jce welcome everyone thank you for joining us this evening um moving to the agenda approval any changes to the agenda no changes to the agenda can I get a motion to approve the agenda as
presented so move by Schmidt second by Scully it's Skelly uh to approve the agenda as presented can I get all in favor please say I those opposed motion passes moving on to some future events please check
the district website for a complete list of monthly events Thursday February 13th and Friday February 14th no school uh staff professional workday Monday February 17th no school President's Day uh District service center closed
Tuesday February 18 no school staff professional workday Saturday February 22nd Panther Foundation Panthers for a purpose party Tuesday February 25th school board work session at 5:00 pm and Tuesday March 4th
regular school board meeting at 7 pm with Communications to the board and administration at 6:45 moving on to the consent agenda can I get a motion so moveed by forsburg second second by henon to approve the
following items of the consent agenda minutes of the January 14 2025 organizational meeting and regular meeting minutes of the January 28th 2025 work session bills paid for December 2024 in
the following amount uh total of of 4,663 134 Personnel items seniority list and Lane changes all in favor please say I I those
opposed motion passes and moving on to discussion reports and information items engaged and enthusiastic Learners align work of adults to continuously improved personalized instruction and responsiveness to meet our students
unique and varied needs District operational project updates or operational plan project updates deepen student engagement through Innovative and personalized learning Dr hope Ron uh Miss Melissa Olsen and Miss Amy Berlin
welcome thank you good evening well at our January work session I took the opportunity to bring the board Along on uh a number of different professional learning opportunities our teachers have had this year uh tonight we are narrowing that down to uh just speaking to you a little bit again about the
professional learning that's happened through this District operational plan project that uh Mr Easter shared de in student engagement through Innovative and personalized learning and uh you heard from me quite a bit a couple weeks ago so tonight I'm going to pass it off and let other people share their
experiences with you so uh to kick it off I will hand it over to Dr Melissa Olsen our director of a learning design and student engagement and Amy berin our learning and Innovation coordinator for [Music] literacy okay hello
all right so um we have um two projects that we would like to give you an update on tonight um as hope already referenced um the first is deepen student engagement um in E6 or early childhood through sixth grade literacy through Innovative and personalized learning and
then deepen engagement in grade 7 12 through Innovative and personalized learning um and we're excited to bring you along on some of the work that's been happening in both of those projects okay so um our teacher facilitators are leading the learning you're going to get to hear from some of them tonight which
are excited about um but a little bit of context and background just to set the stage um so we've had um an open invitation to all teachers to indicate um if they were interested in being a teacher facilitator back in June um and we have teacher facilitators across all
of our buildings um at the uh E6 level we um and as well as 712 Center based we have 29 teacher facilitators who join us regularly across grade levels and across schools um at the 712 level plus our k6
Specialists we have 28 teacher facilitators um those teacher facilitators come from across content areas and one of the things that's been really um wonderful about that this year is they've had an opportunity to work more vertically across 712 so having our
Westwood teachers with our high school teacher facilitators regularly and then our Specialists um have had the opportunity to spend much more time together K12 as well in music um Visual Arts um and so on so our facilitators
come together once a month to learn together and prepare to lead learning at their buildings they facilitate professional learning for their colleagues on professional learning days and through their professional learning communities or plc's um really the goal with this was
the idea that our teacher facilitators would be able to personalize learning for our teachers in the same way that we ask our teachers to facilitate learning for their students um the feedback we've received so far has been overwhelmingly positive from our teachers on professional learning days getting to
work in smaller groups and being led by their colleagues so um it's been an exciting Endeavor and I'm going to um turn it over to Amy to share a little bit more about like what exactly that looks like all right our our teacher facilitators have four kind of primary roles that
they have been working on this year um one role is to engage in that learning first um they've had monthly opportunities as lead Learners to come together to deepen their learning around the engagement tools um they also during those monthly learning days have a
workshop time where they have a chance to design use those design qualities and apply them to an upcoming experience with students to then tried out with their students so they're able to share with their colleagues how that implementation um went for them so that they can learn from each other um in
addition to the engagement learning at Early Childhood through grade six and then our 712 Center based teacher facilitators they've had the opportunity to engage in that read act literacy learning um there's like starting in August and they W just wrapped up in
January they've been able to stay just a step ahead of everybody else so that they could be ahead in that learning and then be able to facilitate and share their experiences around the literacy learning a second rule is then to develop skills to design and facilitate
high quality professional learning um the facilitators has been able to experience all of the learning first and then take what they've experienced to design the learning for their colleagues um they've been incorporating some intentional groupings utilizing protocols to facilitate reflection and
dialogue and then intentionally making connections between engagement and literacy and other initiatives in Spring Lake Park um for example we've been able to weave in our tools for cultural proficiency um they've woven in um Competency Based learning as well as
creating a learner Center environment so bringing everything together then the third role that we've worked on this year is to deepen the practice of our springl Park leadership approach um to prepare for their role as Leaders uh some of the things we've done there when the benefit of pulling people together for those monthly teacher
facilitator meetings um we've been able to weave in um really U knowing and living out our Spring Lake Park Norms as well as the concept of self-differentiation our fourth role that we've worked on this year is to implement professional learning um including sharing those
experiences and the impact that their implementation has had on student learning um the teacher facilitators have been an integral part of all of our professional learning days um throughout this year um leading small small groups at their school and um weaving in all
that impact as that they've experienced as lead Learners with their students kind of um if you can imagine on a professional learning day maybe in the past you would have seen like a larger group of 40 teachers in a room doing some learning together and this year you would likely see like four small groups
of 10 teachers in a group spread throughout the whole building really engaging in that deep conversation with each other and designing work for their students all LED by a teacher facilitator one of their colleagues who has already tried implementing these things with their students um and being
been supported by other District leaders in the building it's been a really powerful experience and like MSA mentioned earlier we are really excited tonight to have um some of those teacher facilitators here to be able to share with you we have two teachers from elementary and three teachers who are facilitating secondary here and we're
going to have them come up a couple at a time and share um their name their school and the role that they're in and then really some of those things that have been meaningful to them about being a teacher facilitator this year so we'll go ahead and start with a couple of our elementary teacher
facilitators you and hello everyone my name is Dianna feno and I am a second grade teacher at woodg Spanish meran it is a pleasure to be here and I first want to thank H for inviting me because
it is an opportunity to bring this experience from a multicultural perspective so thank you uh being a facilitator for me has been an inspiration for other people as well especially because most of the
training that we have comes from basically the same people always right so inviting me inviting teachers to be that face to be that facilitator has opened an opportunity for other teachers to say I also want to participate I also
want to do it for good graad it has been meaningful because with our principal we decided to translate this material and allow people to participate in the language that they want some people decided to take the training in English
and participate in their discussions in English but some people decided to do the whole training with me in Spanish so it was meaningful for all of them for everyone to decide how to participate and how to be together um something else was that
I translated every single module so it has been meaningful for all the facilitators at West to present a similar material we have been taking our curriculums we have been taking our
lessons and connecting it to this and I as a teacher I have to say that even though this is a new training and this practices has been in this has been in our district this is are completely new this is what we have been doing working
based on Research based practices as well so it has been an opportunity for everyone as well to align those practices and be able to teach Spanish and English as well utilizing the same the same uh research based practices
also uh something else that uh has been meaningful for myself and for my group of teachers at West is that that um we have been coming together to inspire
teachers that have been there for many many years but are not in the leadership roles so this has been an opportunity for them as well to say how we can incorporate those practices and teach and lead and show the students that come
from other countries as well that they can participate that they can be they can their voices are valuable and we can be together for them for our community so that's all I have thank you am I okay okay uh my name is
Christina hrom thanks for allowing us to come and share with you this evening I am a complimentary teacher at Centerview um and as has been shared with you this evening we're here as lead Learners um and I've been a lead Learner in the area of literacy um we've gone through the learning first asynchronous and then
we've helped design and lead the learning within our buildings this year being a lead learner has provided me the opportunity to develop some new skills professionally in this facilitator role and as I learn alongside my colleagues I haven't had many opportunities for that
in the past so that's been um personally and professionally um a positive for me I've appreciated collaborating with a team when we meet as facilitators across the district as well as with my core team of facilitators at Center view it has been been great to see how purposeful we have approached the
learning by connecting it to our core resources our reading framework and engagement strategies in the design time on professional learning days teachers are collaborating and working together to design learning that includes the instructional and engagement strategies
that we're learning about through the use of our core resources we have also been purposeful with staff learning in vertically aligned small groups meaning teachers are across various grade levels academic Specialists multilingual learner teachers speech pathologists and those
in student services are all going through the learning together we're able to share our unique experiences that we bring and learn from one another in how we approach literacy instruction in our unique roles as I went through the learning on
my own I was eager to then engage with the learning with my colleagues and hear what they were noticing and wondering and engaged in conversations discussion with them I have brought up thoughts and wonderings to my colleagues and they have shared New Perspectives and ideas
with me we are learning from one another and this is positively impacting student learning thank you good evening I'm Angela googi I teach seventh grade math at Westwood Middle School had some of your
children um I appreciate the opportunity tonight to be able to share with you the impact that um being a lead learner has had on myself professionally and in my classroom um being a part of this group has been a very positive experience for me um and I've had a lot of great things
that I've been learning along the way um but one thing that we've that's been in discussion over the year is is student engagement that's something that has been a topic of conversation and so when I heard that this was a focus for a district I was very curious and interested to see how are we going to
how are they going to incorporate this into our professional learning um throughout the year and so once I heard the plan of of what we were going to do I was super excited to see how might this translate into my classroom uh being a part of the lead
learner group has been like I said a positive experience for me it has really caused me to reflect on my teaching practices and look at how am I really meeting the needs of my students so that they're being successful um I've really appreciated the days that we get once a
month to meet together as a group at the district office here um we use that time to go dig deeper into schley's um design qualities so we're learning more about them we're having uh discussion about what would that look like implementing that in our
classrooms um what challenges might we face as we try to do that and just having good discussion but the best part is our discussions are happening across grade levels across content areas and even talking with teachers from other schools so I'm gaining very valuable um
different perspectives in that way um we've also spent a lot of time talking about engagement like what is student engagement and so I learned that engagement is not um being compliant it's actually when the students are going to volunteer their attention their
time their effort to towards a task or an activity that you have so that made me reflect on my own teaching and what activities I plan for my students and are they just being compliant or am I really getting them to want to do the activity in t can be involved in
it I think throughout this process I've definitely grown professionally and as a leader being able to have that time on those days once a month to plan out you know what my next step is going to be what am I going to try in my classroom and then in turn going to my colleagues
and sharing that with them and then being able to facilitate them through the learning process has been very valuable um it's been exciting to see that I can share what challenges I might have faced or what successes I've had and then um share that with my
colleagues and have a discussion around what might they try or you know what what they need to know more about to support them um honestly this has been refreshing because I've been teaching for almost 20 years now and so sometimes you get in that rut of like teaching the
same way every year you know you have different students in front of you but you tend to do the same thing year after year so this has um caused me to go back and look at how I'm teaching and refocus on you know what it knowing my who and figuring out what do I need to do to
make sure that they're engaged and interested and see that the learning that we're doing is important um so it's been refreshing for me to have this um different perspective again um one thing that I've done in my classrooms that we talked about in our
lead learner group is to know our who so we one way to do that is I give students surveys and an interest survey to find out you know how do you learn best um what are some activities that you like to do to learn about these the concepts that we're working on what questions do
you have that kind of thing and so I'll give them the survey at the beginning of a unit throughout the unit and at the end um and for example one student really wanted to do paper dodgeball and so and so I took his advice and the look
on his face when he came to class and on the agenda was paper dodgeball today he was so excited and so one thing that we talked about is like if you're asking for feedback make sure that you're using the feedback and so that student was like she listened to me and we tried it and the and the rest of the students saw
that too and so I feel like I've built that Foundation of trust and they um they will give me value you know their honest feedback and I'll use it to make the you know the next lesson more interesting and engaging so um that's been kind of fun like just getting to know my students more with like a simple
survey different questions um and then the facilitation piece when I bring back my um what I've tried in my classroom and I've shared it with my colleagues that has been powerful because we have really good discussions
about um just like how did that go and what what do you mean about how can I use this design quality in this part of my lesson and so just it it drives the conversation about just improving our teaching practices and making sure we're doing what's best for students so I'm very excited to see where the this
journey will take me for the rest of the year because I think it'll be great and it already has been um and I appreciate you taking the time to listen to me thank you hi uh my name is Karen CS I am uh our technology one of our technology engineering and design teachers at the
high school um and despite my gray hair uh I've only been a teacher for seven years my fir my first uh exper erience was in industry for over 20 years and uh my last position I had in industry was all around continuous Improvement so I'm
super excited to be part of this initiative because it is an opportunity for me to help Drive change um not just in my classroom but across the school as well um design is my passion um so I love and greatly appreciate this extra
time that I've had to dedicate towards um making more meaningful and engaging lessons for my students um and it's really refreshing to be given a framework which we can look at and help us evaluate what we're doing so we can continue to drive Improvement Beyond
just a one or a two-time experiment um I've seen the results of these experiments in my entry engineering class um it's kind of I'm probably one of the only ones here where I see students every trimester so I'm in my third iteration um I did this class last
year was the first time I did it so I did it then in try one and now I'm in the middle of it in try two and based on what we've been learning with the select the engagement model I've changed it every single trimester and I think I've been changing it for the better um there are things that we uh take into
consideration um about knowing your who Angela had mentioned and when I started off TR two for this engineering class I had a set Vision on what I was going to do because man I really improved it the first trimester so I know what I'm doing and I came and I said well you know maybe I should ask the students they'd
like to do and I I learned all my assumptions were wrong um the things that I was going to focus on were not the things they wanted to focus on so instead I listened to their voice changed up and what it's been really fun to see is we do things where we're building little simple machines we're
wiring breadboards we're doing a little bits of programming we're making Bridges and I'm seeing kids get excited about things that I don't think they would get excited about um I've had students who just said who you know they're in our Al program or or they haven't had a lot of
success in school to say I think I like this this class is not so bad and I'm like well yes it's great if we can all sit down and have some fun and put some focus on our learning and make it engaging you can find it fun um so that's been super refreshing because I don't think without the extra days and
the extra time to do that and to do that in collaboration with colleagues across the different schools and buildings I don't think I'd be able to make that experience for those students um the other great uh thing that I love about this is in my area in engineering I've often been a professional learning
community of one um and many of us in the pathways we all are Singleton we are the only people who teach our courses and that can be fairly isolating um this has really allowed us to create a much stronger Community um I have seen um I
have witnessed better collaboration across all of the pathways teachers not just at the high school but also getting to know our stem colleagues down um at Westwood so it's been amazing to be able to connect that way um one of the fruits of that was just during registration a
couple of our technology engineering design teachers we went down to the stem classrooms to talk to the eth graders about the classes that they can have at the high school and what would be good opportunities for them and without this type of community and feeling that we had that connection I don't know that
that would have come about um the other thing um that I feel too is just being able to support my uh support my my colleagues growth I become a better practitioner so I'm able to learn from them and what they're trying they're
able to question me um why did I do something and that that reflection and that sharing process um helps me continue to be a better teacher every day um finally uh the one thing that I really um I think has has um paid off a lot is the fact that this community now
they're starting to learn from each other right again that a sense of true collaboration where people aren't designing in a vacuum anymore um they're starting to share tools they're starting to share techniques and um those relationships um in that collaboration um really helps set the foundation for
continuous Improvement so I really appreciated this opportunity it's um it's been invigorating for me and I I hope we continue to invest in this type of personalized learning for teachers uh thanks for having me um my name is Zach Vel I'm uh nth grade language arts
teacher at the high school and I also serve as our curriculum lead um on a personal level the teacher facilitator in lead learning initiative has been really impactful for me uh I have felt called to education as a teacher and now
as a leader so having the opportunity to reflect practice and refine my leadership leadership skills alongside building and District Leaders with my colleagues has been really fruitful and enriching um throughout my time here at Spring
Lake Park in the last seven years I've felt an abundance of Grace in the support of my leadership journey and um it's with that I've been able to find such um meaning behind this work and really believe in it um so far uh kind
of the most powerful impactful moment I think we've had in our um time together has been um when we do our learning here together at the district uh we've learned that to truly measure student engagement uh you have to ask the students you can't just uh you can't
just uh figure out engagement based on casual observations but you you have to actually ask them which uh builds off what Angela had shared earlier and some of the other coal facilitators here um so as a language arts department and teacher facilitators um that was something that we really held close to
us and wanted to stand fir on was knowing our Learners knowing our who so that we can use that knowledge to deepen uh and personalize engaging student experiences and student work um so in our language arts department at the high school we what we actually did was we surveyed all teachers surveyed a cohort
of students and ask them what um activities what sort of classroom culture components um what ways they learn best um draw in their most their highest levels of Engagement um and then during one of our uh on site days where we were all together we collaborated by
looking at what um the students had all said about engagement what things we noticed across um across 9 through 12 grades and we thematically organized and um looked at patterns that we were noticing and we reflected and refined on where we saw opportunities for growth
and also where we saw areas of strength um and then we we used that we've used that data to now inform and influence our design of units moving forward um so for example in the ninth grade classroom uh one area or one piece of feedback that I got from my students from a
curriculum lens was that they really enjoyed doing um like passionate creative narrative writing like having the opportunity to really personalize writing through poetry uh through creative short stories through even writing songs um and they liked having
Choice with all that um so that was something as a 9th grade group we took and we decided during Tru we have to build more of that in um so personally I have really felt um just like this has been a really great Initiative for this year and I think the
um number of co- facilitators that we have in this program is really evident of this work um it's been really great to have the opportunity to um meet teachers where they're at throughout this work to uh hear their feedback and support them for wherever they at
wherever they are at um and also um to just take their feedback and make adjustments and adaptions to the learning as we as we see fit um all ultimately with the goal of personalizing and deepening student learning uh more with the focus of
Engagement I promise we did not tell them what to say we just said share something that's head meaning thank you all for sharing like really heartfelt um things obviously I I think I speak for Amy too I feel super privileged and
refreshed is a great word that I having had the opportunity to work with our teacher facilitators this year has been for sure a highlight for me um I just wanted to check in and see if you have any questions for me for Amy or for any of the teacher facilitators before we close this part out any questions I
don't have a question but I have a comment I mean I loved everything that was said but the the look on your face and Hope's face was the best [Music] okay I I I could talk for a long time
about this but we've heard a lot about it um but just I have no words just to hear it from the teachers it blows me away it's amazing I'm very proud of this it's amazing so thank you all tell your other
teachers too thank you it's amazing um I also want to thank the teachers for coming because to Ali's point we heard a lot about it but it's not as true to life as coming from from you all and so not only thank you for coming but thank you for being leaders
amongst the teachers so that the rest of the faculty can also um bring this to their classrooms as well um 13 years ago when I got on the board this was a great District but one of the things I loved about it from the very beginning was the
words continuous Improvement were being used even then and seeing how you know every year it gets better and better and better but you know this is just a whole new level and having you guys come and these guys have mentioned it like we've been hearing about this but having you
come and talk about how valuable it is um is just super valuable I guess for like a better word toss because it's you know we kind of are here a little bit and we it's it's wonderful to have you come and tell us about it and I the the Improvement it must be in your
professional learning like you said to have these small groups to be learning from other teachers and both be a teacher and a learner at the same time I'm assuming from what you guys are talking about it's it's really amazing so thank you the word that comes to my mind when I empowering that's what I wrote down
here it say empowering [Music] so well Amy and her 13 years you know he just a beginner are you going to dunk on me [Laughter]
marn more years ago than that everything really was adult run and done for the convenience of the adult and the students were just students and so it's
really really heartwarming to see how much the students are involved and how much more student centered education has begun so thank you and I just want to say it's fun for me to hear from so many different areas
of this it's like we hear we do we hear a lot about this and it's fun to see the faces and hear in a good way we hear a lot about it in a good way but it is it's really refreshing to see each of you share something so different I took
a note from each one of you that like I was like oh that's so wonderful I would write that because it's just it's touching for me to hear it and I having four kids that have gone through this District it's it's so encouraging for me too and it's um I'm excited I'm excited that it's working you know and that
you're seeing it and you're hearing it from people doing it so thank you guys other comments all right I'll wrap it up with this com I I Echo everything that's set up here I
I really do other than the uh years on the board I'm I'm one of the younger ones too so um but I do want to say uh I love hearing about the passion I love hearing about continuous Improvement I'm in a a job I'm an agile coach so I talk
continuous Improvement and all that kind of stuff all day long but to see the passion on everyone's face and to hear about it it's that kind of passion is infectious so it's going to just it's going to go to the other teachers and
from those teachers it goes to the students and when the students see that they get excited about education they they get excited about the subjects that they're learning so I just want to say I appreciate the passion and excitement I appreciate you sharing the opportunities that you have uh because that's what
we're all about we want to make sure that we're giving the opportunities for you as Educators because we also know that that's going to give our students and our kiddos opportunities too and it's going to make them exciting about education so I just appreciate
everybody's time and I I know it's a a little challenging sometimes but well worth it it's it's one of the visions of our district it's a vision we had for a long time and um yeah we just appreciate all the time and effort thank you and I would just say thank you too
for I remember when Jeff and I and hope described this idea to you last spring um and this support that you gave us to have this additional time to be able to do this so um just a a note of appreciation for that and hopefully then
it sounds like it was fun to hear it come to life for you so thanks I just want I want to say thank you to um each of the teachers who are here Diana who had to to run out but I really appreciate everything you've done and one of the things that I heard each of you mentioned was every one of you at
some point talked about your hoop and you talked about your kids and that's keeping our kids really at the core but one of the things I know you're doing in this role is you've got more who's than just your students because one of the things I know you're taking to heart is the who you're working with on these professional learning days your
colleagues and how you can help bring them along and how you're looking at what their interests are their needs and help each one of them in in unique ways and um and really starting with that approach of it's really easy one of the things that really frustrates me the board's heard me talk about this before is that people can often get labeled as
resistant to change and I always like to say people are more hesitant than they are resistant and I think your work this year is helping those people that are more hesitant to start taking these steps be able to do that so um I appreciate your stepping into not just the work you're doing with the students
but that leadership role because you're making a difference for um in that way for thousands of kids and for the teachers who are sitting here who aren't one of the lead Learners you're doing this work too so thank you very much for that so it's fun to see it happening uh throughout the system and the last thanks is to Melissa and Amy because
they they put a ton of work in and one of the things that's been really important to them I know because Melissa comes in and shares ideas with me that she's got and a lot and um but one of the things that's really important to her is modeling that she's making sure she's taking what the needs are so if she
talks about her who which is these teacher leaders that she's working with them um and Amy's doing that so they're really positioning them to be effective as they move out so there's a lot of people in this thank you to all of them because I do when I walk around I can see it really making a difference for
kids thank you thank you you have a budget you have a budget presentation right now yeah if you want to stick around for the budget presentation nobody wants to stick I tried Amy I tried Jeff tried too
you know I do not take it personally so movie but it is always hard to get up after like somebody's describing all the great things we do yeah but uh it is it's it is hard to follow that and then it's okay so our
strong management is what allows us to do all the great work that we're doing with kids so um I will keep it brief again tonight as we do this each month present our monthly financial report so tonight we are reporting for the month of December um our same three reports we
do each month so the treasures report is our beginning and ending cash balance as well as are cash receipts and dispersements uh the dispersement side is kind of right in line with what we would typically see in December on the receipt side a little bit higher than typical at this time of year but with
that we had um about 86% of our receipts in December came in but just between State AIDS and taxes um and then if you add in our um internal service funds which is our premiums for our um medical and dental insurance it makes up 92% of
the revenue that we bring in on any given month so the rest of those are really just based on um whether it's participation meals things like that so the bulk of it comes from just those three areas so you can see we ended the month with just over 72 million in
cash um on the statement of revenues this report shows our December receipts as well as our year-to date our budget and then um that percentage of where we are to our budget at this point in the year and where we were at this point the last two years so with that the board
did do budget adjustments in January so those are not reflected yet they will be reflected when we do the next uh report in March so uh with that you can see that on the revenue side here the general fund and the Community educa Education fund are very similar to where
they've been the last few years on the nutrition side this is something we brought up the last few months that in fiscal 23 and 24 there was supply chain assistance funds that we were getting from the federal government due to the pandemic uh those were often just here's the allocation you're going to get and
they sent it so it wasn't something it often came after we had already gone through a budget process we didn't know what was coming so that was something that typically at this point in the year we would have received that is no longer coming our way so that is why it does look a little lower and then we've also
mentioned this the last few months on The Debt Service fund we had our bond refunding where we did refinance our bonds to get interest rates and we had initially budgeted for that in the current school year we did end up booking it back to June so we've talked to the board about that a few times
you'll see that we are um the budget will be dropped on both the revenue and expense side when we present this next month so on the statement of expenditures the report is laid out the same way so on this one you can see that our compensation is ahead of where we have been the last few years that is due
to negotiated one-time payments and one more contracts um other areas where we are over was Capital as one of those and that was um basically the LED project that we had going this summer so that put us a little bit ahead of where we would have otherwise been um the rest of
them are the percentages might look a little funky but between all of them in total they kind of do come out a little closer to where they have been just between different areas on the Food Service side we are a little bit below there as well we had several pieces of
equipment that were ordered and installed by December of last year um I know one of them was the big dishwasher a cooler uh we do have several things that are coming and some of them got done over um our winter break so with those we'll start to see those come in
so I would expect in a couple of months that our food service will align more with the budget at that time and then debt we already mentioned so with that that is our report for the month of December if there are any questions any
questions all right thanks moving to superintendent report so we have all kinds of fun news from all over the district uh first off is Early Childhood we had the um I love to read month uh that happened here
right at the start of February it was fun um it's on a Saturday lower left you see that really goodlook guy getting to read to um the attendees there so but there were all kinds of uh all kinds of readers that guest readers that uh joined that day so it
was a lot of it was a lot of fun we're all pointing at the P yeah exactly yeah I asked for it um so kindergarteners at Wood Crest Spanish Immersion they worked on the letter B while creating some super big I'm not
even going to try to say that correct bubbles so see so there we go all right so it's kind of fun and I appreciate um Erica working with her team and catch capturing some of these pictures because it it's some of the things you heard the teachers
talk about earlier it's how it's coming to life in each of our schools I'm giving you a glimpse into each of the schools in this way um so Park Terrace is literacy night everyone enjoyed hearing the a jibway Storyteller playing site word Games Etc so it's kind of fun it's the pictures are a lot of fun you can see some of our staff in the lower
left there having fun as well so but that is always super well attended event so that are sixth grade students you can see here in a general music class um getting into a sixth grade group at ukulele so our W Westwood
knowledge bowl is always very successful um over there can see that both teams competed in their first meet and they finished in the top 10 so I will let you read down the left I don't to read that to you but you can see the pick of the kids who participated in that all right and then um couple of our
West Wood students performed in the Minnesota band Directors Association central region honor band festival and concert so that's pretty exciting and our Lighthouse class um worked on a multi-disciplinary unit focus on the question why and how do scientists explore the ocean so with
that they did some research wrote speeches on a marine animal of their choice and created 3D models with cardboard paper machine and paint so lots of smiles there okay and then our one act play um
earns second place in section finals which is great they perform girls in the boat play it tells the story of the first women's Olympic rowing team of the 1976 Olympics it's been fun to see how that program in recent years has just taken up there we go um and then our always
successful uh FCC La students competed in the um area midwinter Star Event all 13 students qualified to advance to compete at the state level so we have and talk about various programs we have dance team football all these teams that are successful well this is another one
it's not in athletics but um one of our activities that they are extremely successful year to year as to see and then um you just heard from our teacher of the intro engineering students they designed and 3D printed custom bathroom passes for teachers who
were their clients so teachers shared their interests and needs and inspiring designs from video game themes to Department logos so I know you can see the one right in the middle there yeah yep that's pretty fun and then our two
School Board student school board members Elson and Mia are on the Stu superintendent student Advisory Group and we just recently met I left you all an update about it that's always um one of my highlights getting to uh about two and a half hours I think we spent
together that day we put them to work with a number of questions that they really dug into but um one thing they get feedback in the cell phone approach that we have um talked a little bit student engagement Feast was more getting on their radar to uh talking to them about what it is what we're trying
to do and then having them kind of keep their eyes open for what do they see evidence of and we're going to be talking about that next time on and then we also talked about kind of their hopes and dreams and so it's sophomores Juniors and seniors we don't have any freshman on but the sophomores were together the Juniors to were together and they kind of talked about what their
hopes and dreams are for the rest of their High School experience to inform us and then the seniors got to share their wisdom more about what the benefits have that they've realized um during their time here so uh so it was fun it was a lot of
fun and then I just wanted to share this because we're watching the legislative session down at St Paul um at least what there has been of it it's been a it's been kind of slow start to it but um we're watching closely especially for funding of schools I think one of the
key next dates is going to be the um the the the budget uh update that will happen here at the end of February probably first week of March is where that's going to be um shared to shared with the public and then that's where we'll really start seeing the the house and the Senate um putting together some
some plans but um people ask about from the 2023 session and that big investment that we had in education and there was a big investment in education but there were also a lot of mandates and things like that that came along with it um and the good news is that we're as Amy just
shared we're in a good uh budget situation where unlike a couple of our neighboring districts are having to make budget cuts for this next this next year um we're not having to make those budget cuts but there are some things that because we do have managed and we do have that flexibility with our fund
balance like that even though we're projecting some cuts for example of compensatory revenue and other things right now we're maintaining that programming for next year and planning and should that go away we'll at least have time then to purposefully plan for that into the future if there would be that reduction funding and we'll
Advocate hope that there won't be but we we are able to uh plan forward without that so well but without additional investment from the state the next in the coming years here um and after years of kind of underinvestment from the state we're kind of getting to that point that Tipping Point here where it's
been um 24 years since we've gone to the community and that's for an increase in operating Levy we do have the lowest operating Levy of all amsd districts so it's just something we're going to have to continue to uh see what happens so um but that's an important one first all pay attention to oh yes thank you Association of
metropolitan school districts so it's 48 districts there's 41 that are in the kind of in the seven County Metro area and then there's an additional sevenly uh Cloud Rochester duth um a few others that um have joined the metri poon School District
so yes yes the lowest of a long list so this was uh at the start of the board meeting these dates but you can see uh no school for students so February 13th and 14th you had a chance to hear from the teacher so February 13th and part of the day on the 14th are really important staff professional learning days and
then also part of that 14th is just a work day for staff so they have some time to get um just get worked done going to be prepped for uh UPC coming on the 18th where there's um some communication with families March 6 is the end of trimester 2 then we have spring break and then we launch the
final trimester of the year so which is hard to believe so next week is our week of giving um and Panther Party U for uh the panther foundation so they do a great job with that so people can look for um you don't just have to
attend the party there's all kind on Saturday evening there's all kinds of ways throughout the week to get involved so I encourage people to check that out and also um Disney High School Musical will be our Westwood musical um this this uh end of February early
March so that is all I have for you unless there's any questions any questions for Jeff all right moving on to action items acknow acknowledgement of gifts can I get a motion so move by
Schmidt second by mlen to approve the following resolution whereas School Board policy 706 establishes guidelines for the acceptance of gifts to the district and whereas Minnesota statute 6
4653 states that a school board May accept a gift May accept a gift of real or personal property by the adoption of a resolution approved by 2third of its members therefore be it resolved that the school board of Spring Lake Park schools accepts with appreciation the gifts as
shown any discussion we always like to say thank you to our um donors for being so generous clerk can you call Ro please yes
Schmidt yes mlen yes forsberg yes bellaa yes Skelly yes kenon yes and Easter yes resolution has been adopted in a 70 vote thank you I'm
[Laughter] killing did you have your mic on them awesome great all right moving to board forum and reports we'll start with our student reps so starting with sport
um winter sports are wrapping up girls hockey are playing in their semifinals tonight um and they're ranked third in the state so good luck to them um our Alpine and Nordic ski teams just competed a few days ago in conference
Alpine won in conference and Nordic placed third and one of our Nordic skiers Addie Roar is actually going to State tomorrow for Nordic ski um transitioning to warmer weather thoughts
uh spring Sports registration is opening and it's open so that make sure to sign up um and then we also had signing day recently Jason Eagle for football Luke fabacher for track and field and Remy
zon for volleyball and he's our first boys volleyball commit from SLP y all right so um I'm just going to mention again how the one act got second in their sections because I feel like that's really big for us um they always do really well in
the one act competition but placing second is just awesome and as someone who knows many theater kids I know they had more fun doing it than placing so that was exciting um they actually had auditions yesterday for the spring musical Hello Dolly so that's going to
be coming up as well and then because we're not just good at sports obviously because we have an amazing theater Department we also have amazing band and choir students and just recently was the Northwest Suburban music conference and in that we had four kids in the All State band and within our conference
schools only have maybe one or two students in that allate band so we have the most with four which is pretty awesome and then we just wrapped up our spirit week um we started off Saturday decorating the school student council NHS members I thought it looked the
greatest it ever has it's always fun to see I mean I'm a little biased but it's always fun to see the streamers up and the snowflakes and just the Joy on everyone's faces putting that up um so throughout that week we had the power buff game so junior boys versus Senior
boys playing volleyball and the seniors came out Victorious go us um we have the Amazing Race which is where students and pairs run around the school solving riddles and then competing in challenges to get their next riddle we also we had gift cards they could win so there was
an incentive so we did have a good group of students that keep coming back every year I think our winner has done it three years now and has won all three years so yeah yeah we got to get the new winners going in she's a junior so she
has one more year yeah I mean hopefully she can win that senior year yeah and then our Winter Dance was supposed to be Saturday but it was postponed due to the winter weather that we had with the snowstorm um but even though that's was very disappointing for us we're actually
looking forward to reshaping what we're going to do for this um we're going to go in a different direction than a semiformal dance in the spring and hopefully gain some more attention and more participation with that and of course we always had the pep Fest where
we had the panther out and we had people cheering and we had musical chairs teachers versus staff and I'm pretty sure we had a few staff with injuries but it's okay um but overall it was a really good spirit week and I'm glad that even without you know the
name spirit week going around every week you can see the spirit going around through students and staff every single day yeah thank you great updates again makes me want to go back to high school but
crazy so we'll start with the board on this side any updates okay sir um just a couple so I had a really great conversation about now just after the last board meeting with Aaron or Eric
Van brocklin who is for those of you that don't know the teacher that oversees all of the career and pathway stuff and I had um met up with him with it's part of my assignment for this year as the member of the board but also because um I just sort of geek out on
that stuff and I was already excited to talk to him but then in speaking with him could not get over all of the different places the web of Korean Pathways goes and so not only the health side but also the business side and also
um what I would say the you know the tech and and space and the connections we have to other schools so it's just I was um a half an hour was not nearly enough time and we covered a lot of ground and so that was really um
exciting conversation I um also saw girls in the boat and saw them at sections and they did a bang of job and fun fact it's like almost an entire cast of seniors and so for them it was I think just really special for that to um
kind of be their their swan song of uh one act and then um the other assignment that I have is my first day on um the Minnesota I'm going to mess this up Minnesota school district liquid asset
fund which is a fund that we invest in as part of our overall Financial stuff and I'm going to meet up with Amy and get some facts some blanks filled in on some things that I was like taking notes on um but that was uh my first board meeting was this morning and that should
be some good stuff so yeah where we get some of our extra dollars you for your thank you anyone else on this s i I went to the high school today because my daughter had an appointment with her counselor and we were going to do it
online but my daughter wanted me to pick her up from school so I ended up going in person I saw Scott Wickland and he said that he's waiting for his invite to come address the board uh but anyways it's just humbling being there you know and seeing
everything and just I'm kind of like my [Music] daughter I didn't think she had as big of a as she does it's kind of humbling to see that and you know they've been shepherding her along and it's just it's
good she doesn't tell me about it but she just does it so it's exciting anyone else one One update I have is that Sam just showed me that the girls hockey team did win tonight so
nice I'll be there on Friday what would the teacher say is that his first warning warning [Laughter] one um I attended the panther Foundation meeting last week um which is a great group as you all know they passed some
bylaw bylaw revisions um they talked about some grants and they did some upcoming event planning including their big event coming up week from Saturday which is awesome and I last night I went to the woodrest PTO meeting and they have a lot
going on as all the schools do it's always so impressive but the week after the party on the 22nd they have an I love to read spirit wear week which I think is super fun just celebrating books in general and Thursday of that week they're doing a glow party that
they used to do and haven't done for a while but just sounds like super fun kids were bringing black lights and kids were things that glow and I think sounds like a great time so and then my last thing I was gonna mention and that I'm sure Marilyn will as would as well is so
the legislative season is upon us msba does these legislative updates on Friday mornings as we've talked about in the past I know many of you can't watch those but they do I watched the last couple on replay you can watch them on replay and then this year they started with with um they're putting notes up as well so if you don't want to spend the
half hour you can just kind of go over the notes if you want although Jeff keeps this well informed as well so but just as a resource so people have that as an option thanks I was not able to attend the lighthouse meeting last month but the next one is this a week from Wednesday
so that one I will be attending and you give an update on that and then I'm also on my 's but we don't have there's meetings or anything going on there so that's it for me Marilyn she'll carry us on the side of
the POR well the first thing I want to compliment Kelly because I have this little these little weird definitions and I say that one of the jobs of a Schoolboard member is to be a cheerleader for the district and you did an excellent job of that this evening so
thank you um I went to the Westwood PTO meeting and it was a presentation by one of our staff members on schoology and on grading and it was very very good
but in the end I think it raised as many questions as it answered questions um from amsd uh an interesting thing is happening uh Metro Heights which is
credit recovery has been just south of the Fridley post office for probably 10 years and that is moving to University in Mississippi down in that southwest
corner of that it was it's much larger space and um the landlord had not been doing an excellent job of of the building that they're in now and there was no room for expansion but that's
that's a change that was that was the big issue at that meeting I went to the leadership conference um the keynote speaker was a man named Mickey Smith who is h a music teacher a seven
time teacher of the year he's from the south from he's been in several States but I think Louisiana is mostly his spot he plays a really mean
saxophone wow um he believes modern day teaching is a relationship based approach and more than ever teaching cannot simply be about the subject matter but also about showing students that they
matter in Mr Smith's classroom his mission is to engage educate and Empower every learner to Excellence through music so that every child feels loved valued and wanted so it was a pretty pretty
powerful then I went to the recognition luncheon my friend Cheryl from Brooklyn Center was a recipient of the Arlene Bush recognition I think she and I are the only active ones that have that
award I also went to a session on parliamentary procedure which really didn't uh wasn't what I expected but the interesting thing was that there was a team who had gone to
competition on parliamentary procedure and I thought wow but it's through FFA and so we probably don't have that kind of connection but um something to keep ears open if there's ever a a club
that's interested in that uh Amy has mentioned all of the msba stuff um the the uh information that we get is
through if you go into the msba website it's the governmental relations Dash dashboard interesting things at the legislature uh there's a proposal about limiting cell phones like not having
any and then there's a senate files 634 uh and I'm surprised this hasn't come up earlier it requires all cities towns and school districts to hold elections in even numbered years so I don't know where that's going
to go it would be if it goes through as proposed it would take effect on July 1 2025 and it would apply to elections after January 1
26 so there's a year in there but uh that would affect us and White Bear Lake has there's 25 districts that are OD Year everybody else is even year white beer Lake just recently has
decided to go to even years and I didn't have an opportunity to spend much time with that board member the other evening but um I'm going to inquire why they chose to do that I think that's quite interesting I think there's a few
arguments on both sides could be well it's cost um and uh turnout U on the other side of the issue you know
you pretty much kept Party politics out because it's not on those elections and local control so L to say on those but you but you know if you can
avoid the the really pressing issues and pass something else it's it's a feather in somebody's head true very true thank you Marilyn anything else well I think that's
enough thank you there is a lot of interesting things happening at the legislators year with education things will pick up here the next few weeks yes they will all right any other board updates all right so we'll move to
adjournment can I get a motion sub Mo by hennon second by Schmidt to adjourn the meeting at 807 all in favor please say I I those opposed meeting is a journ thanks
everyone