Okay. Crowded room. Have to get everyone's attention. Okay. Tonight we're going to start Hey, boys. Quiet. Okay. We're going to start tonight with public comment. We have one speaker. Um,
I will go ahead and read the public comment expectations. Uh, the school board encourages community input while comments and questions are welcome. Law prohibits the board from discussing concerns about individual employees or students in a public meeting. The board will not deliberate, discuss, or incur
engage in conversation with speakers. However, the board may ask administration to review the concerns presented. Speakers must present their testimony in a respectful manner. Vulgarity, character attacks, malice, or specific complaints identifying staff or students by name or implication will not
be permitted. We will stop the proceedings immediately if employee or student privacy issues are raised and direct the speaker to forward comments regarding the individual employees or students to the superintendent. And with that, our speaker tonight is George Hner.
You can sit here and we have our timer cards here for the three minutes. Welcome. No. Uh, George Hapner, Oak Park Heights. I'm here tonight to ask that you consider placing a commemorative plaque on school
district property at the old athletic field on the corner of 6th Avenue and Orleans Street. Let me explain why. Still Water is loaded with traditions. From its community history, its historic schools, its bridges, and even its
prisons, our town is known by many throughout the state as a historic Minnesota venue. From individuals like Civil War veteran Sam Bloomer to Minnesota Viking coach and Stillwater Loggers baseball player Bud Grant to
numerous distinguished alumni. There is much in our town to be proud of. One individual I think the town needs to know more about is Bud Fowler, an African-American baseball player born in 1858.
You may or may not have heard of him. He was born John W. Jackson. And Bud Fowler was the first African-American player in professional baseball when he stepped on a ball field in April of 1878.
the first professional baseball player who was African-American. This was 70 years before Jackie Robinson completed his first season with the Brooklyn Dodgers. But why should we honor Fowler and Stillwater
in 1884 while playing for Stillwater in the Northwestern League, which played its home games at the old athletic field, Fowler led the team in pitching, hitting, and stolen bases. While playing second base and catching for the team, he conceived the notion of
shinuards after repeatedly being spiked while attempting to tag out runners. He played just that one glorious season in Stillwater as the team disbanded, but he continued to play ball for a variety of Midwestern teams for 32 years. He
died in 1913. Notably, he was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in Coopertown in 2022, where his induction speech was given by St. Paul native Dave Winfield. Few people in Stillwater know about Bud
Fowler. Few of the kids who currently play or practice at the old athletic field have ever heard of Mr. Fowler or know he's in baseball's Hall of Fame. and yet he is certainly part of Stillwater's history.
Allow me to suggest that you encourage one of our district administrators, and there is one who I know played at the old athletic field because I coached him, to oversee the placing of a historical marker to commemorate the legacy of Hall of Famer Bud Fowler. More
Stillwater residents and baseball players need to know his story. Thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you, George. Thank you for that. Thank you, sir. Great. That is our only speaker. And with the conclusion of public comment,
we'll call the meeting to order. Joan, roll call. Director Kursovich here. Director Hawker here. Dr. Kellenberg here. Director Law here. Dr. Parker here. Dr. Theelander here. Chair Sherman here. You have a quorum. Great. Let's stand for the pledge of allegiance.
I pledge algiance 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. Great. Um, now I will go ahead and make
a motion to approve tonight's agenda. Can I get a second? So moved. Great. Director Theelander with the second. All those in favor of approving tonight's agenda, raise your hand and say I. I. opposed. Motion passes unanimously and we'll move on to our superintendent
report. So, a couple things this evening. Um, first thing just for the board and the community's awareness. You know, we've got schools starting up here in a little over a month, and transportation has been a real challenge
for us the past few years, and we've um hired a a new individual um to super supervise our our transportation program, and we've also moved our transportation uh routers in the district office. So, they're actually um
located out right outside of mine and Carissa's office. And so we have got a real pulse by having the the supervisor who's right in the office next to mine and in the two routers right right uh outside our office as far as what is happening and what's going on with
transportation. So I've got a a much better feel for the direction we're headed and uh we're hopeful to have a a smooth start for the school year for everything but uh um in transportation in particular. So, I'm going to have Tom Ridley come and um probably update the
board here in August on where things are at with transportation as we roll into the new year. Uh but uh I'm feeling feeling uh pretty confident about it. Um so that that's a real positive sign. Uh the other thing I want want to just inform the board about is over the last
twice this uh twice of probably the last three or four weeks we've met with the directors on a retreat as we're planning for the upcoming school year. And I just have to say that I'm so pleased that we have our various directors putting a lot
of systems in place and it's nice to see people who've been here a while and we're are able to okay, yep, this is how we do things. And so I think with a lot of the turnover over the years, um, we haven't had that for a while. So I'm looking forward to seeing the the fruits
of their labor. And that's all I have. Thank you. Great. Okay. Um, I do not have anything for a chair report. We'll move on to the consent agenda, which is displayed on our screen, items
A through G. Can I get a motion to approve tonight's consent agenda? Great. Director Hawker with the motion. Lowour with the second. All those in favor of approving tonight's consent agenda, raise your hand and say I. I. Opposed. Consent agenda passes.
Um, tonight we have under strategic direction C, utilize systems and align resources in an efficient manner to support learning. We're going to start out with a gifted program update. Um, just by way of background a little bit,
we had back in when uh, Superintendent Funk first started, we had a review of our special programs, one of which was the gate program and identified some different opportunities within the program, um, things that were working, maybe things that could be improved. And
so the second phase of that was to bring every a community group um, together. It included staff, it included community members and met for about five times for a couple hours at a time. So significant investment and this is our way of kind of updating the board on what that that
work was like as we move into kind of phase three which Kissa and we'll talk about I'm assuming. Um so I just wanted to thank personally the people who participated. I know that Carissa will probably do the same thing, but from the board's perspective, it's just nice to have those opinions as we look at best
practices and GT learning and um what we are doing well and what we can be doing to improve and expand services. So, we'll lead with that. Wonderful. Well, thank you for that introduction, Chair Sherman. You actually took some words right out of my mouth, so that's great. Shorter presentation. Um, thank you so much for the opportunity to be here tonight to
talk about gifted programming. And you mentioned Gate. This is bigger than just Gate. And I want to say that we're looking at all of our gifted programming. Um we have a lot of students that are identified as gifted who are not part of our gate program who we need to make sure we are providing opportunities to as well. So we will be talking about all of the opportunities
from elementary through our high school that we're providing to students. And again, tonight's objective is no action on your part. You just get to sit back and listen. There's no recommendations or action that you need to take. Um this committee was brought together to give feedback to administration as we look um forward on how we can provide better
services for all of our gifted students. Um so with that again you mentioned the 2023 evaluation. Um that's kind of where this started when we just wanted to look at data and get a feel for what are we doing with our gifted programming? What are the results we're seeing? And a couple of things that we saw in that was
um first off there's some there's some real success stories in our gifted programming. There's a lot of wonderful things happening and a lot of students who are having their needs met in wonderful ways. We also identified some challenges though. Um we know that not all of our gifted students, especially those in cluster programs, the feedback
we received is that they're not receiving um the same level as maybe GATE students are. And so that was one thing we wanted to look deeper at. And another thing was even how are we identifying students and what gaps are there in our identification of students. So, those were a couple things we
learned in 2023 that we wanted to dig a little deeper into. And that brings about the committee. So, um again, as I mentioned, tonight's just an update on the committee's work. No action for you and there will be more conversations. So, we will be bringing this back to you um throughout the next year as we start
to dig deeper into what do we need to do to maybe change our programming model moving forward to make sure we're meeting the needs of all kids. So, with that, um we did bring together a committee in March of this past spring. There were 21 members of that
committee made up of parents, some staff members, teachers, and we represented a really vi a wide variety of people. We had special education at the table. We had multilingual learners represented. Um, Spanish immersion was there. And I think that was really important because these conversations, especially as we're
looking at identification, um, there were a lot of different perspectives and ideas brought in that I think was very meaningful to that group. We started our work by kind of grounding in the community engagement framework which you as a board um well not you at this table many years ago another board
adopted this framework for us and what's important about this is it just lays it out from the very beginning what we're asking the committee to do and in this case we were asking for feedback and we were asking for them to help us identify concerns or really understand um what it is that are the desires of of our
community. So they were shared at each meeting, we shared this framework with them and just reminded them of what we were looking for and it was really that feedback piece that was going to help us drive um programming moving forward. So we presented them with some clear goals and desired outcomes. They were
going to look at the current service model, review data. Um wonderful Elsa here beside me is really really good at providing data and giving um an a way for them to look at it in a meaningful way. so that we could understand what are some gaps or challenges that we face. And we looked at some key areas.
The identification process which I already mentioned, how are we identifying students for that those services and supports? What does differentiation and acceleration look like? Um the overall learning experiences of our students. And then social emotional learning supports was another thing we talked a lot about. And
ultimately our goal was to ensure that all of our kids were having their needs met. Not just gate, not cluster, not PSO kids or a the opportunity the high school, but as a whole, how are we doing as a system in providing those supports to all of our learners?
We also had Dr. Funk come to the very first committee meeting and provide some kind of key questions to guide the work. Um really looking at what can we do to improve? How do we create kind of that vertical plan? Um so that we can make sure that we're providing services all the way through their experience. um
what can we do in the area of social emotional learning and let's look at the demographic makeup and ask some hard questions like are we really meeting the needs of all of our learners? Do all kids have equal opportunities and access to our programming? Chrystal quick question. When you talk about the current vertical plan, do you
mean like K12? Is that what you mean by vertical? Okay, thank you. Just to clarify that. Yep. Okay. And just to ground everybody again, as I mentioned, this isn't just about gate. This isn't just about clusters. It's about everything. So, here's just a quick overview of what our current programming looks like. We do
have a cluster model at each of our elementary schools. And then we have the self-contained school within a school. That's what we call gate at Stillwater Middle for our grades four through five. At the U middle school level, six and eight, kids can be clustered into honor classes and math or language arts. And
there is some opportunity for subject specific acceleration. And then at the high school, we have different things like advanced placement, credit by assessment. You have heard of PSO and concurrent enrollment. We've had a lot of conversations at this table about those things. So that's currently what we have in place.
You have cluster listed up here for two different types of educational opportunities. One is for the elementary school kids and one is for the uh middle school kids. When we talked about the people that were involved in feedback in this process, did we have uh families
from both the clusters? I would imagine it'd be rather hard to find an elementary school cluster family since that program is rather we do have kids that are identified. Um so the committee was one way to get representation and feedback. We also did a lot of um focus group and survey work
too. So we heard voices that we shared with this committee as well. I honestly can't tell you from my recollection of the parents who was who. Do you remember also? We had a good mix. We had at least a few middle school parents representing the middle school cluster and some rep representing elementary. Um the hardest
participation to get was high school families um just because of how it shook out and it was quite a big time commitment to be honest with you for our committee members. So again, thank you so much to them because we put them through their paces. Um but it was well balanced between the cluster and gate programming and
um some families, you know, their children experience both as well. I mean the middle school program is basically an extension of the in program gate. I was just trying to figure out the clusters because this the elementary school cluster we use the same word for both but it Yeah, what I would add is that so we
have about 70 to 80 students at each grade level who are identified as gifted in elementary one-third of those students are in the gate program and the other twothirds are spread throughout our elementarymentaries. Um and that proportion is reversed at the middle school level um in terms of tracking. So one-third of our gifted students in
middle school are at MS and twothirds are at SMS. So I I don't know if this is your question, but I'll I'll ask this. So we have clusters four or five for kids who are not part of the self-contained program.
Do those kids have an opportunity at the middle level particularly at Still Water Middle to be part of that cluster program or is it just previous kids who were in the self-contained program? The most honest definition would be it is previous kids who were in the
self-contained program. There's not a formalized cluster programming at the middle school. Um, but students who are formally engaged are intensively clustered in their honors classes. Okay. So, it's a bit of a difficulty of language. You're right.
And again, before we move on to the actual work of the committee, um, we touched on it already, but we do want to thank the group that came diligently, sat through sometimes very nice evenings in the spring, and then there's a lot of other things going on. So, we appreciate all of the good conversation. It was a
diverse group. there was a lot of really robust conversation um that they provided to us and outstanding feedback. So, we are grateful for their their time and their insights that they shared with us. I'm going to turn it over to Elsa now to go through what the committee discussed.
Great. So, we really started by looking at a portrait of a gifted learner and trying to identify what are the goals of our gifted programming and what's their vision for the future in order to be able to backwards map what are we doing this for? And then we can get into the who and the how. So, we spent a whole evening working
through some visioning work and came up with three different goals for a gifted programming, academic and cognitive development, really focusing on personalized and challenging curriculum. Being able to differentiate by subject area and individual ability, not necessarily being concerned about going faster, but going deeper and having a
more rich experience, as well as open-ended learning opportunities with discourse and engagement. Again, going deeper into the subject matter. Another goal was robust social emotional growth, developing a growth mindset for our gifted students and supporting any needs
around anxiety, self-confidence, and feel of failure. Finally, we looked at long-term readiness and equity, thinking about multiple entry points and equitable entry points to access programming as well as providing something sustainable and scalable with a clear
structure across grade levels. When we look for a vision for the future, the committee highlighted flexible and equitable differentiation for students, multiple entry points to accelerated learning across subjects, a variety of enrichment opportunities, and robust social emotional supports that
are personalized for gifted and talented students. highlighting our identification system. The the committee proposed that identification be inclusive, look at multiple dimensions and be ongoing, so
not a single point in time. And trying to balance achievement with ability and objectivity with teacher insight. Teacher insight is obviously subjective. And so looking at a balance of these two with the goal of being able to reflect diverse strengths rather than only standardized scores at one point in time
and we'll dive a little deeper into the three areas we spoke about that was identification, differentiation, acceleration and I miscounted it's for social emotional learning. So a few gaps and challenges within identification. Identification is currently unequal late and narrow. So we
look at one specific point in time in third grade which is about halfway through an elementary career and we look at two tests the Kogat 7 test and FastBridge. So a measure of ability which is Kogat and achievement fastbridge. So missing from that picture is any teacher input um social emotional
factors, family input, student input and any non-academic gifts. Universal screening is a really great first step because it means that all students have access to the same entry criteria. It's not optin. Every student is screened. But that alone has not been enough to
ensure that equitable that access is equitable. And we see persistent barriers for students of color, multilingual learners, and low-income students. We also spoke a little bit about why it's important to get this right. If we underidentify students, we run the risk of social emotional
behaviors like acting out and boredom and really a loss potential. If we're not challenging students who need additional challenge, that's a waste of their time and gifts. On the flip side, if we overidentify students and we identify students for programs that are not designed for them, we create unnecessary stress, anxiety, and an
academic mismatch. Differentiation we found is quite different at each grade level. In general, at elementary, it's quite inconsistent and teacher dependent. Some teachers are really, really strong in this, some teachers are not. Um, and part of that is that the curriculum and
tools are not systematized. Planning and delivery varies widely because teachers are left to kind of figure it out on their own. GATE has a really strong focus on differentiation in math but it's less consistent with the other subjects and really that's true of the cluster programming as well. Part of that is that math is straight more I
don't like to say more straightforward as a former math teacher but it's easier to see how you might differentiate it. Um so really through this conversation we identified a need for centralized resources built in curriculum and professional development to provide a more consistent experience across
schools. When we think about acceleration, there's a couple different types of acceleration. We looked at whole grade acceleration, single subject acceleration. So moving ahead a whole grade is quite rare, whereas moving ahead in a single subject we start to see more commonly at the middle school
and high school. In general, there are a lack of clear equitable identification standards and supports again the standardization across the district. Elementary acceleration is currently quite rare and would need to be more flexible and inclusive to be functional at an elementary level. And it's all
currently test based. Um so students would benefit from options to demonstrate mastery beyond tests. Enrichment refers to those supplemental learning opportunities that are outside of the standard curriculum. the types of learning opportunities that allow you to find a passion and pursue an interest
and maybe you aren't interested in what you're exploring, but then you learn that and try something new after it. Again, it's a story of inconsistent access and offerings across buildings. Um, but there was a strong desire for interestbased opt-in activities that are both available during the school day and
after school. after school presents its own equity challenges in terms of um community education funding and uh transportation. And then we did see a lot of strong interest and opportunities for parent and community involvement
here. Social emotional supports are implemented districtwide. It's something that every student receives. Um we see it strongly implemented at elementary. It's fairly systematic but less aligned in secondary between the two middle schools and our high school. Gifted students bring their own set of social
emotional challenges depending on the student. Every student is different. Um but the committee really wanted to highlight struggles with perfectionism, growth mindset, peer relationships, and executive functioning as areas where students might need targeted supports. As part of this work, we also spoke with
other districts and were able to take a site visit to our sort of neighbors all the way in Mitaka. Um, and I have quite a lot of information for you up on this slide. I won't read it all for you, but a couple things that stood out is that many, many districts are addressing these gaps in
identification. None of them have figured it out. We've told them when we speak with them, well, when we figure it out, we'll be sure to let you know. But it's a persistent challenge across districts. Um many districts are also working on building teacher capacity within their own classroom whether that's professional development or
coaching and the framework many districts are working towards um focuses on the needs of all some few when we think about a multi-tered system of support. Sometimes they add a fourth category many for what amount of service each student might need.
Can you go back to that slide? Sorry. Yeah. What is flux and transformation? A lot of thing a lot of districts are going through the same thing we are. They're trying to figure out how to change it. Um Rosemont was one where they are in the process of looking at their systems, changing what they're
doing. So they didn't have a lot of great ideas for us yet. They're in the same place we are. They're trying to to figure out what they should look like moving forward. Thank you. And can I just say too because we thank the community members um these schools and their willingness to work with our
staff was invaluable. I just like to like at Minnetonka we were out of sight visit. They had staff that spent I mean a good half day with our staff and anyone that from the committee that was able to volunteer. So I appreciate our staff for setting those relationships up and those schools for sharing what they
know and what they don't know because all of that learning I think is going to help in this next step for staff. So yeah, I think that is a beautiful thing about education in general, but especially on this topic, everybody's kind of looking at this too and trying to figure it out. So we're trying to learn from each other of what's working, what's not. So, everyone we met with, they shared what what they were doing
and they're like, "Okay, what are you guys finding out? What are you learning? Share back with us." Everyone is in the same boat and we're learning from each other. So, jumping into the next steps, um there's a lot of work to do now as we have this great information. We know what it is we want to try to create. Um
we also know what kind of limitations we have as far as staffing and budgets and things like that. So, in the year ahead, we are going to be creating an internal team. And I should recognize Dr. Agamu has also been leading this charge with us. She was not able to be here tonight. Um but she will be helping to lead us as we move into the next stage of
determining the now what. So we have this information. We know what we need to be working towards, what our goals are, and now we have to do the hard work of figuring out what this is going to look like as we move forward. So that's um the internal team will be exploring some of these things, taking all of this feedback from this committee and coming
forward with some recommendations in the future that you will be definitely hearing more about. Dr. funk. So, how long has our current gate self-contained system been in
place? 2008, 200. That sounds right. I don't have that number right in front of me, but that sounds about right. So, I just want to publicly say thank you. We've we've had a program in place for 2008. It used to be in this building. It moved to Stillwater Middle
School. And we have had a program for our students and we've had teachers who you know as I have come to find out here and we can use AU is another example of it where okay somebody creates an idea
we're going to go forward and we're going to run with it and the district has always kind of been catching up okay and so I think I can't speak for before I got here but what we're trying to do is as a district take a look at the
program we've had great teachers who who clearly we haven't been providing a lot of uh centralized supports for who've been you know meeting the needs of our students over time. Um so now what can
we do if we harness the resources of the district and we're looking at professional development and we're looking at curriculum and we're looking at best practices. how can we support those teachers who then can support the kids in the self-contained program and
the kids who are in the clusters um throughout our district. So that's what re that's what we're really looking forward to here because and so there's you know we talked a lot about okay areas to improve area to improve etc etc
yes okay expect more we can do better all right but that's not to diminish the hard work and the efforts that uh many people have uh been putting forth for a number of years into this program so I wanted to be clear about that thank you absolutely
great thank you very much for this update Are there questions? One thing uh I was surprised by in this was that we're looking at the ways to address some of the equity and inclusion issues and it looks like one of the
things that we're looking at is different ways of testing and with different ways of identification. Um you highlighted three populations that were called out. I was surprised to see gender was not one of them. as gender, is there a significant imbalance
in our gender in the program and it has been for years and so I'm was surprised not to see that highlighted and noted. We discussed that a little bit. We did discuss gender in our committee work. We didn't spend as much time on it. Um in part because it's a more
recent trend in the past few years. It's really expanded. Um which is worth looking into but is less persistent than the other gaps that we see. Okay. my daughter was in, she was one of four or five girls in her class in particular last year was quite remarkable. Yeah.
So, it doesn't mean we won't look at it. It just wasn't one of the top focus areas of the committee, but it's certainly as we were evaluating this um something we can dig deeper into. Thank you, Director Hucker. Thank you. Um before I ask my question, I just wanted to acknowledge that um this is a
trickier topic for me. Um in full transparency, I do have some gate children. Um I've got both my twins went through the gate the four five gate program and they're currently in the middle school program. Um so learning all this I'm super interested in all this thing all these wonderful um data
points and also I'm living it. Um, so going through this kind of presentation was an added challenge for me to try to make sure that I pull back and take a look at this data um and respect the work of the committee and of our staff um and not just uh look at it through
the lens of me the parent. Um I also was a uh gate teacher when back in the day um so um so I have the educ the educator's lens as well. So, I'm really trying to pull myself back um and just kind of look at the system. And um I
guess the biggest question I have and kind of hope for the program going forward has to do with the barriers that um Director Parker just brought up. Um I know that in gifted programming, one of the greatest things about having gifted children is it it should expand against
all odds. Like there's not a specific um area of the population that has a higher percentage of gifted people or shouldn't necessarily. um and that isn't necessarily reflected in our program and it's something that I've noticed um and that I've been aware of for several
years. So that that entry point of how do we get more kids into this program to better reflect um the population that we have in our district. Um and there was an acknowledgement on one of the slides um about those barriers and I'm curious if there were um any feedback from this
committee about those barriers and any insights that kind of came out on are there structural barriers to the program? Are there um intellectual barriers? I mean what did we get any specific feedback um from the committee or is that something that needs to
really be dug into further? I think I would say probably both especially when we look at our achievement testing through fastbridge. It certainly mirrors the achievement gaps we see on all other testing and ability testing is really powerful because it offers a different lens but it also comes with its own biases. Um,
often you'll hear people say that maybe the non-verbal portion of the KOAT test is a way to identify and address this, but the non-verbal portion of the test is not just a test without language. It measures something specific. It's more about spatial reasoning. So, then we're back to square one in terms of how to mitigate that language load. So, that's
one factor. And that's something that we heard from other districts as well as they went through and um redid their identification processes. They got to the point where they were just replicating the achievement gaps that they saw in their district to begin with. And we look at ability and achievement in tandem. It's both and
rather than or. So it can multiply itself. That's one factor. Um I'm trying to recall back what our committee spoke about. I know we focused on language in particular. Yes, definitely. Go ahead.
Yeah. So um you bring the gate kids together and you teach them differently because they're gate kids. What other investment does the district have in that program or expense um beyond what the other kids get that aren't in pro in
gate? I don't I I don't know. I mean, we I we can get that to you, I think. Yeah, that wasn't something that we were looking at in this do and I'm not questioning the value of gate. I enjoy talking to those kids, especially you go to any expo that we have and the kids
are presenting their robots. Go have conversations with them. It's it's very good. I'm just wondering what is our what what's our investment in that? That's part of the next step too. Again, we have we have limited resources. The board knows that. So, it's a a matter of trying to determine how we can best use our resources in a way that's going to
meet the needs of our students. So, definitely next phase. Okay, fine. That's fine. Another question. Yeah. Um, so when the kids age out of gate and now they're in the high school and beyond, are we following them at all and getting any kind of feedback or data on
their experience in gate or how they do beyond? Beyond is trickier. We sort of lose students after they leave us. We can see sometimes where they go to college and how long they stay there. But that's a trickier endeavor. One thing that we did do this round was we did student focus
groups at every grade level. So from fourth grade all the way up until um high school. And it was really exciting to speak with the high school students because of all the students that we spoke to, they're the ones who have the ability to look back on their own experience and think about how their education shaped them. That was really powerful. Okay. Thanks.
Thank you. Yes, director. So Chair Sherman and I had the opportunity just to kind of observe the process and you know it was really fun to see all the interactions and and the hard work that was happening. So thank you both for the work that you did and Dr. Bamu. Um I know you guys helped led
the charge with that, but um just more of a point as as I kind of just you know listen to the the presentation and he take maybe a 10,000 foot view up. What I'm really excited about is that we're actually being proactive in this program programming. So Dr. Funk, thank you for
your leadership and for the cabinet and the work that's being done because what an awesome way that we're actually, you know, at stability so we can look at making things better versus being reactive, you know, which maybe historically has been the case. So, I'm just super excited about that and, you know, as we continue to have these discussions and find ways to celebrate
the things that are going well, but being uh open-minded and u objective of figuring out what could we do to make things even better. So, just wanted to share that and excited about the continued future. Great. Thank you. That's a really valuable point.
Um, if someone at home were listening to this presentation, maybe they are new to being identified as gifted and talented or they have experiences, is there a way outside of the work that's already been done where they could share their thoughts or feedback? Um, would it be to you Carissa?
They certainly can. Um, again, Dr. Abamu, myself, Elsa, any of us can take that kind of feedback and um, as I mentioned, there will be an internal group. So, now is a great time to to give us just if someone's watching this and has something else to contribute. Um because the part that too that I liked about this process other than the proactive
nature and really looking at it beyond the four five program which I think is important and something that came up in our program review previously is that those cluster um programs at all of our schools but it's just um it's exciting that the community had such an
involvement in this. I mean, just for perspective, Andrew and I kind of just watched fly in the wall um in alternated meetings and I mean, it was 2-hour meetings um and two sometimes maybe a little bit over that. And there was a commitment from our staff um who were
volunteering their time and our community members who were simply volunteering their time as well as partner districts that want to help us. So, I mean, this was a team effort to get to to this bring everything to this point so that staff can now do their work and and coming up with solutions. So,
thank you. There were also a lot of families who weighed in on a survey that we sent out. There were staff that um teachers across our district who weighed in with feedback on their survey and you mentioned the students. It was so much fun to sit down with small groups of kids and hear their experiences. So, there were um hundreds of voices
captured in this work. So I think we've had a great response from our gifted community in providing us wonderful feedback. Great. Well, we look forward to the next step here. Um sounds like now the work is on your end. Oh, yes. Dr. Sorry, one question on the next step. What is the outcome of the next step?
Because we had a presentation in 2023 and the the takeaway from that was we need to ask some questions and learn some things and develop a new model. And then we did this work and the outcome of that is we need to develop a new model. So I'm just curious what what's the
outcome of the next one and when should we ex when should we see the a new model? I think in the board calendar I provided you in the update last week. I think there's going to be an update projected in January to talk about the work of what is occurring. And I would say this,
I don't know if the model's going to change, but you heard a lot about curriculum, professional de development, identification. So I think those are going to be real areas of focus for us as a district. The
other thing I can I can share with you is all right, I understand that at some point because of space considerations, it was moved from an elementary building to a middle school. Mhm. Is that the best place for a four or
five program, a middle school? So those are some things that we are going to take a look at as um internal within the administration um to see what how's the way we can improve
this and and really there's two different I'll I'll share with you what I hear anecdotally from the community and not so anecdotally I mean I hear point blank in some cases we don't have accelerated programs to match the accelerated programs at
Oakland Middle School that Oakland does not have the same accelerated programs that Stillwater Middle doesn't. Why not? Okay. So, that's something that we're going to be taking into consideration. Um that's uh you know the other piece that I hear
loud and clear and it was in the survey two years ago or and it was in the feedback we receive here is what are we doing to support the cluster kids in our elementary buildings and what are we doing professionally to work with our teachers in those buildings so that they
can provide more opportunities. So, I don't know if you're going to see a wholesale change in the program, but I think you're going to see changes in our approach to meeting the needs of our students in a more effective manner. So, that's that's my
thoughts on it. Thank you. Y um with that, thank you to your team, the two of you, and to I mean, Dr. A was so um pivotal in this as were many others. So just again gratitude for the work that's been done up to this point
and excitement for what's ahead. So thank you very much. All right, we're moving on to action item uh which is a resolution intending to sell 2026A go school building and facilities maintenance bonds. And we're
going to talk to Dr. Funk about that. There's two pieces to this. So, we have uh the bond that we um um was approved by the voters for $175 million and I believe the proceeds from
that which we've sold so far are 100 million or what we we've recapped. The other component of it is $15 million up to $15 million of long-term facilities revenue which would be paid for through our longterm facilities proceeds that
you prove as the board um every December at at the approval of the levy. So, this is a procedural issue um that we're bringing forward so that we can access our bonds and we don't think we're going to need the 15 million, but we're we're
putting it up to that and we will see what that's going to look like uh when Marie comes back here in September and gives you the preliminary levy results. So, that's what's in for in front of you tonight. Great. Um so, with this resolution, it'll be a roll call vote and I'll go
ahead and make a motion to approve this. Can I get a second? I will second director Theelinder with the second and then any questions for Dr. Funk. Okay. Um seeing no questions, this is a roll call vote. So Joan, roll call.
Dr. Gerspitch, yes. Dr. Hawker, yes. Dr. Kelzenberg, yes. Director Law, yes. Dr. Parker, yes. Dr. The Lander, yes. Chair Sherman, yes. Resolution passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Our next action item is a report
contract and terms and conditions update and Chris Carlson is up. Okay. Good evening. Hi Chris. Good to see you all again. Um so I am bringing forward a recommendation for the board um to um
approve the um terms and conditions updates that we made to the coordinators, supervisors and specialists contracts. Um so I just want to hit the highlights. Um and there wasn't really u much beyond this really. Um uh we wanted to keep it
fairly um short um and um well within our um fiscal constraints. So um we updated the insurance language representing uh that the district will pay the first six and a half percent of any um renewal increase and then um any increase after that will be shared
between the district and employees. Um we did the 5050 split of the paid family medical leave um premium as that comes on in January. Um, we also added um a section of the contract or into the terms and conditions that just talks about the
paid family medical leave and what our how that will work. Um, because of the paid family medical leave benefit, we've eliminate eliminated the short-term disability benefit um effective when the paid family medical leave comes on
board. Um, and then uh step advancement in both years and 2% on the salary schedules. um in both years in alignment with the board parameter that we've established. So um the the terms and conditions are
as I've said within board parameters and so we are um here tonight asking for you to approve these three um terms and conditions. Okay. Um so this is the that was kind of I guess the report that is on the agenda. Now, we're going to kind
of we're going to go into the action um before we consider taking action on the coordinator supervisor specialist terms and conditions. Um one I guess I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve. Is there a second? I'll second. Okay. Director Hawker with a second and then questions for Chris if there are
any. Okay. Seeing no questions, um we can vote. We have a motion and a second to approve. All those in favor of approving, raise your hand, say I. I. opposed. Motion passes. And then Chris, you're going to stick
around. Are you So that was we the technical support terms and conditions. So we're going to do one at a time. Got it. Okay. That was for the first one. Yep. Now we're in. Okay. Um technical support terms and conditions is a separate action item. So
same information stands. Um are there I'll go ahead and make a motion to approve. Is there a second? Okay. Dr. Lawer with the second. Any chance for questions? Okay. Oh, how many people aren't are covered by this?
So, the tech support um uh terms and conditions has 85 members. 85 members tech support. Okay. For the tech support. Great. Good question. Okay. We have a motion and a second. All those in favor of approving the technical support terms and conditions, raise your hand and say,
"I." I. I. Opposed. Great. And then our last um action item is directors, managers, and program administrators terms and conditions. Um so again, all within our parameters and everything that Chris had said. Is there a motion to approve? Make a motion.
Okay. Is there a second? Did I see your hand go? Great. Director with a second. And assuming no more questions, but just in case this group. Okay. All those in favor raise your hand and say I. I. I.
Opposed. Motion passes unanimously. And thank you very much. Glad to see these settled up. Thank you. Um and that is it. We're adjourned. Thank you for a short meeting record. All right.