volcanoes and it tells them some of the things about like thermodynamics in third grade language um it would have
allowed us to check the box of a lot of Minnesota academic standards and science to say oh the kid watched a video on it and as we talked about it partly driven by the fact that we didn't think we had enough money to buy uh anything and and then now we're investing in that we also
realized it was very low-level reductive introduction it allowed us to say we showed the kid a video about a science phenomenon and that's very different that what we are prioritizing this unit but we do have some gaps we need to fill in the Minnesota new science standards that are not covered by these units and
that'll be something as our new Chief academic officer Mona Perkins starts next month that we'll be talking with uh her about quite a bit um that that is all very helpful and and very good to hear um the the only other thing I was wondering and you sort
of touched on it was the extent of consumables and things just looking at the purchase disorder it indicated that this would go as you said for seven years but is that is this one-time purchase
covering all of the consumables and so forth for that entire period or for these units amplify actually has a full curriculum that would cover many more units we are buying kind of the greatest HTS that of for the Minnesota standards and part of
the cost was we needed to buy the consumables out out far enough to know we have this ability to keep teaching the units so um it is a unique kind of curricular purchase whereas like in my field when I was a teacher you bought the social studies St textbooks once and
then probably you used them far longer than maybe you should have but that was the one-time purchase this a science curricula is kind of the gift that keeps on giving because you have to keep refreshing the kits um which is great for the kids but it is a continuing cost so this is we're investing more fun in
fewer units in order to afford the um manipulatives that the kids need okay thank you Dr Workman so I my question is a little bit it's diverges from the one that uh director cook asked but I've
noticed in the quote that was provided it says it it expires on December 30th 2023 has that been updated um are these prices still solid yes the company when we realized that we were able to make this purchase with our remaining uh Co
funds we got a new quote and so I apologize for the fact that that date has not been changed but this is a current quote that we confirmed with the company today okay that's great um and then the other thing is do you know offand what the number is from the covid dollars percent or the dollar amount
from Co roughly that will this would all the $846,000 would all be from Co it would all be from covid-19 okay great thank you Dr bar and and um so the amplifi signs will be available
districtwide K through five yes thank you thank you anything else good all right we will take this up again on July 16th our next item 8.1 is an action item approval of the 20242 budget we have
discussed this budget at the June 4th regular meeting and the June 11th study session I will read the resolution ask for a motion and second and if reced we'll open the floor for additional information and discussion on the resolution be it resolved that the school board of Independent School
District 535 does hereby approve and appropriate $429 m583 597 for the 2024 2025 original budget as follows for fund one general fund 296
million $511,500 fund two F Food Service fund 122 m752 n85 uh fund four community service fund1
m636 fund six build and construction fund $ 347564 69 fund s Debt Service fund 27,5 183,184 , 442,000
fund 20 workers compensation fund $897,500 25 Dental trust fund $2,752 500 fund 29 Health Trust Fund 32,7 186,187 fund 30 printing services fund
$93,700 and fund 45 post-employment benefits trust fund 1,771 one30 is there a motion to approve approval second it has been moved and seconded any questions discussion or
information superintendent P up um chair Nathan I I'll be brief because you have had many updates on uh this budget over many months but um you will recall that back in January you approved some parameters to guide our work on the budget and I want to just briefly go
back to those seven parameters um and uh just touch on each one because I believe that we have met them and I want to thank uh John Carlson and Andy krogstad and their team for five months of work that I believe came held true to the direction you gave us back in January the first parameter was one constrain
new hires and large purchases to avoid further increasing the imbalance between expenditures and revenues uh we have done that we have held very tight to our staffing levels most of the Staffing increases and they are marginal but they exist are tied to the growth in students
who have an individualized education plan who receive special education services in our district which of course we are both um committed to and required to serve so most of our staffing growth was in the area of Special Ed I know that's a continuing Focus for this board um and it should be but we held tight on
uh Staffing ratios the second parameter you gave us was when making reductions or allocating new revenues prioritize the objectives and initiatives of the RPS strategic plan as the board knows well because of Mao clinics donation and because of board's decision to use
reserves we are not making major reductions this year which is the first year since I've been in Rochester that's the case we also however are not making new Investments and so I believe we've met that parameter it's a status quo year number three was a parameter about
that Mayo Clinic donation use the $10 million gift from Mayo Clinic to avoid increasing class sizes or closing schools during the 20124 2025 school year um it was not long before the board approved these parameters that this room was full of uh people who were
understandably very upset about school closures and changing attendance boundaries and reconfiguration of services across the district and so Mayo Clinic's gift uh as well as the board's use of reserves has in fact allowed us not to move in those difficult um
directions but uh as I've said almost every meeting if we're not successful in passing a referendum next fall those reductions will be back on the table number four was settling current and future labor parameters uh agreements within parameters approved by the RPS School Board I'm pleased that we have
settled all of our labor contracts in this cycle within the parameters you've given us that was not easy in several instances at board as board members and our Union partners are well aware but I'm grateful to them uh all for coming in within those parameters after sometimes challenging negotiations um
number five was used 7 million in budget reserves to fund the district's Assumption of much of the employee Healthcare Premium cost during the 24 25 school year and take steps to contain premium increases without reducing benefits um your approval of the reserve
has made possible the uh shift a really a structural shift in how we uh deal with employee Healthcare in Rochester Public Schools uh as you know had we not done that we would have had especially some of our lower compensated employees essentially working entirely for healthcare and that would have been UNS
sustainable for them um we also are beginning to see the curve bending in our healthcare costs through the new provider and I look forward to finding sharing more with you about it it's early um but we're seeing some encouraging signs of Cost Containment that was also part of your parameter
number six was recommend reductions of 2.5 million to reduce the district's remaining deficit for 2425 as we discussed and Andy described um the new initiative we've launched to increase our thirdparty billing for services we provide students with disabilities and other services is going to cover more
than a million dollars of that and um the rest of what we anticipated would be an additional $2.5 million deficit was able to be covered by what we did on your first parameter which was staying tight to Staffing and so because we did not increase staff we reduced Staffing
where enrollment went down we were able to um uh cover the rest of that anticipated deficit from constraining our uh salary and benefit expenses and then number seven is something that is absolutely in the internal planning stage um which was design and launch a
multi-year eff effort to increase enrollment in Rochester Public Schools um sometimes when I me meet with business people and actually I met with uh one today um they talk about running a school district like a business and I've said there's a lot to be said for that uh we have brought people in from
the corporate world to run our recruiting effort to run our project management effort uh Andy has a diverse background in finance but schools are not businesses we can't charge for our fees we can't uh tell people that our services are um full and we can't serve
you um but we can work to be the provider of choice in Rochester Public Schools and so um over time the single best thing we can do financially is to continue to be that provider of choice which we are for more than three qus of the school age kids who live in
Rochester Public Schools so I think um chair Nathan and board members we've met those parameters that you charged us with back in January and I uh hope you feel ready to approve this budget today thank you board members any questions or
comments I Dr brother uh first of all Dr pel thank you for reminding us of those parameters uh I think it's important for those of us who are on the board and the community as well um and while the truth
is this is a significant amount of money I appreciate the fact that we've had five meetings prior to tonight to walk through and be uh present it with uh uh expenditure Revenue uh to where the
public should be fully confident that uh uh the vote we're about to make is well informed uh and deliberate and uh so to Andy and John and those who work uh and support this important effort thank
you anything else board members hearing none all in favor of the resolution say I I I opposed resolution and the budget has been approved our next item is other business 9.1 board questions and responses I
don't believe there were any uh questions submitted by board members before the meeting the ABCD um that has been updated is available in this agenda item for reference are there any agenda items board members would like to raise for a future meeting
agenda hearing hearing none upcoming board meeting dates July 16th at 5:30 we have a regular meeting July 23rd at 5:30 we have a study session August 6 from 4: to 6:00 pm note the different time we
have a regular meeting and August 20th at 5:30 p.m. we have a regular meeting and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 7:06 p.m. e e