this regular meeting of the Independent School District 535 School Board is called to order at 5:31 p.m on Tuesday April 22nd 2025 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 school board members Superintendent Kent Pel a non- voting exeicio member and assistant school board clerk Miss Anne
Kramer miss Kramer would you please call the role director Barlo here treasurer Cook here director Mclofflin here clerk Marvin here nathan here director White here vice Chairman
we heard you thank you at this time we offer the opportunity to say the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for
all 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 board members all of our votes tonight will have to be roll call because we have a board member attending virtually so Miss
Kramer will you please call the role on approval of the agenda director Barlo I i director I clerk Margin here i
director White I vice Chair Workman the agenda has been approved the agenda and documents for this meeting are available online at rochestererschools.org/simly org/simly 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 hear 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 p.m on the Monday
before the school board meeting the form is available on the RPS website and on the assembly main page a reminder that policy 206 and 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 comment procedure 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 will have three minutes to speak and the timer will be displayed in front of me please begin your remarks by stating your name our first speaker tonight is Joanne Barkmeer item 4.1 information and outreach is
National School Bus Driver Appreciation Day today is School Bus Driver Appreciation Day and the purpose of the day is to recognize school bus and our van drivers for their efforts to go above and beyond in order to transport students to school every day here in
Rochester our bus and van drivers ensure the safety and well-being of our students while transporting them to and from school every day our drivers transport over 10,000 students on yellow buses and almost 900 students on vans across over 13,000 miles of daily routes
the 260 bus and van drivers that transport RPS students are the first people to greet many of our students in the morning the last to say goodbye each afternoon which significantly impacts all of those students every day we thank these essential members of our Rochester
public schools community for supporting the safety and sense of belonging for our students and just a reminder we are still facing a shortage of bus and van drivers and first student is hiring so you can view the opportunities at workfirst.com administrative
professionals day is tomorrow April 23rd our receptionist secretaries administrative coordinators and office managers do an exceptional job and work hard to keep our schools and offices organized and running efficiently they are the front line of welcoming families and students to our buildings and
offices and often the first stop for addressing an issue we are grateful for their friendly and professional presence please join us in thanking them the next time you call email or visit a school or district building or program our next information and
outreach item 4.2 is activities update Century Chess Champions superintendent Pel thank you Madam Chair uh it is a pleasure to ask Chuck Handlin and uh some of our Century High School state
champion chess tournament winners to come on up to give us a brief overview of the incredible victory that they achieved and the great work that they've been doing so great to see you Chuck great to see you guys why don't you take
a seat um board members we are going to be trying to every board meeting from this point on recognize some type of student accomplishment sometimes they will be athletic sometimes they'll be academic sometimes they'll be artistic sometimes they'll be none of the above and so tonight is one of the first in
that series and so it's great to begin with all of you and so thank you let us know what happened the state tournament well um I'm Chuck Wheeler Hanland and I've coached the Century Chess team for 25 years
uh and I I'm sorry to say that two members are playing tennis but I'll talk about them later um but these gentlemen would probably be more comfortable behind a chessboard with 30 seconds left on their clock than
they are right now but I'm going to let each of them just introduce themselves and say a little bit uh to my right is our captain so we'll start and you can introduce yourselves and say a little bit about
what the experience was for you uh hi hi i'm Cole Lappy uh I'm the captain as he said before this is my third year uh here at the Century Chess team um it's been a pretty great experience as you could imagine it's a little stressful uh
sophomore wrangling a bunch of freshmen we have a young team this year but we've done amazing and I'm hopeful for the future uh we have so many great years ahead of us our team's only going to get better yeah no I think they're all green means go
um hi I'm Calder Win and I've been on this team for around say two years and I think it's been a great experience just everyone's always been nice per se and I think my friend Cole over
here great captain but I'm sorry it's a deal with all of us tell them uh how what place you were in the tournament oh in the state tournament i'm if I can recall correctly I pretty sure I got 11th place yeah 11th
out of probably 125 students okay hello i'm Andrew Merkel and I've been with the chess team for I think one year now i'm a freshman well with the varsity but he played junior varsity yeah true
um chess has always been great for me because I I've just been able to connect with so many people and being on this team we go to so many different tournaments and you just meet a lot of people you're able to exercise your intellect and overall just be able to be
good at games that you like to play such as chess so uh the two members that are not here right now uh both were uh got trophies in their division so in the United States Chess Federation you have
a rating and when you start your ratings probably about 500 and if you're in the 2000s you're a master or grandmaster so in the under 1,200
grouping um one of our freshman Johan Mayberg placed first and uh his colleague Josh Joshua Wang was second uh so as Cole mentioned we have we had four
freshmen and I had no idea what their ceiling would be because in the previous year they were in the junior high tournament but now they'd be playing against the big boys and they were hyperfocused to give you a little idea
of what this is like it's a two-day tournament and they play four games the first day now each player has an hour to make their moves and it's not uncommon for a game to go two hours or more so
they put in about 10 hours of chess for some of them on that first day and you would think they were wiped out but when I took them to McDonald's no they were not wiped out they were still ready to go um and then the next day they had
three rounds so they played seven rounds and you know I've always told the team if you get four out of seven that's above 500 you know that's pretty good score but we had three players get five
out of seven and two of them were freshman six out of seven you're in the you're one of the co- champions probably so just their first year they did just an incredible job they were super
focused we went into the last round with um three teams well there were actually five that were within a point of each other you get a point for a win and a half point for a draw so you could get if seven if and
they count the scores of the top four on your team so you could get 28 theoretical points but there were like four teams it was very bunched up and it was anybody's chance to take it i knew we needed two points and we got that
from the round and were able to tie with two other teams it it was pretty uh amazing that they outdid last year's team which took second so um one of the things I want to mention is there were
other successes for Rochester public school students um I'm just going to mention that uh eighth grader Luke Selin was able to place eighth in the junior high tournament and then a Mayo High
School senior Isaac an placed fourth and he was in the playoff for the national champ the champion for the state that would go to the national tournament so in the 25 years uh we've had a Rochester team that's
been in the top 10 or top five in the top 10 every year and in the top five for like 12 out of those 25 years and why is that it's because of the Rochester Chess Club uh a nonprofit that we work
together they host tournaments they've funded students to go to state they've written grants for the schools to take teams like the English speakers other languages in the years past um we work
collaboratively no other sport does that you don't have all the hockey coaches working together to improve each other uh and it doesn't matter which team you're on we help each other when we go to state we have one team for one room
for all the Rochester parents players everybody and every coach is willing to do an analysis of a players's game so the these guys are hungry in fact I'm taking to them to a tournament in Wisconsin on Saturday um which there are
will be some cash prizes i've told them what my percentage is uh but with the NIL we don't have to worry about them losing any eligibility um before we finish here um Cole would
like to uh on behalf of the team uh do a little presentation here yeah to thank you for your uh support I wanted to offer this shirt to Dr i'm cool finally so awesome thank you now show the back
because we want you to know the Panthers got your back you move we pounce that is so awesome thank you so much for your support great madam Chair Director Barlo I I wanted to
acknowledge uh Chuck you know retired uh school teacher um your continued commitment to our students um is a a true blessing and I hope uh the team
members uh recognize uh Mr han is doing this you know out of his love for uh the game and I think the future that he sees in you and I just encourage you to strive to do your best thank you so much
thank you and if congratulations if anybody's watching it and has young chess players having had two chess players be coached by Mr hanlin and had a lifelong impact on um their academics their their approach to life i suggest
you get your kid involved in chess um get them to learn it's a great sport i think these guys can vouch for how exciting it is and um and it's not just it looks like an isolating game because it's just you and someone else but I've seen the camaraderie on these chess teams and how they support each other
and um it's just a really wonderful opportunity that we offer our kids so thank you Chuck and to all the other coaches who kept it going for all these years yeah thank you there I mentioned the Rochester Chess Club they meet every Tuesday evening uh at the Mayo Harwick
building and they'll take six year olds and work with them if they want to learn the game of chess community Ed runs some things as well thank you thank you thank you guys so our next item is 4.3 board member
updates any board member have updates from their committees since the last meeting or any other information to share oh director Marvin surprise um at this time I'd like to invite Cypress who is a member of Rochester Public Schools
Student School Board to the table up here uh last Wednesday Cypress and four other student school board members um attended the um Minnesota attendance convening um at the Minnesota Department of Education building uh the focus of
that conference was to learn about and to share some of the challenges and possible solutions to the absenteeism rate that's common throughout the K12 schools in Minnesota and really throughout the nation um Rochester was
asked to send a panel of students uh to attend and to to provide a presentation um about their perception and in terms of chronic absenteeism uh Lieutenant Governor Peggy Flanigan facilitated a discussion before the panel among the
adults there about why their schools uh were seeing so many kids were were absent um chronically and it was interesting that across the state in rural areas and and uh bigger cities um it was sort of the same kind of of
message they said that kids were not coming to school because of transportation problems or because of the physical or emotional challenges some of the students didn't see that any positive outcome would uh would uh result uh from an education they said
that schools weren't welcoming or classes weren't relevant and they said that they had fallen so far behind they needed support and they just felt helpless and we heard this again and again and again now we know that when we talk about students and the challenges
they face and what some solutions might be we had better listen to students and not just listen to them but really act on what what they're saying um the audience there was riveted to what our
students had to tell them and they gave them a lot of information our students are thoughtful they are profound um they are eloquent and they have done a lot of listening to students in their high school so they represented I think our
district well cypress is one of the five who attended and Cypress I'd like you to introduce yourself where you go to school what grade you're in and then talk a little bit about the panel that you were part of oh and I should say too sorry I asked you to do that and then I interrupted you you had that experience
before um Will Ruffen and Sarah Louise Henry were vitally um influential in getting this group together and getting them transported and both of them um and along with me were able to witness what a great job our students did go ahead
hello my name is Cypus Pivar i am a senior at male high school and I would like to speak about the student panel that we attended I say last week or two weeks ago and I'm one of the five students and I would like to name them
out i'm Cyus Pivar there was Katarina Julia Katarina who's a senior julie is a senior uh Julu from Century who's a senior and I hope I don't butcher it ayen Ayen Ayen from
Century who was a sophomore and we learned from this meeting that one of the biggest reasons why students won't attend school like absenteeism is the lack of connection that they feel
and so when we of male high school or RPS we mentioned the TOPS room which is located in male high school and that is is a program that is about peers supporting each other having
someone to speak to when you need help and you just just always having someone to reach out to and it helps a lot of the connection me I am a peer supporter at in the top room which stands for
teens offer peer support and daily I help students who walk in asking them how's your day how are you doing um would you like to speak and I wouldn't say all the time they they
would say no because they like to hide that in but every once in a while I'll get one student that likes to express theirelves and let that weight off their chest and I learned from I don't really know
anything about what how it affects them but I learned from uh one student who came to me the next day and said "Thank you a lot for letting me speak to you about these things." And they seem to do way better now at school so I feel it
does it has had a big impact on the school system or schools and speaking of school system Century and JM have now tried to incorporate their own uh mental health mental
health programs just like for Mayo and sorry I I feel that this program is actually very helpful and speaking of who like liked the program was Peggy Flanigan herself
the lieutenant governor she expressed that she wants to know more about the program and even visit Mayo High School herself and so the student school board we have uh made a draft of a letter to send to her as an invitation to our school and
so I feel that we have just kind of came up you know from like we've really done something in this program and in this club and I would like to speak about how this has affected me uh starting freshman year I didn't think I would be
doing anything this big in my high school high school years and joining the Topps room actually was the reason why I'm here and so I thank um Amanda Burgette who is
the the runner of the Tops room at Mayo High School and with how much it's affected me is one day I was called to the principal's office asking if I could attend a student schoolboard meeting which was to
to promote the tops room and and ever since then I've been attending every single meeting and that student panel was probably like the biggest thing that has ever happened to me in high school and I'm like really
proud of myself and glad and I thank all of you for having me here for to speak on the behalf of the student school board thank you thank you Cypress and and let me say we're really proud of you too and
uh the thing one of the things that you all the five of you talked about was how the TOPS room was working for students who had some emotional issues but it could absolutely be the kind of place where upper classmen could tutor students who were struggling any student
who was struggling academically and be there for them the same way the TOPS room works perhaps they could get some sort of credit and that was what uh Lieutenant Governor Flanigan picked up on and she wants to come and see how that works and how it could extend to
helping kids with uh who need academic support too um can I so speak um actually of that what you're talking about the student tutoring there are
some students at in the talks room that like to kind of have they they kind of make their own like almost like a it's not a therapist but like they have like uh they actually do make connections i've seen it like real
time at in the room i see students coming in asking for a peer supporter like like and whenever I see that it's like I it makes me really happy just how this room actually does help with connections
thank you thank you so much thank you very much any other updates from any other committees board members hearing oh director um I attended the community curriculum and
instruction advisory committee um last week which one of our speakers spoke about as well and it's a fairly new committee to me so I'm still kind of learning the ropes and how that committee works but it's a I think we meet quarterly and this quarter we had uh first we had an update from the
elementary literacy website that parents can access to get um supports for parents who want to help their children with the new wit and wisdom curriculum and a lot of really good resources on there from ebooks to printable worksheets that students can work on at
home so want to get the word out about that as much as I can and then we also shifted then to a town hall format where parents were engaged with the various areas of early education elementary secondary advanced learning and the
graduate profile to provide some feedback on those programs from the parents and um you know just learning from the parents about their experiences so that we can improve the curriculum and instruction so looking forward to more work with that committee
madam chair yes if I could ask um Director Mclofflin a question regarding the committee uh as we heard earlier from uh one of our parents and uh she echoes the uh need for parent parental
awareness and involvement uh is there a link or uh can you suggest how a parent could maybe obtain more information about uh the CCA
um the what I can tell you is that I actually saw a post about the meeting on Facebook on the district website so I know that it's being uh promoted there um it gives the date and time and location um that I would suggest reaching out to
Heather Wellman um the secondary um director of curriculum and um they had a you can sign up to be on the committee and attend um so I know that they're you know taking names and contact information so I think that's the place
to start and it's open to all parents okay that's important because sometimes parents either feel they're unaware or not invited to be a part of and thanks for bringing to our attention sure and Dr marvin's a member as well did you
want to add something no just that it's open to the community and we get grandparents we get parents we get people who are expecting children uh we get staff and it's a good opportunity for people to learn a little bit and then also to let the curriculum instruction folks know what they're
thinking what questions they have what needs need to be addressed i don't think we're ever going to get good enough at communicating um everything and all the opportunities for people to come and let us know uh what what they want to say so uh I think
we need to keep focused on that but this is one really important um committee and you don't have to be on the committee you just have to show up and um talk listen and I really appreciate that they include all different areas of
students including the earliest learners in our early education programs because I think that that's a way for parents to start getting involved when their children are really young and hopefully continue to be that way as their kids uh go through RPS and do we know what the
next date of the CCIC meeting is i think this was the last one for the year yeah this was the last one for the year so in the fall parents can watch for that kind of communication absolutely for it to start up again right all right anything else board
members we'll move on to our consent agenda items 5.1 through 5.12 are on the consent agenda for consideration would any board member like any item removed for separate consideration hearing none is there a motion to
approve the consent agenda so moved second it has been moved and seconded miss Kramer will you please call the role for the vote on the consent agenda director
I dlo hi director Wman nathan hi director hi director Marvin hi director White i thank you the consent agenda has been approved our next item is 6.1 focus topic housing
stability initiatives update superintendent Pel thank you Madam Chair i want to ask uh Lita Casper our coordinator of community partnerships and her team to come on up to uh get in places so we can move forward i'll let the team introduce uh themselves as you
take a seat up here at the table um it's common sense and there's a ton of research behind the fact that kids who are experiencing housing instability face perhaps one of the greatest obstacles to academic success um
obviously solving the problem of housing instability lies far beyond the walls of Rochester public schools and so it's work that inherently has to take place through partnerships um but partnerships don't happen uh as has been noted tonight um by magic and without effort
and so this work is a lot about bringing resources across our community together to support families uh who for many complex reasons find themselves living in circumstances where they lack stable housing and so I want to thank Lita for her leadership in moving this forward she works closely with Amy Ike in our um
office of community partnerships and engagement and uh I know this is a subject of great interest to many board members and community members in a community where housing is a hot topic for good reason and so lead I'll turn it over to you and thank you all for the work that you do um this has been a
subject that we've been working on since I've been in Rochester and long before that but I believe this is one of the first in-depth uh presentations we've given to the school board so um it's long overdue thank you Dr pel um thank you Chair Na Nathan members of the board
um and cabinet miss Kramers thank you um I am really grateful to be here today and I'm really thankful that you gave us the opportunity to to share a little bit about the um really innovative and interesting work that we're doing here um I'm going to allow um my colleagues here to introduce themselves and share
what they do for for for work thank you for having us here this evening my name is Nicole Westead and I'm the McKini Vento liaison or point of contact for students and families experiencing homelessness within Rochester public schools
good evening i am Shay Nichols i am the eviction prevention specialist um point of contact for Rochester Public Schools good evening my name is Mary O'Neal and I'm the associate director of the housing department with Homestead County thank you um we are really excited that
we get to share with you some of this innovative and really interesting work um that's taking place here in Rochester um and we really do believe that it's innovative in um across across the state and really across the country
um focused on solutions to really complex challenges um youth and family homelessness this work would not be possible without the strong leadership um and the intentionality of multiple uh
entities including Mstead County um and Rochester public schools so I want to just take a moment to thank um some of our leaders who who really do support this work amy Ike um and I see we have Dave Dunn who has also joined us and Dave Dunn is Mstead County's uh planning
and housing director and so you can see physically here um the support and the collaborative work that that um that that exists so thank you so our presentation goal we're really just trying to build a shared understanding of what we are all doing
together to um to ensure that like Dr pel said that um that students experiencing homelessness have their basic human needs met so that they can access their education every single day as I mentioned we don't do this work in isolation none of us can solve youth
and family homelessness alone and so we are really grateful to get to work with our strong community partners you see the lo logos here um we just we we couldn't do it alone just for some interesting historical context um in
2019 um Three Rivers Community Action Mstead County Rochester Public Schools partnered together um to uh around a grant called Homework Starts with Home and at that time um we had piloted um this opportunity within a few different
Rochester public schools elementary schools at that time they were primarily our community schools where we had on-site housing uh navigational expertise through this grant um located in our schools and we saw some real success with that model and just from my
experience being at Riverside at the time it was wonderful to be able to refer a family who was experiencing homelessness directly to a person who could who could really help them navigate a really complex challenge that certainly our school social workers don't have the expertise and the
capacity to do um from from their lens um and so we expanded the model and so that's kind of how we're here today certainly we've made some um some significant changes to the model and we continue to focus on continuous improvement but just so you're aware
this is where this kind of began and so I'm going to turn this over to Nicole who is our um our homeless liaison here in Rochester public schools she's um just going to share a little bit about um our team and our structure so you can
see the photos of the members of our team that meet twice weekly that are on our collaborative um including Mstead County and Three Rivers Goodwill Easter Seals Americanore and Rochester Public Schools we do deep work together we
certainly don't just meet twice per week we're messaging throughout the week we certainly also have not solved all of the concerns of housing in Rochester and you're going to hear about the gaps and things that are still needed yet in our presentation tonight but as Lita shared
this team has grown and expanded over the last two years and we're thankful to have a group that meets and works well together and is closely embedded with one another so part of our work and if you've ever been involved in a collaborative with different organizations coming together
you know it can sometimes be a little tricky to navigate too with different federal definitions different dollars received um different grant requirements that we receive something to just note is that even the definition of homelessness differs depending on which
federal organization you are referencing according to McKenn Vento statute or educationally it's lacking a fixed regular adequate nighttime residence and as you'll see on upcoming slides that means it includes things like families that are living together not by choice
and they're doubled up because they have to be um there's a different definition that is offered by HUD and I'll let Mary share that as well hud is um an acronym for the United States Department of Housing and Urban
Development um and the HUD definition is literal homelessness imminent risk of homelessness or other situations like fleeing domestic violence hud has made the decision to focus on those and target their funding for those who are
most in need um and people who are literally homeless which would be defined as families that are in shelter or are living in their cars or a shed or other places that are not meant for human habitation so that is the difference between the educational
definition and the HUD definition so you'll see that some common situations that our families experience under that educational definition of homelessness under McKenna Vento law are that they're doubled up in shelters hotels motel unsheltered oftentimes
unsheltered will mean living in a vehicle um sometimes it can mean literal homelessness and our most common scenario for families that we're working with is that they're doubled up with family or friends but certainly and unfortunately
we have families that are experiencing all of those scenarios at any given time during the school year when we think about what leads to family homelessness there can be a lot of stereotypes or stigma around
that or common perceptions by the community could be that oh that's an individual problem or an individual factor it's regarding someone's mental health concerns it's regarding substance use concerns but what we'd like to take a moment to clarify and I'll let you
read for yourselves some composite situations of families that we have worked with and assisted this year typical situations um please note that 81% of RPS families families experiencing homelessness do have
household income and so we're just looking to also combat some of the stereotypes and um perceptions that may exist as well in terms of who we're serving so you may ask where are these families staying when experiencing
homelessness and so um we do a po each year we do a community point in time where at some point um we pull numbers and in January this is what we got one family was facing eviction 19 families
lived in hotels nine students lived in a a youth shelter five families lived in the women's shelter one family lived in inadequate conditions so that could have been shel uh a shed um campground um one
family lived in a vehicle 95 families were doubled up with families or friends and 65 families have been um housed since being homeless so how does homelessness affect a child's
education um chronic abi absentism academic challenges um graduation rates are low educational instability immobility uh social emotional challenges and um a
lot of students feel shame and stigma um it was identified that RPS um students there was ninth grade there was 41% um of ninth graders who experienced um a decrease in the odds of graduating
high school than their house peers this is some recent statewide data that was put together by the department of the Minnesota Department of Education and anecdotally we see similar trends in Rochester um obviously you see the this the disproportionate impacts um but for
us this really promotes the urgency as educators and and the other piece to this is it's it's part of this the why our collaboration is not only necessary but really really um critical in in solving um these complex um
challenges okay so this is very this is a very it's a very busy slide so I'll try to take a minute to just share a little bit about what we're doing to help and how we collaborate you um you've seen MTSS in some of our um in some of Rochester public schools work
around lit literacy specifically but it's also um it began as a public health model and so the intention of it is really to serve an entire population of people um what I like about this graphic is that it really shows how we work
together it identifies sort of where our roles are where um where each of our organizations sort of fit in this multi-tered system of support um and it also allows us to identify where gaps are um and
so I won't go into the gaps necessarily right now but um we can perhaps save that for for questions um you might wonder how a family would be how a family would enter into this multi-tered system of supports um I say this all the
time but our schools are community's most trusted resources our our schools are oftentimes the very first uh places that um a a family member or a student will share that they are experiencing homelessness and so Nicole has done an incredible job
of ensuring that each of our schools have a key point of contact which you'll see in that in that um tier in that tier one area um and so what she what what will happen is a school a student or a family might report homelessness they report it to their school social worker
their school so social worker will fill out a a referral nicole and Connie will get that referral or SHA potentially and um they will call and and and try to better understand what the family is experiencing experiencing and understand the barriers um sometimes that might
just look like working with some of those uh tier one supports right school suppil school stability transportation um community resource and referrals but sometimes it could it could require a little bit more um intentional and uh
targeted support services or or uh intensive support services in which case at our collaborative triage meetings Nicole might bring that bring up um a situation and try to figure out how how to best serve um a family based on the barriers that they have and so that's
really the nature of this collaborative work and how we are working together to solve these incredibly complex community challenges um and ensuring that we are promoting educational stability um while also promoting housing stability i'd like to provide a little
bit of context in terms of how and where the funding comes from so local homeless prevention aid was legislation that was passed in 2021 and funding started in 2023 it is guaranteed um through
2028 and these are the amounts of funding that Homemate County has received um the unique thing about local homeless prevention aid is that it's a direct allocation to counties based on population and student data that
actually RPS and other school districts within Homestead County reports to the state each year um so this number does vary but if anybody knows anything about government funding um direct allocations are pretty rare we oftentimes have to
apply for grants so this has been really um such a unique way to provide funding and resources to counties the other nice thing about it is there wasn't a lot of detail and expectations around the use of the funds it's pretty broad and how
we can use it we do need to target families with school-aged children hence the relationship with RPS and we must provide rental assistance or case management services and we do provide both so our two hope navigators soon to
be third we just hired a third will be um joining the team so they provide case management services for that top tier that Lita had just discussed um and then we also provide some rental assistance we're also able to fund some hotels for
those who need shelter um we have contracted with Goodwill Easter Seals to provide a career navigator that's also embedded within our team um it's a quick access to um to employment to an employment resource who can really help
them engage with employers navigate some of the challenges that people have as they start to get back into um employment and the workforce and to increase their income so the the funding has been extraordinary and like I say a
lot of flexibility within how we can use this funding um in terms of how Rochester Public Schools funds funds um the positions that are um that work within the system we have uh funding under the Mckin Vento
um uh homeless grant and we are one of seven across the state that get this um formula grant we also have funding within our title one grant and so within the title one grant there are multiple set aides included in those required set
aides is the homeless set aside and so um we we're funding our Mckin Vento liaison out of that and then we fund our um our Mckin Vento navigator out of that fascinatingly this is kind of where the
where the where this collaboration sort of expands and where we get to get excited about the work that Sheay is is doing um through this collaborative we were able to um lean into some publicly available data some publicly available
eviction data and so over the course of one year we checked that public eviction data against some of the some of our data systems um to just figure out like how many students and families are actually getting evicted a year and what we determined was from December 22 to
December 23 that roughly 452 students were likely evicted totaling about 211 families from Rochester public schools and so from that we started to ask ourselves what if we were able to use
some of our homeless set aside to fund an eviction prevention specialist to fund this opportunity to um not only uh under under the Mckin Ventto law we we um are are required to um identify
families and so using this really unique set of data to identify families who potentially were being evicted um and and so that's how that's how this um this this sort of dream came about i remember asking Mary what if we could
prevent like 20% of these evictions like what would that do for kids and families the ability to stay in their school the ability to stay in their home the ability to have their basic human needs met so that they can access their education to the fullest extent um and here we are today um we have we have um
our we fund the eviction prevention specialists but then we utilize all of these community resources that you'll notice below for example um local homeless prevention aid Salvation Army we work with legal assistance of Mstead County Acts for Kids Diversion Funds
with Family Promise um there are others as well but um just a really interesting um dynamic opportunity and um we have this in a later slide but I can't help but share uh Sheay has been able to
prevent um based on our last count 90 out of 96 evictions for students and families in Rochester public schools so I'm just going to give her a little cut and what that means is that kids and families are safe and stable and can
continue to access their education at high levels can I just add um with the numbers that that were found um the 211 families from Rochester public schools as of Monday um we are at
180 students for Rochester public schools that means that there's about seven months left um that's almost that's over half of that number and so um to to be in this position
um I'm truly humbled to be able to work with families um in making sure that we can try to save their housing because the numbers I mean they just don't lie but thank you so as Lita just said um Sheay has worked
with Legal Assistance of Homestead County and their eviction clinic and the families to prevent 90 evictions out of 94 um only since October 1st so that is rather a huge impact um going back a
little bit looking at some data our hope navigators have housed 65 families from July 24 to January of 2025 um we have as I said earlier a lack of um shelter for families in our
community so we have been utilizing some of our funds for hotel stays for families um so in 23 we we helped 28 families and then 40 families in 2024 and all of them secured permanent housing after being in
shelter we also have provided some assistance um to our family support and assistance team department at Homestead County so we are able to provide additional assistance above the emergency assistance they receive through the state and you can see how
many households we assisted um with that funding as well we might have taken over our 15 minutes but thank you for for taking the time any questions Dr bara sure i'll go ahead and start it off um first of all I was very
impressed with the um presentation as I viewed it uh thank you so much for including the link to the NPR uh article interview that they did you um and I listened and read with a great interest
um I didn't realize as I'm sure others may not as well uh fully understand that uh many of these families are working full-time it's not that they're just hanging out and you
know doing nothing uh they're doing their best uh uh even the the one person in the uh MPR uh she was working she was housed but with a
looming eviction and and what a blessing for you to be able to uh step in and and intercede uh my question um I saw the reference or use of the term permanent housing now in my mind I
thought well is that housing ownership or can you define permanent housing we would we would define permanent housing as a family um having their own name on a lease okay um that would be
one um but that they're not doubled up or they're they're not sharing housing with another individual or family okay and thank you i just wanted to clarify that in my own mind and
um so 387 students as of March 2025 uh what can we do to increase if you will the uh successes you guys are able to bring about
um and and I use the term we and I expand it beyond the collaboration of the the county Three Rivers um and RPS and the other uh Goodwill the other
organizations um are there other um opportunities for community organizations nonprofits to um if you will come alongside of or um perhaps as a result of your presentation this
evening uh they've developed a an awareness and may think that they can play a role how could they uh potentially find out uh that the role they could play and and the support they could provide
certainly there's always room and you can see when you look at the numbers under the 387 I checked today and it was 416 um certainly there's gaps and when we first started presenting we mentioned there's room for the community
i know that this is a limited opportunity right here but I would just say we need folks in the community we need the community support at large um we need voters at large we need everyone in involved in Rochester looking at how affordable rents may or may not be for
folks you could see the numbers of folks that have income coming in versus can they afford what they're expected to pay at rents of what they are right now and that's a complex issue right like we know that that's a complex societal
issue i'm not certain that we have all the answers sitting here today but certainly we would invite anyone to partner and come alongside us because frankly our students need you director
i love it i love the uh I love all the work that everybody is doing um but coming thinking from education because that's what we do right here at schoolboard education um and coming from that lens so putting on my education hat um and being heavily involved in the
community i know one issue is that we often have families that return into the system right because they are working get them housed and they're kind of right back in that cycle sometimes by no nothing of their own doing right because
life happens cars break down people pass away you have situations outside of your control and um some of us are familiar with living check to check and if you're check to check one messed up check can make a can start these snowballs so with
that thought process my question is and not to negate from any of the work that we're doing um but just on a preventive hat you know what how can what can you see or in the work that you do and how can we partner in whether it be
financial literacy is that something that needs to be done sooner um I mean I know we can't do much about some of the societal things and you know pay rates and like you said these are bigger issues but are there things that from a school system perspective that we should
be uh promoting or partnering with to you know maybe help with budgeting or you know help with uh you know savings and these things things that people often don't think about until it's you know until you're in a bind right then you wish you would have saved you wish you would have did these
um is there an educational um partnership or opportunity there is that something that could be funded so you know some people end on that that hamster wheel um I think there's there's you we could go on all night about this
like this i want to be careful because I could I could we could we could I could talk all night about this but one of the um one of the things that you know through our MTSS um multi-tered system of support one of the gaps that we identified was really
this that we don't have a f we didn't have a family homeless shelter and so that has been an area that actually our team including Mary O'Neal myself Dave Dunn many others have really gotten involved in that family promise and I know thank you for I know you sent your husband came to the family promise
opening director Marvin came to the family promise Dr muel spoke at the family promise opening but that what you're talking about is not band-aids right like we we are trying to really um ensure that our system has a response that our community has a response
um where where we are working with families um you know when families are going to enter this new family promise homeless shelter the the first thing we're going to be talking about or the first I'm saying we because I I'm on the board at at family promise but um one of the first things that we do is start
talking about housing immediately right we are we are driven to ensuring your own safe and stable housing going forward and all of the skills and tools that you need to be able to that we can do work together to be able to ensure that that this doesn't happen again and
so I think the other piece with our tier three that hope navigation housing outreach to promote education I know I didn't go into that very well but really that level of case management um is intended to really create and to to to um ensure
that that there's a true understanding of the needs and the barriers that a family is experiencing and then sort of that really um um extensive case management to support a family into that long-term safe and stable housing so
those are two things I I don't know if anyone else would add yeah um I would like to add so one of the things that I've observed um when I took the role as the eviction prevention specialist was okay I think I've seen you know a family on this list twice how are we going to
get this family off the list um where they don't keep running into this same cycle and coming from an exper from experience it's some of these things are generational where if you didn't teach your kids about financial literacy or if
they don't know anything about credit um they don't know and you don't know what you don't know and so one of the things that I've we always bring to the table is how can we reach out to community members and other organizations um you know when we talk about
partnerships to say can we provide someone who has this specific um expertise whether it's math teachers and whatever the you know these are always talks that we're having um when we're meeting as a collaborative um
it's not something that's going to be solved obviously you know with that one time where that person you know we may have been able to prevent eviction but that generational stuff is generational and so one of the things that I'm really
working hard on um is to find ways um to collaborate with community um out partner with other community um organizations that we can come up with you know do some budgeting and some financial literacy but um the the c is
so the evictions are so urgent and homelessness is so urgent that there's nothing that those families want to do more but to find a place to stay and so you know when we think long term I think you know when Lita talks about the shelter you know when those families go
into those shelters the the goal is to have a plan and allow them to be um have some type of stability plan in budgeting or whatever the case um may be a part of that plan i think it's just trying to meet those specific family needs and looking at working with
Goodwill Easter Seals for example on employment and increasing income and I guess I would also add to in terms of community and it's a societal problem but why can't Rochester be the community that ends family homelessness why not us and so in terms of asking like what what
is it with the community i'm not certain i don't think this table has the answers but I do think student and family homelessness in Rochester needs to end it's unacceptable and so what are we doing to lean in and just just for clarification I I I I knew some of this
but I guess what I was getting at is kind of where Shay was leaning that it is generational right so how do we take the data that we have knowing that we do have kids that are more high risk um to be in this situation and prevent that right because I think the goal of any
organization like this like you said would be to end homelessness you know not that I don't want to put anybody out of a job but it would be a good thing to say we don't have kids that are that are unhoused and I could you know use my my skill set elsewhere in education right
but you know how do we identify those students and maybe make it so the list doesn't continue on because as she said you'll see you know in family par planning the parent was homeless and now you know the child has a child and they're struggling with housing so is
there a space that maybe we can find that we can pre be more preventative i know this we like she said home um being unhoused is a serious thing and that's a big concern and once we get past that but you know it's a very reactive process so how do we how do we start to
shift that so that we can do some more preventative things so that we don't always have this family that's urgently being kicked out in two weeks right because a lot of this uh we could see coming with some of the data that we collect i think it's just in how we're looking at the data we collect
uh uh thank you J then just to director Whitehorn's uh point earlier we are standing up new financial literacy uh coursework for all students it's a state requirement but we'd be doing it otherwise um so that's a really important point and let me just say with great respect to my awesome colleagues
we do need No please stay the board is not done but please you're so passionate it's so great the board has a very long agenda for the evening so please if we can uh keep our answers as pointed to the board members questions and they would never say that because they're much nicer than I am but this is
fantastic director McLaclin um thank you for this work and thinking about Dr raquel I'd like to give um mini goat award to you all for the attachments that you provided that they were incredibly helpful and you could go as deep as you wanted to and um director Barlo talked
about the NPR article but then it had links to other articles so it was you know very informative and I really appreciate that that we could you know pick and choose what we wanted to look at and I think your presentation here answered a lot of my questions but I just kind of want to point out um from my perspective um mainly because I
actually work at Southern Minnesota Regional Legal Services so I have some connection to this work more my colleagues than me but I know what you guys are doing and how important it is but what I'm understanding from the first of all I love the collaboration but thank you for tying it to the MTSS
because that makes sense to our world here at the board table as to what you're doing but as I understand it the level one is to um make student and family homelessness brief rare and non-reoccurring and that seems like the the um level one intervention but the
level two as I now understand it is the prevention and I really love that because there's so many pieces of our system that we never get there and the fact that we're doing that here it's really exciting um so this does answer a lot of my questions but I did have two um one of the attachments was about that
gap analysis there's a slide in there from the state data that talks about u breaking down the state data by grade level does is that reflective of Rochester as well or are there do you notice any differences with that
i overall I thought the data was pretty reflective of Rochester um okay so there nothing specifically to that slide but I wasn't it wasn't super surprising um just for your own interest to um across the state roughly 2% of of
students are experience experiencing homelessness and here in Rochester we're about 2.5% right now or three so we're right we're not far off got it and then my other question is I appreciated the attachment that had the strategies for
working on this work um and you talked some about um the school level point of contact i wanted to make sure that we had those in all the schools but it also talked about professional development how can you talk about how um how informed our regular classroom
teachers are about this or are there professional development things we need to do to improve that knowledge you did you did an excellent job of reading all of the information thank you i'll let So we do have professional development opportunities in place but certainly there's room to grow um each
building does have a designated point of contact assigned and I'm in regular contact with that designated point of contact each one of those contacts has received training in identifying what qualifies someone as being eligible for Mckin Vento when to reach out were in
regular contact with each building we did at the beginning of the school year provide training for our ESPs during back to school week so that some of the folks that might have first contact with our students also have that training and awareness we offered training to each building this year i'm hoping that more
buildings take us up on that offer for training in the upcoming school year but our team is always available to provide frankly a similar presentation to what we shared with you but also the impacts of what that would look like on your practice as a school professional and
how to network with this team wonderful thank you Dr cook um well thank you you know along with my colleagues um I'm gratified by the work that you're doing it's it's clearly incredibly impactful i think as a
community the idea that two to 3% of our students are homeless ought to be shocking it ought to be a rallying moment um because it's just so unacceptable but the thing that that um that I I can't stop thinking about is
that for for most of these students I mean surely the the prospect of eviction is is horrifying and it's urgent um and demands as much of a response as we can muster collaboratively but the months leading up to that are
also incredibly stressful in the home um and for those students and just the the absence of that security and safety and sense of stability of a safe place to go and be yourself um I I'm almost I I
guess Lita the thing that you said is that for for many students that go through this process the school is the first time that that they share that information with somebody do we have examples or or is
it are we able to assess that some families are moving into this uh very stressful period where they're not yet served with an eviction notice but they're becoming
unstable um and do we have the capacity to respond in any helpful way like prior to the eviction stage um our capacity right now is from the Rochester public schools that that tier one is really where we we'd need that
that level of capacity mhm um so no I would say we are um I don't want to speak for Nicole but working sometimes 12 hours a day right like really significantly over time because you're right these these experiences are urgent
and stressful and scary and um we need to respond urgent urgently um and so yeah I mean right now I would say that we don't have the resources to do more which is why we lean on our collaborative partners um for that for
that work i will say that since word has gotten out that Rochester Public Schools has an eviction specialist we've been getting I've been getting um more calls from landlords and property managers saying
like "Hey like I know you do this are you able to support this family?" And in these cases it has been prior to them having given them notice or given an eviction um filing an actual eviction and so one of the things in my role that
I really want to work on too was just cultivating those relationships with obviously there's a lot of landlords and property managers within our um homestead county but getting you know my name out there so that they know that there is a contact and that you know I
am playing the mediator between landlords and tenants you know to save the family's homes um I do feel like they some families will be upfront about it if they don't have any type of like resources or they don't know
especially for example like a family who may be a multilingual family or they don't know that there's resources for them within the schools um I can see in working with those families it's been um a lot of panic and they think that when
they go to court they have to move that day you know so um I really stress too just when reaching out to families um to say like the biggest thing that you can do right now if you've already received an eviction notice is to appear at court
because if you don't then you'll be defaulted and you automatically get an eviction on your record um but even just being able to provide some education or on like what's happening in the process I felt like
families are more at ease in the urgency that they are um in a housing crisis that's really good to know that property managers are reaching out to you proactively in some cases i think it's a um that's good to know that because I
you know the other thing that I I just wanted to acknowledge is that eviction specialist role is not something that we had in RPS until very recently so um really glad that that uh that this is doing such a good job of being impactful
to the uh families that were able to reach so anyway thank you again very very much and thanks for the presentation thank you see if there's any other comments for there no um as director Cook just said we haven't
had this 18 um before uh for before um and then I look at your sources of funding for Olmstead County and I look at what is funding our um our staff and our services and we are talking about how the community can get involved is
there anything that our state legislators or federal legislators are considering right now that is threatening any of these funding sources that our community needs to know about or stay aware of um because if that funding goes away we would have to make
some hard decisions about how to support this work and obviously the um the number of students is going up daily so anything you can share about that um from the Rochester public school side like I mentioned we are funded um
largely out of title one uh the homeless set aside is within that budget and so I I don't um I'm I'm hopeful that um Title One isn't um Title One continues right i mean it's it's been around for a long
time and since before the department of education and it serves uh you know it's federal dollars that serves um the entire country and certainly there are areas of this country that would be um really challenged without that those those dollars and so um it is a
bipartisan it's been historically very you know sign strong bipartisan support so my hope is that it's not but yeah you're right I mean it's a it's it's a serious consideration it's a serious consideration thank you for bringing that up
anything at the state level um we had a we had a a a grant with a community based organization a year ago and um so no there's nothing consistent the consistent funding that we have um is through Mckin Vento and um Title One
board members well thank you very much we look forward to keeping updates about this work and thank you for having us we really appreciate it thank you thank you our next item is a monitoring item curriculum review and revision process
superintendent Pel thank you Chair Nathan and board members uh our chief academic officer Mona Perkins is coming up and our um uh director of secondary education Heather Wilman um this presentation may be a bit of cruel and unusual punishment for you
as board members because it is only going to be a taste of the deep work on curriculum that is happening in our office of academic services we wanted to provide this because we know that the implementation of our new literacy curriculum has been much on people's minds and we know that the board has already approved the implementation of a
new science curriculum for next year we wanted to show you that we are thinking uh far beyond those two immediate next steps um thanks to the passage of the referendum we now have a base of $1.2 million a year not sufficient for all of our needs but a base on which we can
invest in continually making sure our students are being provided with knowledgerrich highly engaging inclusive curricula in all subject areas and so when I saw that the team was doing really deep work on this I said let's
give the board and other folks who are watching kind of a preview of coming attractions we know you'll have many questions about individual subject areas in this plan about the finances in the plan about implementation we look forward to providing you with more information on all of that but here's a
snapshot of the years ahead and I will just say I was in two schools this afternoon and questions came up uh in both instances about what's next after literacy and so this is timely for people in our schools as well so Mona and Heather thanks for your leadership
thanks for having us heather's going to kick us off yeah so before we get into the details of the plan we just wanted to kind of ground us in our why and really this is about high quality tier one instruction for every student um we
know we've been working on deeper learning um through our deeper learning teams but now that's really going to live within this curriculum articulation cycle so as you think about MTSS as they just talked about as well this is really that high quality instruction for every
student every day in every classroom and when we sat down to think about our curriculum as a whole we were really think trying to think about we wanted a long-term plan for our curriculum enhancement process um what had been
what had been kind of the history was new standards come out you look at the standards you look at a what curriculum you're going to adopt you implement and then you just kind of let it go for 10 years until the new set of standards come out and then you kind of repeat
that that cycle and that's not what we wanted we wanted to um have a better process where you're constantly reviewing um the even after you adopt a curriculum we wanted to be looking at it and making um adjustments because because you want
to adjust to who's in front of you and nothing that you adopt um is perfect and so you want to be constantly looking at the materials um the instruction the P you know doing work with the PLC's and all of that so when we started this work um we started really looking at what are
the phases that we that we want this to be in um and so we landed on four phases but they're not necessarily four years so a phase can be more than more than one year and so you start with phase one which is when when um it's just the very
beginning and you're looking at the current state so you're looking at your current data you're looking inward you're looking around um you're analyzing for alignment with uh elements of deeper learning um and then you can start moving into phase two and that
starts your planning and figuring out what are your what are the best practices you're looking at what curriculum you might want to adopt and you're looking at the different criteria aligning it to standards you might pick a couple curriculum uh
that you want to possibly pilot um and if you ch if we choose to do that the next phase would be a pilot so that still stays in phase two although that might be two years um and then if you're choosing to pilot you pilot and then you
move into implementation if we already know what curriculum we're going to pick you just you purchase it and move into implementation prior to implementation prior to the full purchase the board does have to when you're making a large purchase the board would have to approve the purchase
if it's over $100,000 that's the dollar amount I believe yeah.$175 175 okay um and then so like for example this year was our full implementation of Witten Wisdom so this year we are in phase
three of Witten Wisdom so we're using the new materials and um instructional strategies assessments all of that and you might wonder where student work or student voice comes in and really that would be in phase three in the full
implementation although sometimes even in our planning we may want to get feedback from our students or our families um before we make that choice but um really phase three would be when we'd be looking at student work um we also found this year with Whiten Wisdom
we needed more collaboration time and the teachers needed just more time to be able to really delve into that so that would come in in phase three as well then when we shift into phase four this is where the a lot of the revision stuff happens and this is I think probably one
of the the most important parts because and this is where we're looking at some tight collaboration between central office and um and the schools because 4.1 is the PLC work and data review where we're looking at materials and
resources if there's any support that that we need from the central office to really look at any material adjustments that need to happen um systemwide any adjustments with assessments tools anything like that and then 4.2 is
that's the work the heavier lift is more at the building level with in collaboration with the with central office and that's more around practice and routines it's more around the PLC work they're digging into the student data and making adjustments at the at the you know classroom level
um so that would repeat and you're constantly making revisions and adjustments there that is where like the the heart of the work is um and then you keep doing that work until you circle back to phase one which whenever that
comes back up around but that's the important part because we're not dropping it you know for 10 years i think one thing I'll say about our process um we did a lot of study of other districts and what what their phases look like and how did they really
think about how to make this more of a continuous improvement process and not just we take a look and then we see you in you know eight or 10 years so we spent a lot of time really looking at and hearing what worked and so I think that helped us land on these four phases
so then then we had to look at okay now let's actually outline the work and so we started with every subject area where are we at and outlining it this is the long-term plan and what phase are we in in each of
these subject areas so there's actually two slides here just didn't stick them all in one um so for for English elementary was in implementation this year and um secondary was in phase two
phase two planning in the planning and so then next year um elementary will be in the revision phase do you want to touch on the Sure secondary yeah um and with English um for secondary we really spent a lot of
time on um looking at the standards looking at the instructional shifts and then um we've been working a lot on vertical alignment um so thinking about how do those standards build at each grade level and um one of the things that's come out of that work is single
point rubrics um so we can see what changes in the standard from sixth grade to seventh grade to eighth grade we didn't feel like we had tight enough alignment with that um we've also talked a lot about common text um and so then next year will be our year of
implementation and then we'll be collecting student work and using those rubrics um in our practice so that's kind of what the the process looked like in English um you can see in social studies um we're kind of at the current state right now we're looking at what
are the standards asking us to do um and where are their gaps um what does the data look like um we've been spending some time at secondary with a a social studies leadership team that's been helping us think about well how do we now get everyone on board with that work
and one of the things that team really urged us to do is to bring all social studies teachers in and so that's been a part of this work this year as well um I think probably one of the most beneficial pieces for me was thinking about backward mapping and making sure
that we have the right resources to be able to support all of these groups because um as you can see there's a lot going on and we have to make sure that we um have that central office support especially for the phases one two and three um and then how do we make sure we
keep that PLC going yes and we want to you you got to look at when the new standards roll out and you also have to think about if you're actually purchasing a curriculum you can't have them all be purchased in the same year want to make sure that you have the
dollars align as well and so a lot of this like we had to look at there was a lot of looking at okay what what can we support when and making sure we're not missing when things need to be rolled out align with standards and and that type of thing so when you look at math
element excuse me elementary right now is looking at doing um identifying what is a potential smallcale pilot that we can do for next year so we'll identify um some some teachers have um
volunteered to be part of a a pilot and then so well I they're looking at what what are the curricular resources we'll use for that we'll do a smallcale pilot next year and then once from that from the information we gather from that the
following year we'll have a larger pilot um then full implementation the 2728 year which is when the standards are actually need to be implemented at the secondary level that work has really looked um like a
secondary uh leadership team so we have a math team that has um administrators um some math teachers um and we're really looking at what are the standards asking us to do how have they changed um and then we're doing some common reading together as well um and then next year
we'll be thinking about how do we get our grade level teachers involved but this first visionary group has really helped us think about what are the shifts um one of the things they've been kind of talking with us about um from MDE is that we don't necessarily have to
have new materials but we need to think differently about how we use those materials so we don't know yet whether there will be new resources needed u but right now we're just spending some time looking at how have the the standards changed and shifted and what are the instructional moves that we need to be
thinking about so that's it this is our this other page is just the other topics for subject areas that's all since you just talked about it um under the good timing
um you talked about when the standards needed to be implemented for math can you tell us what years the standards need to be implemented for the other subjects yeah we have all that outlined okay but would that be the year of implementation
for we tried to align it as best we could for most of them some of them we did have to push it out a little bit just because so when you're looking at elementary you have the same teachers doing all the subject areas and you
can't overload them right do you know what I mean and so it's there's some where we had to we had to make some adjustments and just say like we might have to push it out a year um so math would be 27 28 28 and 26 27 would be
social studies and then next year is um English although we were a little ahead of the curve with witten wisdom because we needed it uh sooner than what the the standards had to be implemented and for other courses like we
experienced with personal finance we're at the mercy should the legislature decide there are new requirements or new classes that we have to implement we have to somehow fit it in with this cycle and we talked about that a little bit um just in preparation for this
because we have this long range plan for you know we have new standards and then we're going to do this full um look but sometimes we have things like personal finance where we might have a course that's already in existence but we need to make sure that we're um adhering to what the state is asking us to do um we
also sometimes have situations um a few years ago we had health where we really felt like we needed to really update that and even though there weren't new standards coming from the state we were hearing from our community and our families and our students that we needed to take a look so then we would do um
probably more of a short-term u response to what we're hearing so I think that's that's kind of how we handle it so personal finance we've had some curriculum writing last year and then we'll have some this summer as well um to look at there's lots of new
curriculum because of the most states um adding this and so that's been a benefit and most of it's open source so it does there's no cost which is great and I think that's part of that fourth phase right like you're always looking at what curricular adjustments do you need to
make and then you know what instructional adjustments do you need to make that just has to be part of what we're doing all the time because it's not it's if we think what we're going to roll out year one is perfect like it'll will never be and so we always have to be ready to make those adjustments dr
cook so um thanks for sharing all this um I just had two uh observation slashquests one is I have come to and maybe this is just because of the last couple of uh curriculum purchases that the board has made i've come to think of
curriculum as largely subscription model and maybe that's not really quite accurate maybe it is largely a one-time purchase but we usually there's a lot of consumables and often you know uh uh software subscriptions and things that
go along with it is is that the right way to think about curriculum purchases or is it more of a one-time thing it can sometimes it can be um like you can purchase books there's some a lot of times subscriptions that come with it
that need that are you renew after so many years sometimes there's workbooks sometimes it's you're writing it you're creating it so like there's different models and different types of so it's it's really like the the curricular
resource is just one part of it but but the the big purchase is often that but it's not always so like the the ELA uh for secondary there wasn't a huge purchase this year
i think sometimes you you see the the more comprehensive models at the elementary level or K6 um and so we see more subscription there and then um we've been lucky like with science there's a next generation science
standards and so there's a lot of open- source materials that are really high quality and that are are no cost or low cost um so it kind of depends on the discipline um and what's out there in terms of the open source materials and if we think they're high quality enough
um and so we have to kind of you know do that digging and think about what's the gap and then what's our data telling us and and that helps us think about whether or not we need a subscription and usually when you do a a textbook or a comprehensive program then you'll get
like an eight or 10 year subscription but sometimes um so it kind of fits into that cycle anyway okay if the cycle goes too long then you might have to figure out okay we gota pay for this for a couple more years um until we're ready to to look again and then okay that's
all super helpful thank you and then uh the other thing I was wondering on the I I I think I understood that this is all aligned with the state standards and this is essentially our implementation of state standards so when I look at science it just jumped out at me that
there's nothing for computer science and is there no state standard for computer science maybe that's do I don't know is there so there there are so we have computer science standards that are now embedded into the other areas okay as well and then there
are also computer science uh teaching standards um and so the state is really working on that but that's an area where we don't really have it in our articulation cycle and we probably need to think about that um we're lucky we have a grant right now from the
Department of Education for expanding computer science and so we've been meeting um throughout this year thinking about well how can we build more um exploration at the elementary level um and then what does that look like in middle school so that our students can
really feed into that high school pathway um because we have strong high school courses but we have I think it's less than 2% of our students that are actually engaging in computer science because we don't have the buildup at the elementary and middle um so that would
be an area that we might have to think about adding into our long range planning and I know Dr pel has thought a little bit about that maybe in the next uh some of the next goals that that we're thinking about yeah I think I would just say really briefly to chair
Nathan's question about finance too these this is the plan for the major subject areas we teach many other things that need more targeted strategies unfortunately computer science right now would fall into that category being a niche subject that that relatively few kids in RPS take one of the questions
that I think about a lot uh in a place where Mayo Clinic is reinventing medicine using artificial intelligence is should we have a much more ambitious computer science strategy as part of our next strategic plan um but right now there are many different uh more
targeted subjects where the curriculum review process is going to look more limited and targeted than in the areas that Mona and Heather have mapped out because these are the biggies um but we'd love to continue that conversation for sure director hopefully this is a
quick question when you are piloting a new uh curriculum or approach how do you how is it determined where or who does the piloting um that's a good question so this is uh
for math this year we are we offered it up as like teachers um they volunteered um but you can do it differently you can do it by volunteer you can select like it it just kind of
depends on how we want to do it but but this year for math we asked them and we had quite I think we had a really good number in elementary that that have volunteered and as we discussed that a little bit we talked about the value of trying to have
like a small school um or a larger school um or multiple grade levels just so you get feedback from multiple grades um but I think we just said who's who's interested who's willing yes at least for this initial one right um because
you can I mean it could be great to have even if you don't have an entire school do it like to have like an entire grade level at a school do it but um yeah for this for this especially this initial small one we just did it by volunteer
director so just for my own clarification so I'm on the same page as everybody else here because y'all already may be there and maybe I'm not in the same book um so the new standards are implemented every 8 to 10 years is that is that Usually they're on a 10
year cycle 10 years um but with COVID um everything got kind of compacted because there were a number of years where there wasn't the same um work that was able to be done at the Department of Education um so well talk to me nice here because
I I got a question I just don't I'm not grasping but if we are implementing the phase one and the phase two does this mean that when we're looking at curriculum we're looking we're making an assumption of what the standard will be right because it seems to me that some
of this work we're doing is going to be prior to the new standard coming out and things change rapidly so when we're in that phase two are we having to be mindful that we can assume that this is what the new standard is going to look
like i mean how how does that look if we say we want to implement this fantastic program and then the state standard comes down and they're like but we want you to do all of this so how are we making an assumption for information we don't have yet or is there data
somewhere that gives us a That's a good question you know how how are we not having to redo this process all over again when the standard hits yes so usually the the standards come out and then there's a period when people can give public comment and then
they go through rule making and then you have a chance at the um the local level so we don't um generally make any big decisions until they've gone through rulemaking and we know that there won't be significant shifts so social studies
was an example where it took a long time to get through there was a lot of p public comment if we would have um purchased based on the first iteration of standards we might have had to make some changes so we typically wait till they go and get through rule making and
then that's when we start to look at at So we don't start phase one until then it's way ahead of time like we already know the math standards that are going to be implemented in 2728 yeah we already know but if I think it's a really critical question no it's a
really important question director phase one actually is agnostic to the standards it's what's our current state what's it's what's our internal how's it working what where's the curriculum connecting what does our data show it's when phase two and shifting into phase three happens that we have to be watching the state in those subject
areas where there are state standards um so that's where it's a very important question the other thing too is at least in the three years I've been here this is a much more formally organized approach than we've been taking so we are actually articulating this to you as we are beginning to implement it and so
I think the process itself is new for RPS and I'm excited that you looked at as many other districts uh as you did in figuring this out because um I'm sure we're going to learn some things about how to get that balance right um you don't want the state standards to drive
all of your local discussion because I frankly have been on state standard setting committees and it's just a bunch of regular people like us sitting around saying what they think kids should know the Minnesota state standards are not sent from God or grounded in inalterable
science they're professional judgment and so while they're very important and they're the law we see what Rochester kids need we see what's happening in our data so we want to pay attention to that but we also want to look for instance one of the great discussions about uh
that I'm sure we're going to talk about in a moment when we talk about the skip process should we be aligned with the ACT which is not based on Minnesota standards or the MCAs which is I've recommended the ACT because I think it's more relevant for our high school kids going forward uh but it's not tightly
aligned with the state standards so state standards matter but they're not the whole ballgame um as we think about this so is there a danger in us choosing a curriculum that doesn't align with the state standard does that affect our
funding like what what if we say this is what's best for RPS but like you said the state standard is is different yes that's a very important point if you if you adopted a curriculum that was highly misaligned you it would start to show up
in your test scores because where kids are actually not being introduced to concepts at a time when they're taking that assessment the curriculum might be teaching them one or two years later or uh it might be teaching them in what we call a spiraling fashion where the kid
is introduced to the concept but then they get it deepened over time and so we do have to think hard about the level of alignment i would just say it's not a straight jacket like we want to be thinking i mean the wit and wisdom purchase is a good one is it broadly
aligned with Minnesota's uh English language arts standard at elementary school elementary level yes there were other curriculum options that we looked at that maybe were more aligned you know uh at every grade level point but I
think we made the choice not just for alignment with state standards but for deeper learning and for engaging curriculum so it's a it's a balance as you make that decision we do have a healthy skepticism when we look at most curriculum companies will say we are
highly aligned to the standards they all promise that and you really have to take a look and make sure that it does match what you are aiming for um and because we have deeper learning built into this now we'll be looking for those pieces so we don't always just trust if it says
it's aligned we spend a lot of time making sure that's that's the case because I was with Director Cook I thought it was a subscriptionbased uh situation i'll just say having got friends in the educational publishing business they want it to be like software that's their dream it's just
like oo 3.0 pay up um that's what they're all aiming for um depends on what subject area is if they can kind of get there and how techbased it is and having heard how you've selected curriculum in the past the issue of making sure we have curriculum that
aligns with the needs of our PS students it doesn't just have to be one purchase right we could we could purchase a a tier one for example and then there's a lot of other products that we could fill in and we we did that a little bit with the reading curriculum right completely
do we have three separate uh resources yeah and the rubrics that we're using as we're looking at like the as we're looking at the different curriculums like it we're looking at does it align to state standards does it does it have components of deeper learning does it have a tier 2 interventions and that are
aligned to the tier one instruction does it have tier tier three components like we look at all of that so um so that we're looking at the at the curriculum as like a comprehensively to make sure that so that we know if it's pieces are
missing then we know what's missing anything else board members clearly you have a lot of work on your plate so thank you very much so board members we have four prep for action items in front of us um would any
board member like to take a recess at this time or power on uh I think a break would be productive okay so can we do it in five minutes or 10 minutes five would be okay five five all right board is adjourned at 7:25 to return in five
minutes sorry guys prep for action um 8.1 SRO contract the board would take action if it so chooses at the May 6th meeting and under the current SRO contract uh the contract automatically renews for a period of 12
calendar months unless either party provides written notice of termination to the other party and as we'll discuss on the agenda item the board has other options for action so what I'm looking for board members by the end of this discussion tonight is some direction as to what you want that resolution to look
like for us to consider for action at the May 6th meeting superintendent Pel um thank you i want to ask Jackie Peterson who's our chief of schools to come up and I think Jackie we're going to bring uh Chris Lingan who's our director of school safety and Sergeant
Joel Blottic from the Rochester Police Department are we bringing another colleague up very good come on up ryan Magnus is here okay great officer Magnus good to see you again thank you um board members as you know the our school resource officers provide a very
valuable um source of support for our students our staff and uh sometimes our families um that said this board since I got to Rochester has also been deeply engaged in making sure that our officers are positive uh forces around
relationships and school safety uh the board has been directly involved i want to thank Director Mclofflin in particular for helping us rewrite the contract which I think has held up very well um to meet the needs so this is our opportunity both to get an update on what our school resource officers have
done over the last uh school year and then as chair Nathan mentioned uh certainly to give the board the opportunity to decide if you want to take any action regarding uh the contract which otherwise does renew with no action so Jackie thank you Chair
Nathan members of the board Superintendent Pel we're pleased to be here with this uh report which I think uh does a nice job of explaining the work that's gone on um this year with our SRO's and I'm I I'm pleased and proud to work with this group of uh
officers who serve our our buildings and and our students and families so I'll just jump right into our presentation thank um I'm not sure if I've ever shared uh photos of our SRO's in our previous presentation so I thought I'd share these are middle school SRO's
officer Arzola who serves uh Dakota and John Adams and Officer Royston um Kellogg and Willow Creek and at the high school we've got Officer Condan at Century Officer Gilbertson at John Marshall and Officer
Jackson at Mayo and they also share time at the at the area learning center uh they have an office there and um take turns providing support and then we've got officer Cordom who spends his days at Phoenix
Academy and um and then we've got officer Blanik here who is the team lead and uh provides us districtwide uh support as well we appreciate uh all the work that he does with us he works regularly with Chris and if we have anything happening um districtwide that
we need some guidance on we um we are lucky to have u I won't say 247 we try not to call him um in the middle of the night but uh he takes our calls anytime which we appreciate so I put this slide in here I think uh at the end of the night here you're going to be looking at uh you're
be talking about um policies that um that we've been recently updating and this is directly from a policy on school resource officers so I thought I would just put this slide here to remind us what uh what our statute says about the
work of uh of resource officers um and I don't know that any of us would argue about any of these points and um we certainly feel well served by our team of SRO's on all of these points um in our schools on a daily on a daily basis
um I won't read all of these but definitely um I would say on a daily basis many of these um points come up um probably safety drills we're not doing those on an everyday basis but uh we do continue to uh run our um safety drills
that we're required to do and we do receive guidance on both our crisis plans that that set the tone for those safety drills and then um our SRO's are a resource for how our drills have gone when we do have those um we you we um
Sergeant Blanik pro provided the activity logs from all of our resource officers so six officers about seven and a half months of data and um with the help of Dr peter Ruck we were able to um process all of that information into
some usable data for you to see um how frequent those activities now this is these are activities that actually uh director Mclofflin helped um uh uh scope in the contract other activities that we were looking for um in terms of um
building relationships and the things that you see here below presentations to classes and whole grade levels of students um helping individual students uh helping resolve issues um meeting with families when they had issues
either in school or issues that happened outside of school that were impacting their children at school like social media posts and um and and threats of violence and concerns that happened outside of school that were impacting their children in school so you can see
that the greatest uh greatest issue that our SRO's are working through are those uh we call them meetings on violence but really those are as I was mentioning a student who's really struggling with um an issue of um uh maybe with one student
or a group of students feeling that um there's an issue or a threat coming for um through social media or they've had an an ongoing issue with a student um or group of students that uh is disrupting their learning environment and they're
looking for support to resolve that issue is issue peacefully but by far that was the greatest over 400 uh situations like that reflected in those activity logs um in addition we uh we
also used uh uh um AI to summarize those the logs although I will say I I took the time to read all of those uh all of the logs and actually really enjoyed um getting to know a little bit more about the individual events that occurred in all of our schools we try to categorize
categorize what those uh activities have been and so the first category a high focus on violence reduction and support supporting social issues or really social media issues or um individual issues between students or groups of students so coordination with
administrative administration and staff would be um really would highlight a lot of different issues but um really safety issues that might be coming from students or might be coming from parents calling into the school saying "My child
is reporting this." Um it might be something that was posted on social media that brings up a concern that might be coming into school um as a threat so we are working closely with our SRO's to um investigate and make sure that our schools are a safe place
for our kids to be every day um and um and sometimes the followup to behavior as you see noted here might be a request from uh school um and it might be a request from parents who would like to know more about what um what our SRO's
can do to help um participation in school and community events is pretty self-explanatory um our SRO's are at a lot of events that happen during the school day and after the school day um I noted some of those that were showing up in the activity logs like uh the cert
back to school event um uh if celebration uh one of our SRO was invited to and went to the um Shabbat pancake breakfast that some of the kids invited him to and he was maybe five or six kids that uh invited him there the polar plunge a lot of our SRO's are
participating in and then the final bullet here incident response and crisis management um so uh as I mentioned before planning and helping with uh safety drills and um collaboration with us as district leaders if we've had uh
threats um that we are investigating to make sure that our schools are safe um we also there you've heard probably about swatting incidents where a school might get a call it might not even be a school in our district but might be get some sort of a bomb threat or something that ends up being kind of a national
event um Officer Blanik will call us and tell us this is happening nationally you might want to let your schools know to be aware if they get a call um that it could be a a swatting event or a fake event and but they should let us know it helps us um not uh not uh immediately go
to high alert but know that there's something happening in the nation that um that we should be aware of um in the area of student support this this shows up a lot we have students who really um are looking to SRO's to help them when they're facing
issues of um as I mentioned before social media tends to generate a lot of um issues between students where they maybe are the um subject of a social media post that that is putting them in a difficult situation among friends
maybe they are feeling threatened through a safe a social media post uh maybe they're hearing that there might be a fight that's going to take place but there's there were a lot of instances um indicated in these activity logs of students seeking out SRO's for help
advice um guidance um to make SRO's aware of something that might be happening so a lot of individual counseling and guidance again the trust and rapport building um some of that is just being um available in the lunchrooms and in common areas
um okay in common areas for um for just to build those relationships um I was uh Dr pel and I were out giving an award to officer Al he received the goat award recently right after spring break and afterward many students were coming up
and receiving I think uh they he was making paracord bracelets for a while so they were asking for those and asking for for items and having personal conversations so those good uh connections were being made and then the safety and emotional well-being
um helping students with their concerns um uh in the neighborhood around the school there were some many incidents of officers helping with traffic control at the beginning of the year making sure that our neighborhoods our streets um uh that that parents are approaching school
safely for drop off and pickup all these things that you um really appreciate that sort of help um and guidance and then finally the educational engagement that we had that's called out in the contract um that is happening across the district both in individual classrooms
um and in auditorium environments so for classroom teachers may be asking like a social studies teacher might be asking for an SRO to come in and talk about um the constitution or talk about their role in the community uh and also SRO's
are pre are preparing and presenting um whole grade level um presentations on things like the uh the dangers of uh social media or what to watch out for with social media um there were some presentations on um on fighting and um
you know how to avoid fighting and what can happen if you do fight um and so just trying to be proactive with students um and then um the the last point here interactive and practical learning experiences so onetoone
discussions with students and families um and and helping students understand what what the SR role role is and then I'm going to turn it over to Chris to talk about our data and we'll try to speed through them i'll scroll
scroll for you we'll try to go quickly through this um this is the the data that that we've talked about numerous times that continue to grow with and you've asked for it in different ways i think we're hitting that spot I think that we've talked about numerous times of what exactly we're looking for in our data so if you look at this there's
three main parts to it there's the incident type uh things that the SRO or RPD responds to um we've got a reporting source what our schools are our high school middle elementary or ALC's and the outcome um no action a citation
three rivers diversion um convicted in court or open I'm active um the numbers will equal so your total number incidents will equal in the green column and they'll also equal in the blue column together so example is let's look at assault um we've got six um in the
high school the middle school and one at our ALC for 13 okay numbers add up if you go across into the blue column for the shaded area we've got six that had no action one that had a citation four went to Three Rivers and two are still in court there's our number 9 to 13 now
when we talk about um some of our issues when we when we talk about um our schools that um refer to our police officers those are items that probably will have a level two i can't say every one of them but those will have a level two and have some sort of documentation in our Skyward system and if you go a
couple down to community service there's 28 items those items probably are not in our system as far as a level two because they're not a discipline system those are things that that our SRO's provide outside of our regular pieces that you're thinking of a discipline part or
a conviction part of thing keep scrolling down because community service might be going to change a battery in um an ASD students um device to a location device yeah
for example so there's and this is also in your board pack so you can see it as one document i know it's hard to see on on a slide not sure how in depth you want me to go in each one of these but it kind of gives us our our background as far as where came from
one last one i think if it's if it's if it's fair Madam Chair I would just say in the big picture what we're seeing is that very few essentially none of our students are actually moving through school to convictions um they're all being uh dealt with through uh what we might call
either more restorative community serviceoriented with a couple of exceptions where it's still in process and where we would also expect it to be resolved along those lines does that seem fair to you and again this we really are grateful to the board for pushing for this data and for RPD for
producing it because when I first got here we did not at least from within the school district we didn't know exactly how many of our kids were getting uh as they say caught in the criminal justice system and what we're seeing is at least as it applies to our SRO in school um
it's essentially none um now they're interacting with law enforcement but just to sort of my big takeaway from that And I think another issue that we've talked about in the past is that no action column or or the the all the
outcome columns that it's not who makes that decision as to how that moves through the system so could you just touch a little bit on um you know Yeah so an event takes place um and we refer so let's say I'm at male
high school and we have an issue an assault that happens at high school um I refer that to our SRO and from there it becomes in them i don't have any way of saying to them you need to charge this or I want you to charge this this is now on them they do their pieces um SRO wise
and then within the county within county explain that part but once the event happens we do it separately and then off they go on on their part say they may come back and say hey is it okay to look at three rivers look at that that type that's why I see a lot of the three
rivers piece within that or diverse type thing yes of course we're not in the process yeah so actually as it gets referred over to us uh then the SR will review the incident uh they'll meet with the student meet with the parent they'll have a conversation uh they'll talk
about the incident itself uh they'll look at it at the big picture and then how do we resolve this a lot of these incidents we do refer to three rivers um sometimes parents say "Hey we'd like this to be referred to the courts." Uh that doesn't say or negate anything that it wouldn't go to court but then we do
have relationship with county attorney's office they also look at this uh incident and some of these incidents uh may also just get restored over to restorative practices and then deferred from court um I've seen a lot of great res uh success with Three Rivers we
really believe in it our department is strongly involved in that we've seen just a lot of great outcomes so it does work very well and it works well for the school district before we move off the data one question um for our team this doesn't mean that there aren't disciplinary consequences
according to our student handbook and our policies on discipline for any of these incidents that's correct and we'll see that data July this year how we I think I totaled up the number and if somebody pulled up
a different number that's 277 that may not be the exact number um but we don't have 277 referrals that we refer to law enforcement so some of these are not Some of these things that came in from the community or came in that way
we don't we don't put animals into Skyward right animal calls yeah vector so these are incidents though so how can we get a number of students that are impacted because at the end of it I believe it
says what was it 16 persons are involved but there only two three 10 um Three river incidents reported so I guess I would like to see actually more accurately how many students are impacted um because a fight can involve
13 students i mean so the data is a little misleading that you know you may have one kid in court for it but the call could have involved uh multiple students and then I'd also be curious to know in um just in the work that I've
done in in the criminal justice that oftent times there's multiple charges so a kid could be have a disorderly conduct that also is with an assault so we're counting it you know as two separate incidents but sometimes a one incident
can result in multiple uh violations may I say is that reflected here or is it just so the incidents that we refer to like three rivers so let's say there's a fight that'll probably be referred as disorderly it goes to Three Rivers as
disorderly they go through that program as disorderly so like you're exactly right so one incident there could be uh five or six students involved but again it's getting referred to as a disorderly i I don't think though Director Reinhorn and you guys correct me i don't think in
these data and again we've only been doing this for a couple years and it's gotten better every year i don't think there's doubling up of incidents so there's probably each incident is standalone are there many instances in which a disorderly is also an assault in this data or if it's happening in school
is it usually one or the other it's usually one or the other I think in most case now your point about number of students is we haven't had that request up till now i think we probably would need to build that into next year's reporting but we could do that um because right now the request was to track incidents when there's an incident
and I think we've gotten pretty accurate in the distilling the incidents but we could certainly look at that for future years of number of students impacted in each incident going forward and that information would be reflected in our July report correct so we will
see it at some point separate if it's disciplinary to RPS as opposed to from them yeah you'll see it if it if it resulted in RPS so example of the special circumstances 22 of them that's not going to be reflected probably in our discipline data but it could be I
don't know if it's 22 different students or if it's eight students yeah we Dr mccclofflin um I really appreciate this work and I think that it's reflective of um you know Dr marlo and I
can talk about this and Dr you see us not here but um this is what we were hoping for over modifying the contract is is having it in a way that's digestible and understandable so I appreciate that um one question I do have is that the logs that the officers
are doing is that going to continue so we can continue to see this kind of data absolutely okay i just wanted that was just like a one-off or we're going to continue that and then um I had a question about the other data i think
um that one escapes me I guess um the other point that I wanted to make Oh I I really appreciate and I think one of the other intents of all that earlier work we did in earlier years is to completely separate the discipline data from this law enforcement data and the fact that
we're talking about it in two different months is what we were hoping for so really appreciate that work as well anything RPD we've asked of them is Sometimes takes a little bit of time any more on the data before we let them finish their last slide i got one more
question is there also are you noticing any repeats kind of like we were talking with the eviction process uh where she had mentioned that she is seeing certain families come through two or three times you know for an eviction um are you noticing the same kind of trends from
the SRO's are we noticing certain children or groups of children and I'm asking for this information as to how we could be more proactive and preventative if we are recognizing trends you know maybe there are things we can maybe do to intervene before they are um
incarcerated yeah and that that's a great question and I think that's something again we could look at the data and numbers because sometimes um if they go through three rivers we see great outcomes with that by doing restorative circles it works great but if the student would be
moved let's say to a different school or they maybe go online for a while then come back and we haven't been tracking that and uh we can do a better job doing that and again it's more data that we can certainly and try to collaborate again together for um next year for
these numbers i can definitely get them to you in July when we share the discipline data we we do show you that repeat you know how many kids have multiple instances of behavior i haven't
been here in July yet so you'll get that in July thank you i remember my other question um uh this for you Officer Bonik that it seems like historically um the school resource officers were tasked with investigating things that were
referred from within your department to do interviews and that kind of stuff at school is that still a thing or are the officers not SRO's not involved with that aspect that is no longer the practice i would say too that some of the incidents that get reported to them if they're through Minnesota Department
of Education that become very critical immediately get a hold of our detective division and they're brought in and then they usually meet with the student either off campus or they meet with their family home okay and that seems like just for the community's knowledge that that's a change in your department
then um that choice that you all made to to differentiate those roles in our community yes okay yeah thank you the last slide really has to do with the contract and as uh as you mentioned uh at the onset the contract is written
such that as long as if neither party indicates a desire to either amend the contract or terminate it it simply rolls over currently as it's written um to the follow to the next year um there was
some uh uh inquiry made to RPD as to whether there may be interest in a multi-year contract and uh Chief Franklin indicated yes that would be of interest and so that's uh the information that Chair Nathan provided that there could be a conversation about
a multi-year contract my colleague John Carlson had provided information about a number of uh contract contracts for service that are multi-year here in the district so it wouldn't be out of the ordinary to do such a thing um so there would need to be a a a motion or a
resolution to do a multi-year contract should we decide to enter into a contract of more than one year chair Nathan I notice we're using the term contract versus memorandum of understanding for the most part they're one in the
same thing or have we officially migrated fromou to contract i I think the theou that we you can help me director McWacklin developed in the past is now combined in one document
with the contract the agreement yes okay do you want to talk about the cost of the contract certainly can i the there's been an increase uh in uh cost of uh law
enforcement salaries and benefits uh percentage- wise commensurate with the increase that we've seen in Rochester public schools uh over the last three or four years so the uh aggregate increase
uh as you can see um is on the screen and it's my understanding though I'm sure lots of officers might like it as might lots of teachers they're not expecting that level of increase every year for uh the next 10 years so this was important I know from the chief's
perspective to make sure Rochester is competitive for the best officers and can retain the great officers we have relative to other departments similar to the steps that we've made since uh I joined uh Rochester public schools where there has been a very significant
increase in compensation and benefits for our employees as well so the increase is a reflective of increase in the salaries of the SRO's not an increase in our share or any additional costs it's straight up their salaries and salaries and benefits reflects our
cost cost sharing of that yes okay director Cook so is the I I'm just I'm trying to understand the the posture that we're at with the contract has the city or the police department indicated that they intend to
terminate the agreement without a change in the financial parameters um they have not indicated they plan to terminate the agreement but the standing uh long-standing practice of splitting the cost led them to I think
appropriately propose that again this year so should the board want me to go back and direct that um I certainly could pursue it uh and I I appreciate Chair Nathan kind of asking me to speak to this i obviously uh maybe should have addressed it more
proactively um it's not an insignificant increase but I think it's an understandable increase uh as I've said it's commensurate with the increase we've had and I think that um the cost sharing that we have had with our department is something that I think works very well both sides have skin in
the game um I know school districts where they bear the full cost i know ones where the city bears the majority of the cost in which case it frankly lessens even though we have a very effective partnership it lessens the shared ownership of the strategy um and
so that would be the logic I think of uh continuing to pursue this um obviously every year I've presented you with a balanced budget proposal to consider in June and I will present another one in slightly more than a month that would incorporate this cost into the budget
during the break we were having a discussion about contracts and talking about our teacher settlement and the fact that we don't have um large pools of candidates applying for our teacher jobs like we did many many years ago and how we're trying to attract attract and
retain the uh the best possible teaching um staff that we can and um I'm sure it's not surprising to learn that RPD is facing the same challenges that they're not um seeing you know auditoriums full of people waiting to get on the list of
possible candidates um just like uh just like we are sometimes watching to make sure to see if people are actually going to finish an application so we can call them for an interview we just don't have people lining up and and they don't either so I can understand that um need
for an increase in salary on their end just like we needed to do so just from a contract negotiation perspective just I is is your recommendation Dr pel as you know in in
view of the relationship with RPD and so forth to amend the agreement to reflect the increased um amount that you know whatever the actual amount is that would roughly split the cost of the officers
um because the the current language is just calling for a 2% annual increase so it we I I don't if I'm understanding correctly then the superintendent's recommendation to the board is not to do nothing but is instead to either amend the contract or perhaps explore a
multi-year agreement is that correct yeah I appreciate that in retrospect uh Director Cook it's an oversight the resolution should have been written as you just articulated it and we could update that for your consideration of it at the action level um I also am not making a recommendation at this time
about the move to a multi-year contract though generally speaking my my my perspective on my job is to always give you a recommendation i'm actually agnostic on that i know this has been an issue of importance to the board going we have a lot of contracts that are two and three-year contracts uh I'd be
pleased to make a recommendation to you on the multi-year contract too if it would be something that you'd like me to bring uh next week uh but yes I will recommend I can say for sure that we uh continue the 50-50 cost sharing of the actual cost of the service um you know
the one of the things that I have uh noted since I've been here is that uh RPD assigns us its best um as soon as our SRO's are not in our schools they're on the street actually they don't get the summer off um and they choose them
for their ability to work with kids um and families and I've always said were I to ever feel that was not the case it would dramatically change uh my strong support for this but I don't feel that were the city uh or the department to
come and suggest changing the percentage that maybe the school district should do 70% and they should I think I would have to actually think very hard about making that recommendation to you but because they're recommending we continue the long-standing tradition of evenly splitting the cost uh that would be my
recommendation and we'll update that language for uh your next meeting to reflect that fix because you're right uh it's a bit confusing where we suggest no action is needed but you would need to um authorize this expense
can I add to that a little bit sure um I think that and I and I agree with that that based on the language that I think the the number in the contract represents the 50% sharing but that's not explicitly described in here and that the 2% obviously is is going to
need to be updated as well the other thing I want to say about the contract now that I've looked at it a little bit and to answer um director Barlo's question about theou that I think what is attached in assembly is I think it was anou that we did to increase from the five officers to the six officers
for a period of time and that's why we referred to it at times about anou because that required anou because it was a change mid-contract but that the and the dates of this document seem to reflect that too um but I think the
language of this docu I think what's attached here um is the actual contract we just referred to it as the MOU because it was making that change from 5 to 6 and then I think at one point in time we had to do anotherou it might be why we're talking about it that way because we weren't ready to make a
decision on the deadline and we had to extend it a month so I think all of that has been um creating some confusion here um while I'm speaking I had one more point that I wanted to make um reflecting on um what um
um you're saying about retention as well retention of teachers retention of officers one of the things that I personally envision and I think Dr garcia and Director Barlo and I talked about this when working with this contract is a desire to have someone from the school board sit in on the
interviews for the SRO's um I did mention that to the chief when I talked to him recently and I think that that not that we want to participate in the decision- making but just to have eyes on the person that's going to be coming into our schools to make sure it's the good fit with being with our students um that I think that there's some value in
in having us at least at the table listening in to make sure that um we are confident that um a good decisions being made dr marvin two things um I actually did as a board member did sit in on the interviews and it was amazing not only
to meet those who were interviewing but also to listen to the kinds of questions that were being asked and I I'd never felt more heartened and confident in our SRO's than I did at that moment so I appreciated that um if my understanding
is that we are need to come up with an agreement now about what's going to be in the resolution that we'll be voting on we're talking about multi-year contract is that two years three years i mean has that been were I to make a recommendation on that
i would recommend uh uh piloting a two-year contract were I to do that i think given that we've only done one year um I think that gives the board um and by extension the community that cares about this issue a more limited time frame than like you're stuck with
me for three years because you gave me a three-year contract and Oh my so um that would probably be doc Dr marvin what I would recommend should we do that and and again I I really appreciate this we will be pleased to uh clean up the resolution for you for the next meeting
to reflect the this feedback okay and then a quick question for you i'm guessing that being an SRO is is the best job a police officer could get and also possibly the most exhausting because you're spending all day every day with adolescence what what be do you
think for for some um some sort of security if they're thinking "Yeah I'm going to do this and I'm going to I'm going to get to be the best person I can be with teenagers and I know I'm going to have to invest a lot of extra patience and learning into how that
works would it make it a little bit easier to have people become SRO's if they knew I got this at least for two years?" I mean assuming that they do the the job rather than one year and then you're Yeah i I
think you know you look at um Officer Cameron Jackson uh with his background uh he actually student teached so he knew coming into this when he approached me and was interested in it he already knew what he was getting into so he already had that investment and then he
networks and works very well with the collaboration with Mayo High School so I think sometimes we look at these backgrounds with which what the officers have uh if they're engaging in the community uh if they're volunteering at the Boys and Girls Club um and again it's just a lot of good background that
they bring in that helps out a lot in the schools and they network really good with the uh that administration that's in the school as well and I would add to that that when we select uh school resource officers we are looking more in that long term we don't want them to be there just for a year we want them to be
there for multiple years because I see our school resource officer is that community policing at its best right so they are that community is that schools police officer so we want them to have time to build those foundations build those relationships within that community uh year after year and build
on that so we do see those as long-term investments in the school i think to your point about the two-year contract I think it is a kind of a vote of confidence i know over the past few years it's been a little bit nerve-wracking when we come around to this time of year for our SRO to wonder
yeah director Marlo uh question for RPS I mean RPD sorry so um this increase as reported in the post bulletin is a 24% increase I
believe and is that tied to your uh labor contract or your recent contract and how many year contract is that so uh yes uh the increase is uh one of the main reasons is uh like
superintendent Pquel mentions our our 50-50 split um with the current contract SRO contract um our labor agreements were not or the school resource officer agreement was not keeping pace with our our labor agreements okay uh then now we have since uh new ratified uh labor
agreements which are for the next three-year term uh which had significant market adjustments in them um which played uh greatly into this uh increase and I will you know reaffirm what Superintendent Pel's mentioned about uh our commitment to the schools and I can
assure you that we will not be coming back to the school board asking to increase that that uh 5050 share um because we see the added value of having the officers in the school as well knowing that that officer or SRO is going to spend 75 to 80% of their time
in the schools that shared cost of 50/50 um we see the added value of of contributing that to the to the community to the school district on top of that we have um added buy in and support with Sergeant Blanik here which is is actually an additional resource to
the school district which is not governed within your current agreement um so the police department provides that in addition to that to make sure that your leadership um has immediate access to a supervisor at the police department 24 hours a day uh as he does
answer the phone a lot of times late at night um as well as to be that supervision for those SSROs that are within the schools so we see the strong partnership there um and we really see the value that not only this district brings but that we bring to the district
right so I just wanted to be clear then that um uh for the next three years uh we shouldn't anticipate a uh increase but we should also be aware that uh as
future labor uh or uh contracts uh are renewed and negotiated there may very well to keep our SRO's uh in step with uh uh your line officers there may be an additional know three years from now I'm
not asking you to project into the future but it's quite possible three years from now we could be asked to um uh uh fully fund uh the SRO's i just wanted to make sure that we're not
communicating oh well we're good uh up until the next contract yeah we are good and uh uh I'm a retired union guy so I more power to the union i'm not you know saying that's a bad thing i just wanted to make sure we're communicating uh you
know above board everyone knows and thank you for what you guys are doing yeah thank you yeah I would just I would say that yes our labor contracts are locked in for the next three years um I would say that this contract cycle was a very uh this is the largest market
increase I've seen in my career you know 25 years in law enforcement so I don't anticipate we would see that again i think there was a lot of market forces that came into play with that and nor do I anticipate that we would ever come back and ask the school district to fully fund the SRO program 100% we
always see that partnership there the value in having that partnership and splitting the costs thank you so to build on that question the um base payment in the current contract um would have to be updated to this um
45,993 per month which reflects the increase but there is language here that says that there will be a 2% cost of living adjustment applied to the monthly payment paid by the district each January 1 would that still happen madam Chair I'd like to look at that it's very
clear there was some homework that we should have done before tonight and so that is very much on my mind to update the language for you okay great so we will do it because that that was historically in there as a predictable rate of increase i think to Director Barlo's point sometimes it's not a typical rate of increase and so let's
make sure we work with RPD to come up with some language for you to consider at the next meeting okay if I can if I can provide some clarity for you as to how we came with that 4% is that's based off our um contractual agreements for our labor union through 2027 so that's
where that 4% came into play um and then the second piece would be that in the resolution um I'd like to see and I'd like to hear other board members um feedback i'd like to see the total cost of the contract
also included okay in the resolution so that we know the dollar value we're approving um and then the second question for me that goes along with considering a multi-year contract is the um
provision for the term um this uh tradition we've had of having this contract automatically renew unless we provide written notice of termination in the event we want to change the contract language now we have
to have a resolution and take action i think this board has committed to having a agenda item on the SRO contract every year because we've said that we want to see the law enforcement data and we want to discuss have a discussion as to whether we want to terminate the
contract and I'm wondering if the board would like to have this um be like other contracts when the contract comes up in term we have a conversation about whether we want to have a subsequent contract as opposed to this automatic
renewal if we don't take action to cancel it well Madam Chair I think that is a great idea and that in past iterations of this uh contract it wasn't actually tied to the labor contract it
uh we now have that awareness and so I think we have um every reason to um uh support your recommendation additionally uh any ongoing concerns should there be any which would arise of
the uh superintendent and chief Franklin I'm sure would have communication and if there were anything that rose to the level of a need to perhaps tweak or modify it would be brought to our attention at that point in time i would add to that discussion based on
the work we did earlier is that we probably want to have that renewal time at springtime so that if there is any time that theoretically one would want to terminate either side that we would be able to have plans for the following
year right so keep it on this keep it on that May 1st schedule i think that makes sense yes right to give us a few months before expiration director Whitehorn so I can um just from what I from what I'm understanding is that there's just really some wording concerns and how
it's worded um I would say I'm not 100% opposed to automatic renewal but I would say maybe we can add language about you know the annual review in the spring um I mean I think that everybody should have a way out of a out of a contract
but if there are no concerns I see no issue with it with it renewing without a a vote per se um and I think that's the question that we're we're putting forward is the current
contract should no board member let's say we had this discussion there wasn't any changes to make in the contract we could say thank you very much and end the agenda item without taking any action
um versus saying at every time we renew this contract there has to be a board vote to affirmatively renew the contract but if there's any changes to the contract right like if there's a cost of living change or if there's
change to any language I would think that the board would want to take a vote to approve the contract and under the way this is worded we would have to take a vote to terminate the contract before we modify the contract and then take a new vote i mean
we we can propose a new contract that that specifies whatever term we want and it can call for um cancelling the previous there's nothing that would prevent us from doing that i I if we're if we're going to go to a two-year agreement um I think getting rid of the
evergreen automatic renewal um is fine i don't really feel strongly about it i could envision that actually working to RPS's advantage in some scenarios but it I don't feel strongly about it um I wouldn't if we were going to retain the evergreen or automatic renewal language
I wouldn't want that to be for more than one year though um so those are my thoughts on it and the superintendent I believe said he was going to work on the language and perhaps u he's heard what we have have to say
regarding this and if he's good to go and he's captured our concerns we could probably as long as board members I would still like to see though I I would I mean even if we're not going to vote I'd still like to see language that does require some accountability of a review
well Director Whitehorn I don't think we need to put that into our contract with RPD though but I I think as a board we should absolutely be committing to that and if if the contract terminated with a two-year term we would be forced to do it um because we'd have to talk about it in order to enter into a new agreement
and I think this board has made clear in the past that we want to see that this annual conversation happen so anything else no I I thank you i feel like I have some good guidance and I I think I can think of some ways to make sure that that you're confident about that review as well so I think we can
bring you a good proposal this essentially would align this contract with every other contract that we have which is time limited and then you got to reup or the contract is done um but I think that uh I think we can work together in pretty short order to bring
you uh some of this additional information to consider next time thank you very much thank you thank you our next agenda item is 8.2 performance measures and skip 2.0 process this is a
prep for action item tonight and the board discussed this at the April 15th study session and is scheduled the board scheduled to take action at the May 6th meeting superintendent Pel Thank you Chair Nathan board members you heard a lot from me last uh week at the study session and you had a long memo
from me which we have uh uh spent some time uh considering in the week since we talked last and some of the feedback that you gave us uh last time was uh really quite influential in bringing the proposal that's before you uh I'm going to attempt to be brief because we talked about this a lot and I want to save the
time for discussion two points I think emerged at your study session and they've emerged in several meetings that I've had in schools um this week including one at Mighty Oaks and one at Riverside today that I really want to begin the first really critical point is
how do we frame the skip the school continuous improvement plan and as I talked with folks who were at your study session and who are in our schools I realized in some cases people are thinking the skip is everything it is the master plan for everything that
happens in a school it is the guide book to every subject area every grade level every aspect of school and very importantly that is not what a skip can or should be a school improvement plan is a targeted strategy to address a
limited number of areas where we need to get better maybe it's because we have low performance or maybe it's because we have solid performance that we really want to improve so skips do not and cannot address everything that schools do so there are many aspects of our
schools that we will continue to be attentive to that are not going to be spoken to in a skip a skip is a tool to frankly if you have to put it at its most essential uh level address your biggest problems or your biggest
challenges but it's not all-incclusive the second point um has to do with the measurement piece which um looms large if we're going to be doing serious continuous improvement which is that we have based the proposal for the performance measures in particular that
is before you now on the measures we realistically will have in the next three years i have made the mistake in my career multiple times of writing plans that had goals that you can't measure which doesn't mean to the point I just made a moment ago that we
shouldn't work on those goals but let's not pretend that we have measures for them they don't belong in a skip process if we actually can't measure them this is the place where we do the continuous improvement work so very briefly in the resolution uh that you have you can see
that there's a set of design principles that are there there are uh a list of performance measures that I will come back to in a moment that I'm proposing would guide our school improvement work for at least the next three years and also guide the design of our strategic plan starting next fall there is an
articulation of who the skip team members will be and uh as board members know it was a subject of significant discussion last week as we heard about tonight i am not recommending that parents be required to be on the skip team i appreciated the point that's been
made many times in fact I love the uh the attention that some in our stakeholder community have given to the skip teams um and you'll see on the next point I am recommending that we have a required opportunity for input and feedback that is part of our skip
process the reason ultimately I'm concluding not to require parental or caregiver involvement at this time is that to my knowledge right now on none of our skip teams do we have full integrated parent participants and I think before we mandate something we
ought to try something skip teams are professional dialogues uh at Riverside today we had a deep discussion of the fastbridge data its meaning its use and the administration of the test if you don't speak EduSpeak someone would have
had to translate for someone else there now is that impossible no but it would change that a lot in addition as happened today at Riverside and Mighty Oaks those teams meet during the workday and to try and have teams meeting at alternative times would be a huge
expense and a burden on our teachers and other staff um and then finally the point which again is is well taken no single staff member represents all staff no teacher represents all teachers no uh education support professional represents all education support
professionals but they do have vehicles within the school to reach out to their colleagues they have tangible ways to talk to the other teachers the other ESPs a parent who is there as a volunteer parent does not have a realistic way to get feedback from all
parents in the school and so there is another important difference now I want to strongly encourage parent and caregiver involvement on skip teams i believe some of our schools will uh embrace that possibility and I believe as we learn over the uh implementation
of skip 2.0 how that goes we might get to a point where that requirement makes sense but I do think we ought to try it before we mandate it not making the mistake that they made with the federal No Child Left Behind law which was mandating everyone to do something no one had ever done before which did not
prove successful that said I am recommending an explicit requirement that parents and caregivers have an opportunity to learn about and provide feedback on their school skip every year and that there are ways that uh I'm sure our schools can devise uh opportunities
to do that that is not something that is happening in uh I think it's safe to say most of our schools right now and so that would still be a significant um step forward um the needs assessment component of the skip process is one that is a very important addition to the
process that we don't have now and I think to the point director Cook that you made in the study session um we realized that the self assessments that we proposed to build of key structures in our schools multi-tered systems of support professional learning
communities really were not quantitative goals to achieve through the process their tools for the needs assessment so we've moved that third category from the dashboard if I can call it that into the needs assessment it didn't fall off but now it's part of the needs assessment
not what our schools would actually be aiming to approve over time the components of the skip I'll come to again very briefly in just a moment it has not changed since last week um one thing that we've also clarified based on your study session very helpful point schools will have a lot of autonomy to
setting their intended improvement goals their initiatives their action steps unless they demonstrate sustained low performance or downward performance in which case we will step in and we'll say "I'm sorry you don't get to choose your goals initiatives and action steps
because Houston we have a problem here." And so there's an autonomy that goes with progress that is a result of our discussion in your study session last week the plan remains a three-year plan critically we need to get to the point that where our improvement goals precede
developing our budget and staffing plan that's why it's going to take a year to make this shift because you got to have the strategy set before the budget and it's going to take us the 2025 2026 school year to do that we've tightened up the approval process it continues to
be the skip team voting to approve the skip um that principles will be responsible for the school budgets but skip teams will have an opportunity to review and provide feedback on that budget and staffing plan um although it
will be the principal's job to determine that budget and staffing plan um we have uh articulated that uh we need to step up our support that we provide from the central office for school skip teams in particular we need to build experts in every one of those performance measure
areas who can support skips and then we have some general commitment to board monitoring of the process that will be um there so to just highlight two very brief components of that strategy that you saw uh summarized there that's where
we've landed uh on my recommendation for the dashboard the performance measures once again back to my first point is that everything we care about in Rochester public schools absolutely not are those key areas for us to continually improve upon i do think so
um I am recommending that we embrace the five essentials framework of ambitious instruction effective leaders collaborative teachers supportive environment and involved families one other change from last week is we don't necessarily name the 5e survey as the measurement tool i think that is most
likely but in talking with Dr ruck and Gretchen Accassio our project management coordinator we've realized there may be some other ways of measuring that framework that we should look at so we're asking you to embrace the framework as opposed to the specific survey and then finally the basic structure of the skip has not changed
from what we talked about in the study session those performance measures that you saw a moment ago would be our northstar our dashboard schools would uh set their improvement goals based on their data which are the areas we need to work on is it reading is it math is
it family engagement is it uh leadership um is it our graduation rates then they would select their improvement initiatives we're suggesting no more than three um because capacity is a critical thing to keep in mind and they determine their action steps and we will
deter we'll provide schools with progress management information on an ongoing basis that they can use to track progress toward those performance measures and then critically off to the side there when principles submit their budgets and staffing plans they will need to show that the improvement
initiatives and the action steps u of their skips are adequately resourced in their budgets and staffing plans though that will be the responsibility of the principal as opposed to the skip team and so madam chair with that uh you have the resolution uh before you
board members questions dr wford um so and I don't mean to beat a dead horse with the parent involvement part here um and I I hear I' I've heard everything i've heard both sides so my
question to how you currently have it is how will you create the transparency so I know we are kind of making the assumption that parents may not be available that stuff you know which I think is a big assumption um or language
but my my concern is that if we do it this way um how will parents be notified that these meetings are happening because if we're encouraging uh parent involvement and not and not mandating it as you say um how will we be assured
that parents are aware for the parents that do want to be involved how will they know when and where these meetings are taking place uh beforehand if they do want to you know call in to work or whatever do whatever they need to do because it's important to them um will
we have some kind of way to make sure that is implemented um and furthermore to what you were speaking about the language and those things if we know that we're implementing a system um that can be difficult for our community to understand
um what is our design around that will we you know host a town hall or something because you what I'm hearing is you want the parents to be involved and I'm hearing that there are barriers that may make it difficult for parents to be effectively involved um but I I'm
not really hearing how we're going to solve that right so I I understand that this is something that can grow and we don't want to bite off more than we can chew and I I see both sides but how are we addressing those concerns so it sounds like we have the time concern of
the time of they were doing the the meetings um but then there's this larger concern of whether or not parents will understand uh education legally right understand the langage that being used so that they can be effective um so I
guess from my standpoint in order for me to be comfortable in approving this I would like to know what does that look like h how are we going to ensure that the parents that are able to be involved are able to actually able to be involved and it doesn't become this closed
meeting where now there's just a memo sent out how how are we going to keep that open for the parents that want to be involved superintendent yeah thank you Director Whitehorn um the resolution before you really maps out the highest level
strategy and we would absolutely need to flesh out all of those specifics going forward so not just on this point of parent involvement but on every one of these points the resolution really is give us our marching orders so the language that I gave you is um encourage
but not required to include parents and caregivers i'm authentic in that encouragement so the the the thing I'm not recommending is mandating but then it says skip teams should be required to provide parents and caregivers with an overview of the schooli skip and invite questions and feedback from parents and
caregivers about the skip and so how we do that could be fleshed out and we could certainly come back to the board with detailed proposals at this point I'm simply recommending that you require that um and then there's lots of different ways that we could bring back
uh options for schools to do it i'd want to engage parents and school staff and talking about the most effective ways to do it um I could hypothesize some of my own ideas at this point but right now we're asked the recommendation is to require the input from parents and then
I gave some examples that have come up in terms of you know open meetings written feedback things like that um that could be a very good subject of ongoing board discussion of if you approve this okay now how are we going to implement it and we want to have some
specificity because not just on the parent involvement piece but on the needs assessment on um the other things we're asking for your highlevel direction as opposed to all of your specific um all the specific action steps at this point and I'm excuse me I
was just ask for clarification i know we're saying not mandate but then you do have the language of requirement so it sounds like mandate but it's not well no the mandate would be input so there's a mandate for input absolutely the mandate would not be you must have parents on your formal skip
team um that's the only So there's a mandate for parent input on the skip now so if we have a school where the PTA for instance or just a a parent is saying I have no way to learn about or contribute
to my school's gift that's at odds with this mandate like we have to go to the principal and say you have to have authentic ways for your parents to contri parents and caregivers to contribute to the skip and we would need to flesh that out with them and say what does that mean um so there would be a
mandate for information and input right now I just think it's a and and the feedback from uh school principles in particular but also teachers and others on skip teams was the mandatory membership on the team seemed premature to the folks we've
gotten feedback on director Cook um well I I uh um I I like a lot of of what I'm seeing here i think that um we're on a good path generally couple uh further questions that I've
had is is there an expectation that lead principles would be members of the skip teams themselves or not yes it it should say that we'll we'll clarify that okay yes um that's useful to know and then the as far as the membership of the skip
teams uh we're we're really this this process would delegate the recruitment and selection to the lead principles themselves which makes sense to me if the lead principal is the one that is going to be uh charged with implementing the the budget that reflects the
priorities um one thought that I had and I I kind of wanted to just surface this for my colleagues on the board and for you superintendent um I I think it might make sense here to
call for inviting the participation of parents and then leave it to the lead principle to I mean because the way I read the the proposal here is that um we are stipulating three specific teacher roles
and then the lead principal and then the lead principal is going to be charged with recruiting whomever for the whomever they think will best situated to provide the type of input that they'd like to see from the skip team doesn't even really need to be a member of the
school community um I can think of some folks at some of my kids' schools that aren't current teachers but maybe former teachers that would probably be great members of skip teams so um I think it would be I I I think it could be a good thing
to call for even at this level of kind of abstract guidance explicitly calling for inviting um or soliciting uh potential members from amongst parents in each school and then delegating to the lead principal to
determine whether any of them are are particularly good candidates that they they'd like to recruit and select but I wanted to see if others had reaction to that so the the one one point I'd add is and not to the to your suggestion about the parent point i need to think about how
that might work in practice um because you don't want to have a principal say well I'm going to invite you because the district made me invite you but I don't think that I should have one so I'm not really going to put anyone on i mean it just to play it out all the way but it we do have here each year before the start of school year principles be
required to submit the names of their skip team members to the superintendent who work with central office leaders to review the list and ensure the required perspectives are represented on the team so there will be accountability for making sure these are authentic teams that respect reflect those perspectives and should the board take a step to add
any other perspective uh to the teams we would ensure that those perspectives are represented there as well director um thinking about the parent caregiver involvement in the comments to the board before the at the beginning of the meeting today it seemed to me that
it might be an issue of timing and perspective that it difference between perhaps the skip team getting their draft ready that the skip team hasn't voted on yet that that draft
might be what to present to the school community for feedback rather than waiting until it's draft is voted on principal's done the budget we're all set and then doing a presentation about here's what we decided that's a great point we that I
think it's the timing and and the perspective of it a revision to that effect that's the intent and you're right it doesn't say that clearly yeah I think it could be at the end of the sentence about inviting question and feedback from the parents and caregivers about the skip prior to skip team voting that's intended you're right it doesn't
say that so you don't want to say "Look what we did it's it's all done." Right yep great great point Director Barlo yeah um so there is yes indeed a mandate for
information and input for um parents and caregivers um Director Mclofflin I appreciate your comment um I simply I I have um
served on a number of advisory committees or served as a member of uh the community uh who was simply um informed as to the decisions being
made and as a courtesy um input was solicited but and you just made the statement decisions weren't necessarily made but it's been my experience in the past though that
oftent times the decisions are made and it's a courtesy being extended to oh yeah we're supposed to inform our parents and caregivers so we're going to uh call or convene a meeting to do that
and um their due diligence has occurred the uh parents and caregivers are made aware of what's been already decided i guess my concern and and I don't want to be uh
repetitious i am um it seems like director Mclofflin has already suggested that there be some mechanism that allows for um uh input prior to the final decision made
um the only additional uh concern I have is that um it's left up to the purview of each individual principal to decide what that might look like it's my view
and it seems like there is more than one or two or three of us on the board who would like to maybe see that be more than just a we'll leave it up to the individual principal i think that it would be carry more weight if indeed uh
that was part of the expectation that principles will uh other than the Bible I'm not big on the use of the words shall and uh but um however you would
think would be appropriate for uh you know communicating to the principles that uh uh there are some sincere effort and desire on the part of the board and parents i you know um and I I'll end
with that i I think you've heard you've sensed uh even this is a response to our study session and I I I think we're getting closer and um I will be excited to see what the final result will be i
had one more piece of feedback i want to make sure everybody who hasn't talked yet has a chance to talk but we Oh I you're gonna stay on the same subject i just wanted to briefly respond to that subject but if you're going to comment on that subject yeah just from a parent perspective I I think I like the idea of
giving some flexibility because I think about PTA at the elementary level there's a captive audience of 30 people pta at Mayo High School fiveist five or doesn't exist right so that's where I think those our schools are so diverse
that I think we need to think about what's the most effective way to do it and that it's not going to be cookie cutter for each school is not going to be the same i I I would just first of all let me commit to see if we can bring you some language to this point that is still flexible but a bit more specific
um next time so let me one thing I'll just say um having in my previous lives at the University of Minnesota and at search institute done a lot of work around parent engagement the way to get a lot of
parents and caregivers there so not just the ones who will come to anything God love them is to have an event where their kids are doing something where their kids are performing delivering a
studentled conference whatever parent ball goes way up what's really powerful is if you can provide the info and get the feedback at an event like that but you have to be really efficient because parents who don't want to sit in on committee meetings don't they'll come to something where their kids are
participating and can you get authentic engagement at at a setting like that because then you've got people who will make time in their busy lives to come to something that involves their that's when you want the broad engagement then there's sometimes you want the deep engagement with people who are willing
to sit through meetings and stuff but when you can get a community event like we have go to Elton Hills it's jammed and I've talked about this a little bit with staff there they haven't generally leveraged their incredible
turnouts for parents nights to also get feedback on issues of school improvement now nobody wants to sit down and hear a big PowerPoint at a parent but they have everybody there and are there ways you can actually begin to get the the parent and caregiver feedback at an event like
that that is teameming with those things you have to that that's something we have to support our schools at getting good at but it can be done it can be done in a way that you know you say hey there's three big priorities we're thinking about for our school we have a quick poll that you can you know fill
out and you watch a short video and then suddenly you have a kind of a gut level feel of what a very diverse group of your parents are thinking um and so it's just the kind of thing that I'm hoping this process will drive as we go forward director I was just going to say just
because you know just a little out in the weeds and a little out of the box you know I think we're looking at this like for school But I think there's an opportunity to look at this from a community engagement perspective um you know we're meeting people where they already are you know uh we keep talking
about like reinventing things but you know we have lots of opportunities in our communities where parents are you know where parents show up uh the back to school event the some of the events that were listed um in the earlier presentation you know those are places
that RPS could be present and get some of that um engagement you know I think some of it is also and speaking from a parent is sometimes we're just not aware i think we make the assumption that parents don't want to be involved but they really just don't know and they
they haven't had the conversation to either understand the importance or what exactly it is or to what director Barlo says parents that have been involved felt like I showed up I sat at these meetings and I was just here to check a box so you know there's a little bit of
distrust with people getting involved on these boards and committees even people that have done tons of them because they feel like well they already decided they just wanted you know to get my my quote and say hey we spoke to the the community and this is how they felt
right but we're kind of not um engaged until the end and I don't think we want to do that with this process so I just think it's worth us you know looking outside of the box to see how can we get that information to parents and how can we make sure we keep that process you
know transparent as uh to director C's point our school system is full of all different kinds of of of parents you know retired we have grandparents you know it's just not you know the typical mom and dad you know there are a lot of community members that can probably
offer very valuable um feedback to some of these um these meetings um so I just think we should just as you said you'll reword it but I think if we were looking at this from a broader scope it would maybe assist us in how we are looking at
this parent um involvement and engagement piece but if we're looking at it per school and per principle of engagement it does become more complex but I think if we look at it at a broader scope um we are underestimating the amount the power of people you know
so if the information gets out there and to the right um community partners you'd be surprised the outcome that we can have and the effective outcome that we can have um but if we're only looking at it from what this one school and one principal could do then yes we we
wouldn't be able to effectively um so building on the the parent and caregiver conversation um I don't think it needs to be in uh this level of approval but when we're considering the
implementation I'd like it to be clear that it is the district and the school administration that is taking on the mandatory uh parent meetings and parent engagement that and and that resourc resources of
the district will be provided to help support it so that a principal can't for example put it on the PTA to organize it or another group of parents um and that the district would make things available like translators or you know um if there
might be any family engagement funds to help with funding you know some of um some of our most successful family engagement events involve um you know refreshments and again I don't want it to be put on a a community we could ask for community partners perhaps to help
us with it but I I wanted to be clear this is a school outreach on a school continuous improvement plan not something that you know an outside organization is organizing the other piece is I think we've got some great experiences from
our CAPE workshops and these family engagement events that have been done at schools either by the school itself or in partnerships with PTAs that we can learn from in terms of how to activate that parent perspective
um but my personal feeling is that the the beauty of this plan is that it is school specific and that I think sometimes when we talk about district initiatives it's hard to get people to fe to get feedback because they want how does it affect me what's
in it for me and these skip plans it should be the responsibility of the parent or I'm sorry it should be the responsibility of the principal to educate the parents on how their child's experience is going to be enhanced and improved if they take these steps
successfully and I think that's part of the buyin that we'll get from parents is if the if the principles can deliver that message effectively um it's important information for parents to have but that's I think the important hook to get parents to to to then give
their feedback if they understand that their feedback will really drive their their students everyday experience i agree and I guess what I was saying for the community outreach was more so of letting parents know that it's it's there right i know that it needs to be
school specific but my concern is that a lot of parents don't even know right so I think I was thinking more so in making the community aware that this is a process that's happening at each school and then the schools can you know continue their their process but in
making sure that we're being transparent so that the parents that do want to be involved know the school or know to keep a lookout for you know those meetings and things and I think the other piece of the parent caregiver involvement we haven't covered is the um requirement that um
the skip team will review the data from the surveys and consider refinement of the skip to address weaknesses particularly for parent engagement yeah it's a the 5e parent engagement
uh data is very powerful it'll show you where parents are not feeling engaged in a way that's often not comfortable and we will have if we do adopt that survey as we talked about the study session that was another idea that I didn't think merited here but it was not lost
on me we'll have a required participation rate for that survey so that we are certain that it is actually getting sufficiently representative uh that it is sufficiently representative of our parent population um I think Peter said it was 20% in
Chicago that actually I thought that's not a bad percentage statistically i think we could go a bit above that actually um but that was another good idea that came out of your study session that we would certainly bake into the plan um and one other question about the
requirement so the skip is developed for three years and then every year the skip continues to meet to update the plan correct yes this the skip team so would the requirement for this uh parent engagement parent outreach happen every year or only on
the three-year cycle um no the intent was that it would be every year make that clear if it's not clear okay anything else the the one thing I should probably just say because it actually maybe one of the things I know we shared this with you and we shared some of the feedback that
um came from interviews when when I my first year here we tried skip plans that were something like where we're headed for in 2026 27 which is to say they were open-ended and schools could do it and the reason we
moved away from that there our schools produced skip plans that had 18 initiatives nothing was eliminated it was everything and therefore there was there was it was not implementable there
was almost no exception to that the hard part of this is choosing a limited number of priorities that's where the hard work on the team becomes of course all of it matters and you go and you have to look at the data you have to get
the stakeholder feedback and then you have to say we have three big things you know maybe four and so that's one of the reasons why this process does need to have some some control to it because if you get a bunch of people who care about
kids together myself included we'll all dream big and we'll have so many priorities and this process has got to focus on a limited number of really critical objectives and then the schools have to stick to them for three years because we all know the deep change
doesn't happen if we keep switching plans year after year so I mentioned that chair Nathan because yes they would be doing um an update in between their new skip plan but what they wouldn't be doing is saying okay parents and caregivers should we completely adop get
rid of our goal they're saying "We're in year one of our goal around math and here's how it's going what are your kids seeing?" But we're not switching goals until we get to the next plan we need to sort of be tight in that regard sorry I have a few more questions not on
this subject um on the performance measures you said that it's going to be reported in the eight racial and ethnic groups why not English learners special education yeah it it should say that was a good catch it should say the the demographic groups that the Minnesota school report card utilizes okay so it
would be we now have eight that the state uses for racial and ethnic groups but it would include students with disabilities multi- language learners uh free and reduced price lunch or whatever the state comes up with uh for that um I think those are the other biggies so
yeah is there any value in gender um yes there's value in gender i don't mean to suggest reporting given I had to think about that yes yes there's value in gender um uh there um you know
usually a that's Yes we're seeing striking differences between genders so we'll take a look at that yeah um and then on our board work um in element 11 um should we make it clear since the board is approving this and
we're we're giving uh the authority to the superintendent how to implement it should we does it need to be clearer that we are not the board never approves individual school skip plans or budgets but we approve the budgets as they are
integrated into the district budget annually you think that's important as somebody looks at this document down the line and says "Well when is the board going to approve the skip plans?" Or am I just being too i mean we my recommendation is not that
you approve the skip plans you're approving the performance measures you're being updated on the skip plans i do think that I will bring you uh more specifics on when we would be giving a school less autonomy because they're having problems on I think there's the
language is sufficient here for now but I think I would define low performance or downward trend so you can look at that so there's a lot we would bring you to flesh out um I guess you could make it explicit if somebody thought that you were doing it but it I don't think it says here that you would you do approve
the budget and the staffing plan in the aggregate every year right so it all rolls up to what John and the team bring you in June so that's for sure the skip plans right now you're right you wouldn't be right approving individual plans i'm just wondering if we should add a line to element 11 that kind of
wraps it up that says the school board will approve a budget that reflects the budget and staffing plans of the individual schools sure and to what you were saying about the autonomy that was going to be my next question is some of the other steps are worded very specifically as to what
those measurements are you know as how many uh skip team members need to be on each team but when it comes to autonomy it's very very vague you know as to what what would as you like just said what would make us uh put a school in
position where you would be taking over um so if we're looking at this uh document for longevity um it could be interpreted lots of ways right i can just see that schools could say "Oh well we're like you said we're working on it," which could take several years or
what have you to get into a better spot but how do we differentiate a school that is you know taking a big bowl that is a three-year goal from a school that's just not um you know just not making gains in
whatever it is that they need to be doing like what will be the metrics for us to determine that a school is needing us to walk in versus not i I think well I don't I mean we're not going to be approving the skip plan and
I I don't think it's up to us to make that determination whether schools are that's an administrative decision I think that they would have to be the ones and Dr carolyn uh would be determining that i I think school by
school yes I do think I would want to bring the board more specificity to get your feedback on the broad criteria for that i think for this board at this point to be approving this strategy and saying yes we are going to empower our
school communities but we will step in if we're not heading in the right direction is a very meaningful statement at this high level and then I agree we need to bring more specificity to the process as we go forward anything else well I mean maybe to state
the obvious but this board or any future board doesn't need to give itself permission to exercise general control over the school district we you know a year from now regardless of what we say here three-year commitment and all we could totally upend this there isn't anything binding about this but I I
think we are all committed to this strategy and that's that's a good thing but I don't think we need to specify anything further than that it's sort of inherent so okay we'll continue this conversation next week thank you next meeting um our
next item is a prep for action policy committee recommendations March 28th 2025 uh these were the recommendations um that were first briefed at the last regular meeting and this is the second of second briefing and the policy will
be on the consent agenda on May 6th does anybody have any questions or comments that were raised in the [Music] interim hearing none we move on to item 8.4 approval of start times for 202526 and this is planned to be an action item
on May 6th superintendent thank you Chair Nathan um as you can see our chief administrative officer John Carlson is coming up and I'm gonna with uh your permission Chair Nathan I'm gonna ask John to give you an overview and answer any questions you may have on the the
issue that we are asking you to take action on which is uh a tweak I believe that's a fair word in our start times after John is done Madam Chair I'd like to ask Mona Perkins our chief uh academic officer to come up and give you a brief overview of an issue that I know
you've heard about regarding our elementary school special area schedules art music media and fed that is purely forformational purposes i want to give the board an update on ask Mona to give an update on where we are with that
important work um it's related in so far as it has to do with time and schedules this is the issue before you that we will be asking you to vote on and then once we've uh uh adequately addressed your questions with this issue I'd like to have Mona come up and give you an
update on that issue just because we will be announcing some things in the coming days and I'd like the board to hear an update first okay thank you Superintendent Pel and Chair Nathan so what I want to describe to you is indeed a tweak to start times for and end times
for next year what's really driving this is that um we have learned a lot in the first three quarters of implementing these start times for the 2425 school year uh that were uh decided upon in June of 2023 um we have learned some additional
things throughout the winter um as far as some drive times of some specific um DWOO transfer hubs and um what we're finding is we need about 7 to 9 minutes for a few of these uh deliveries of students to keep the whole system running on time that's causing us
needing to uh tweak the schedule a little bit we also uh wanted to uh tell you that um when we were here in November myself and my colleagues we talked about um needing to uh drop down the ending time to 2:10 p.m that is not
shown on the slide right now for our district-wide option schools at Longfellow Lincoln Riverside etc uh we're able to actually add that five minutes back next year and even add another five minutes to that um so they'll have 10 minutes more of instruction at those schools next year
to do that we also uh need to make a a small adjustment at Bamber Valley Churchill Elton Fwell Gibbs Hoover so on and so forth as shown there so what we're proposing for next year is a start time of 7:50 so that's about 5 minutes earlier and then going to 2:25 at the
first um grouping of elementary schools and then having an end time at 2:15 at the second grouping of elementary schools and that adds back the five minutes that was um adjusted this year and adds another five minutes to it for next year uh at our middle schools this is
all just a trickle down effect then when you make a small little change even by 5 minutes we need to adjust all the way through the system so our middle schools we are proposing an 8:40 to 320 school day our high schools it would be 8:55 to 3:35
we are not proposing any change to Phoenix Academy Rail or the middle school ALC the high school ALC um we are adapting uh that time as well to 9:05 to 3:15 and that's direct feedback from our um ALC and our high school principles
and really making sure that we get those students that need transportation from the ALC up to Century JM and Mayo so they can catch the buses home uh with their um neighborhood peers and then we're not proposing any changes to the uh preschool program times those will
remain the same and that's uh the gist of the quick summary dr marvin two things quickly have you gotten any push back at all from secondary schools about the five minute shift we did on a earlier version when we had
it extending to 3:45 we went back to the drawing board and um worked with it a little bit more we're find we were able to find five minutes in there um on one end and then five on another and we got it down to 335 as tight as we can get okay and then
um maybe I'm saying this wrong but it seems to me that Bamber Valley and those schools will have 15 minutes more and Bishop and that group will have five minutes more so it's and because of transportation So one thing I did this
slide doesn't accurately reflect what it reflects is what was voted to as approval on June 6 of 2023 it doesn't include that five minutes we had to shave off in the middle of this school year i didn't put that in there to maybe I should have but I thought maybe it might be a little more confusing but
we're adding back that five and then another five but to do that we also can extend to the benefit of the other schools in another few minutes there can I just build on that for a second so it looks like
um the DWO schools have an extra 10 minutes but do the Bishop Franklin Gage and Pinewood gain five minutes yes they are gaining um Bishop did they go to 2102
last year this year Bishop does not bishop that would be a new change coming for Bishop um due to a movement of of a or an addition actually of a newcomers program at Bishop um and then making needing to make uh some student transfers there so the only ones that
were pushed back to 210 after the June 6 2023 vote were the districtwide option schools correct then and Pinewood as a result of being in Longfellow building we did end those at the same time i wanted to make it very clear that Longfellow and Pinewood operate on the
same start and stop time okay but the net gain in minutes is 15 for those in the first box that is correct five for Bishop Franklin engage and 10 for Lincoln Longfellow
Pinewood Riverside and Washington i want to say Franklin engage are already at the 210 but I would need to verify that okay i think it was just Bishop is the one change okay jackman um when I looked at this I just want to
make sure I understand because I originally thought it might be some sort of typo but does this reflect that the first group has more instruction time than the second group of elementary that's correct okay how do we explain that we explain that by we are operating
within the constraints of what we have and we know that this is an issue i guess what I can say is the middle group or the second group of elementary schools is getting the same amount of instruction as they got uh the the minutes are exactly the same as they were up through the 2020-2021 school year but we also know
uh that this is something that we need to talk about and it probably be addressed in the next strategic plan superintendent may or may not want to talk about that it's going to be fun everyone's going to love it um and then I I I guess I was thinking about is is
it related to location in some degree it's it's completely related to trying to move students from a district-wide or yeah basically a district-wide program to an attendance area school so they can catch the same buses with their
attendance area peers that go to the attendance area school and trying to not add additional routes to keep the transportation as efficient as possible as we were also directing in 2024 to make sure that we did that got it i I I
I don't want to be flippant we we have to we have to do some hard work on that problem it's there's no simple solution to it uh the hub structure that we implemented for the district option schools has served some important
purposes there are consequences that we're one of which we're seeing in this instance i have kind of a related question not to complicate things but does it somewhat relate to the invol the enrollment and where those kids come from in the district-wide schools no um
because they're delivered um to their attendance area school um about 15ish minutes or so early um and then they catch a shuttle then or another a bus just takes them they all split up and go to their districts from there i guess my point is is for using Lincoln as the
example what if none of the kids from that hub what if none of the kids from that hub area attend Lincoln would that would that not happen ever or would that change that i believe we have students using from any of the hubs where we're where there's eligibility are being used
this year right so I guess my point is is if that changed and that for whatever reason one geographic area didn't have any kids going to that districtwide would that free up more time or not possibly but we we know that we have multiple routes that are taking seven to
nine minutes so it would be more than just one area that would have to drop off some ridership to compress it down to about a five minute time frame which is what we would ideally want to have 10 minutes um allows for those seven to nine minute transfers got it so it's the
complication and the efficiency that we want to deal with got it so the changes are transportation based that that is this is a direct in um result of our learnings of our transportation structure this school year
and is it just due to the limitations of transportation limits or is it just because not efficient i'd say we're doing uh this this makes it as efficient as we can be the limitations are if we wanted to spend more money and go back to a different
structure uh we could look at that and we could have routes added that can provide more transportation higher cost but we are adding 15 minutes of instruction for those um for those first 10 for the
second group and 10 for the second so that so we are adding minutes of instruction which is something we should be glad for and that was a reflection of feedback you were getting from staff about especially the implementation of literacy curriculum
yes as is the next subject as is the next subject illustrate as well absolutely all right thank you John and the team i know it seems trivial to be talking about five
or 10 minutes but I know the work that John and Justin and the transportation department and our first student partners put into even those fine changes so we appreciate that if I may uh Madam Chair Mona comes up um
board members have heard um about well as Chair Nathan said about the need for more time for interventions in literacy and I know you've received some emails about an initial proposal to change the schedule of our special area classes art music physical education and media um
Mona uh in her capacity as our still fairly new chief academic officer has bitten this off uh and has grappled with the details in a pretty extraordinary way um I'm happy to say I think we've ended up in a better place than the initial proposal which I'll let Mona
describe um I realize I'm adding this to the agenda i believe it fits with the last discussion we had um but not because I believe that we necessarily will have all the time we need this late in the meeting to delve into all the
implications but because it's late in the school year and we do need to inform uh in particular our special area teachers about what their assignments are going to be for next year i want the board to hear about this before that process goes into motion uh literally tomorrow um this is not something that
uh I'm asking for uh a board vote on i believe it's fully within my responsibility as superintendent but I want you to be very aware of the the complex change that uh we've landed on so Mona um this is something I'm super
super excited about because um when we if you remember when we met with uh when we had the Whiten wisdom presentation the classroom teacher that was here talked about the difficulty in the schedule and I at that time said "We're working on it." We had been working on
it we finally landed so um our goal was to create schedules that allowed for schoolwide implementation of MTSS and also allowed for staff collaboration um and our current model for our specials area was art is 45
minutes the kids get that once every six days and then media is 30 minutes a day once every six day cycle and then PE and music was also 30 minutes but it's twi they're each twice every six day
cycle so just from looking at the length of the class you can tell you could see like there's no way you can schedule them easily because they're not the same length of time so the first thing we had to do was figure out how do we get them
all to be the same amount of time um and so this is I've shared this with you guys before this is a sample schedule this is an actual third grade schedule i believe this might be from Jefferson um and each so like 3E is one of the third
grade classrooms 3l is a different classroom and you can see where that I just showed four of the six days so that you could I blew it up just so you could see it a little better um you can see like they don't always have like 3S has media on a days at 9:15
um but then they have music on Bday days at 8:45 so they don't even have the same time like the time slot so if you're in that 3S classroom you don't have specials at the same time of day every day and that just gets to be that's
tricky for a teacher and then when you're trying to schedule MTSS what you really want is an open space for all the teachers at the same time because you want them to be able to share kids across the grade level and so when you look across it you can see the blue is
the only time that it's completely open for all of them when they're when the pink isn't taking up space and we needed to clean that up because that just is it's messy it's just too hard um so what we landed on
was we kept the the rotation the same so art is and media are both still once every six days and PE and music are will continue to be twice every six days but we cleaned it all up and went to a 40inut rotate uh class um period instead
and so this is now what it'll look like that'll be their rotation so they'll have in the six days they'll have media um once they'll have art once they'll have um so that actually looks like they have
media three times they won't that one class won't have it three times i should have cleaned up my little picture there but it'll be that clean where they have the same it's a rotation of um you'll have to have it at the exact same time period every single day and then the blue then shows you now it
opens it up you can have MTSS at any one of those periods and we are confident that this can be done within our contract with the Rochester's education association and so that we want to thank Rea i know that they have diverse perspectives in their
membership um but we've uh worked you know closely with them and we're going to keep listening to our teachers um as we implement this uh we know there always is transition in there i'm grateful i also want to be grateful to our art teachers in particular who spoke
up i know there is a reduction of five minutes that's different than 10 um but I want them to know we hear that um and I think there may be some creative ways that we can engage our art teachers in working with kids uh outside the special time uh special area time as well um so
I'm I'm enthused I'm grateful to Mona and the team for where we've um ended up in a very complex uh effort can I ask a silly question why are art and media only one per six days and PE
and music is that a choice is it standards how does that work so I that is that's something that um has just been how it's done here i don't think that that's something that has to remain i think that's a something we can look
at as we move forward um I think for I do think it's something we absolutely can and maybe should look at especially as we look at the arts standards are like it's there's five areas for the arts so it's not
just like we all often just said art and now it's five areas it's art like it's visual arts and music and then there's theater it's just it's a I think there's other ways we can look at how we do it but um but for this year for sure it's a
bigger thing was getting the schedule right i think the rest of it we can look at as we move forward in the next strategic plan but that wasn't something that I think we needed to tackle necessarily this year one thing and there's no change in um there's no loss
of FTEEs no loss maybe a very slight uh increase which we will account for in budget but very slight yeah it's it was just a little bit board members director well I I I love it it you're
all going to be waiting a really long time before you hear me not support something that's going to enable uh stronger supports for uh for literacy and for all MTSS um practices so um well done and thank you and this is probably
like this was a heavy lift and it's going to be so so worth it so worth it all right thank you thank you let's move on to other business 9.1 our
ABCD the current version of the ABCD is available for reference for every schoolboard meeting and beginning tonight we're going to highlight um the upcoming agenda items at the next two meetings for the community and board members if you want to preview at the
May 6th regular meeting our monitoring item will be budget development process update we'll have prep for action of the 202627 school calendar uh mindsets behaviors and experiences for student success and the school resource officer
contract the two action items will be performance measures and the skip 2.0 process and the school start times um May 13th study session focus topic is the enrollment projection are there any items board members would like
to raise for consideration for a future meeting agenda i do have a comment though sure i appreciate the fact that you are um allowing the community to know in advance still that
information's always been there but we're putting forth that additional effort uh this is one of u of those innovative ways to ensure that the community is aware aptly in ample time to make preparation to attend
participate uh educate and inform oneself so uh kudos to whoever came up with that i know you probably did Kathy but uh uh I appreciate how much I love the ABCD yeah um and I think a good clarification for
the May 6th meeting is uh since it looks like the board is go is going to have a resolution on the school resource contract officer's contract that would be an action item on May 6 we we needed to decide if it was going to be an action item by asking for a resolution it's going to be an action
item um upcoming board meeting dates um all meetings start at 5:30 may 6th is a regular meeting may 13th is a study session may 20th is a regular meeting and June 3rd is a regular meeting and hearing no other business this meeting is adjourned at 9:25 p.m
[Music] don't do that where did you go another