testing one two testing one two e microphone test two microphone test two e e e e over supposed to be able to see you test one two
test one two test one two okay e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e e yep sh e
e e e e e e e e e e
e e e e e e e and good evening the time now is exactly 7:00 the wetta
Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for July 8th 2024 will please come to order will the clerk please call the role Heidi ker here Sheila prior here Sarah Johansson here
Paris bende here Valentina SS here Dan janra here Milan soney present Chase Anderson here thank you we have a quorum welcome everyone to the second meeting of this summer hope your summer is going
well and you had a good Fourth of July week SL weekend if you wish to speak during the audience opportunity to address the board please fill out a form placed at the back of the room and hand it over to our district admin assistant Amy sitting
to my [Music] right the next item on our agenda is the approval of the agenda and the consent agenda items consent agenda items are considered routine in nature and be will be enacted in one
motion there will be no separate discussion on these items unless a board member or a citizen so requests in which event the item will be removed as a consent agenda item and addressed the consent agenda items are
listed in the materials the amended action is to approve the agenda and the consent agenda items is there a motion so moved second thank you moved and seconded will the clerk please make
a roll call vote please yeah Sheila prior yes Heidi ker yes Valentina SS I want to double check I would like to discuss one uh one of the items so
will I uh have have an opportunity a little bit later uh director S I think we cannot add one if you want to change an item we can at this point I will not you want to add an item not changing discussing or one of the item um we will have to
remove that we cannot discuss this while the agenda item and the content agenda is being voted on if you would like to move that remove that to be discussed later or in another future meeting we can do that would you like to do that um sorry just
a minute I I wanted to double check I wanted to discuss about um an approval of with an Affiliated salary schedule I'm sorry can you speak up a little bit um I wanted to discuss to be able to ask questions about unaffiliated salary
schedule unaffiliated comes later in agenda you at that point you can certainly discuss you can definitely ask questions and discuss yes thank um yes Valentina s is voting yes
yep Dan chestra yes Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Milan Sone yes thank you we have an agenda all right next item uh would have been the WIA High School school student
representative representative report we have none tonight and so we move on to the next item which is recognitions I will now join Dr Anderson at the podium good evening and welcome everybody it's always my honor at our
Schoolboard meetings to uh present the employees of the month and we have two of this month and I'd like to invite them forward they are Lisa Hess and Melanie nolting congratulations [Applause] welcome I'm going to share a brief
script of uh recognition that was submitted on their behalf for their nomination and then give them an opportunity to make a few comments if they'd like did you know you were going to have that opportunity all right it's optional and you can wing it if you want but uh anyway so I'll share the
following and we're always so uh pleased and and happy to highlight and and honor our employees the early learning school is pleased to honor two staff members as the July employees of the month Lisa H is one of our employees of the month Lisa's presence in our classrooms both
as an early childhood family education par professional and as a preschool assistant is nothing short of magical her joy and enthusiasm create a vibrant learning environment where children Thrive and feel valued with her exception creativity problemsolving skills and unwavering wavering
dedication Lisa goes above and beyond to ensure every child's experience is both fun and enriching her genuine love for our students and their families paired with her collaborative spirit and tireless commitment makes her a true asset to our team we are incredibly lucky to have Lisa as part of the early
learning school her humor integrity and passion for excellence continue to inspire us all congratulations Lisa thank you for all that you do and we'll give her a round of applause before I read the [Applause]
next next is Melanie nolting also one of our employees of the month Melanie is an outstanding Early Childhood special education teacher whose dedication and expertise shine brightly in our school Community she consistently goes above and beyond to support our students and
staff always meeting each child where they are in their Learning Journey her positive attitude and unwavering willingness to find Solutions make her invaluable asset to our team Melanie's ability to juggle multiple tasks and provide excellent classroom support and
advice to her colleagues is truly commendable her informative trainings and continuous support make a significant impact on both our students and our staff thank you Melanie for all that you do your hard work and dedication do not go unnoticed
congratulations I just have loved working for the district over all these years great congratulations to the honores and thank you Dr Anderson all right and now we move on to the highlight of our regular meetings
the school scotlight uh Spotlight presentations tonight the spotlight is on the early learning school commonly known as El and I will turn it over to executive director of teaching and learning Dana Miller thank you dor Mahoney good evening good evening members of the
board superintendent Anderson is my pleasure tonight to welcome Michelle bador director of the early learning school and her staff they're here tonight to do a recap of all the hard work they've been doing around um using data to drive their building goals and the results they've been getting with
that and then as well what they're planning to do forward and I've had the pleasure of attending their building leadership team me meetings and been very impressed with the work that they're doing in this area so I think it will be exciting to discuss their progress and where they're headed from there so thank you Michelle and team for
being here tonight thank you for having us we appreciate the board inviting us in for this I have two of my three colleagues one had to leave for a family emergency so we'll just cover her slides no big deal but Laura and Lisa and Jessica are
my three Early Learning managers and they're here with me today so we will get started we're gonna skip our slides on um Lisa and Melanie because they already did the introductions we just weren't sure how that was going to go so um thank you ladies for being here they
were voted by their colleagues just for the record um the wheel you have seen before this is the Community Education wheel and we just wanted to put a spotlight on the lower bottom portion of early learning school um we um reside
within the community ed department but we have a strong collaborative partnership with many district um divisions and um parts of the district so not only are we collaborating with our colleagues in wetta kids and before and after school classes but also like
Dana said teaching and learning and equity and inclusion we um have a strong partnership with special education since I am uh split between the two and then um our building principles are hosting our full day preschool in their Elementary sites so we have a connection
with them and then we um have a strong connection with our partners at iocp and caring for kids and the scholarships that they help provide to our youngest Learners so we just wanted to take a minute to kind of call out those Partnerships so early learning school by
the numbers is what I call this slide um I gave you the 2324 enrollment and then some projections for 2425 um you can see the different Programs located at the early learning school and in our nine elementaries we
had uh we have and will have 198 for schoolers in the nine elementaries we have uh had this year about 400 48 part and school day preschool so those are part Day means they come half the day school day means they come the school
day 8 to two and then um for next year we're sitting at about 359 students we still have some afternoon spots available and some of our early childhood special ed students haven't yet completed that registration process so we will get there um the one
the 50 the 269 of the Early Child Hood special ed students some of those are counted in the three to five numbers for part day preschool so they're doubly counted in that section um we had
279 enrollments and participants in ECFE family education and then we had 28 families attend our Outreach classes and we did 42 home visits we screened 886 3 four and 5y olds so that's a big
number and then this summer we are running a program a couple programs Rising K is our summer preschool for full day kiddos we have 118 kids there Laura is going to talk about that in a little bit and then we have part day preschool that just started this week
and ECFE that started a couple weeks ago yeah so those are um our programs that we've been running we don't have any numbers for next year because those haven't happened yet for those last two but um our early learning staff so wouldn't be here without them they are
the Cornerstone of everything we do so we wanted to put them front and center um we have been um asking them along the way if they feel a sense of belonging you'll notice a couple different numbers it depends on if we ask them if they belong to their team or if they belong
to early learning school and so that's an initiative we started this year was building that sense of belonging and we're going to keep on working on that next year um but really you can see we have 129 staff members across all different types of roles I won't read
them to you so Dana talked a little bit about our building instructional leadership team we um started that process last year in August and we set three goals for the school year um the first two are really about our teaching
strategies gold data we wanted to um show a change over time from not meeting age expectations to meeting age expectations and there are four objectives I won't go through them here because they're coming up on slides and then the last goal was
really that sense of belonging and we wanted to measure that with staff and with families so we'll talk about that as we go so in the next four slides you'll see those four areas of teaching strategies gold that we
targeted um there they run the same kind of way the um on the left hand side is our three-year-old olds and on the right hand side is our foury olds and the Yetta blue is fall or midyear data and
the gold of wetta is spring or end of year data what we want to see is that first bar to go down those are the students who are not meeting age expectations or below the target so we want that to go down and then the next
two boxes to go up so the students who are meeting age expectations or exceeding age expectations so this first one is really around interacting with peers the next one is about so solving social emotional problems again we're
seeing that first box go down somewhat significantly for our four-year-olds which is great to see and then those next two boxes the middle one going up the the exceeding standards or above Target is about the same so that's about
what we want to see um and then those are two of our social emotional goals and then we had two in the are areas of language and literacy and so we really focused on expanding our expressive vocabulary using our words and um you
can see the same sorts of things in the three-year-olds you'll see that there was a pretty significant increase in above the target which we like to see and interestingly enough it dipped a little bit at the Target but that's
great because it just me means more kids were exceeding than meeting so in that case that middle box went down a little bit but it it went up on the right side of things um and then on the four-year-old class it went up in the middle box the last one is really um
teaching children to engage in conversations 10A in this one we do see a little bit of an increase in the three-year-old in that first box of below Target um we did have 30 more kids in that collection than we did in this
we had 30 more in the spring than we did in the fall and that little bit of a jump um equals four kids so we had four more kiddos below the Target in that one but it's something we work on it's probably one of the harder ones for our little three-year-olds but again we are
seeing some significant increases in that above the target which is what we want to see so all of our staff really spent um the year targeting these four objectives and collecting data monthly to look at who were their students that
were performing below Target what were using their PLC to design instruction for those students that were below Target and then really keeping good track of them so that's our data we're pretty excited about it um we're GNA do
another look at it in the summer during our built Institute and really think about you know where are the areas where we might want to focus next year for the first time we had our data load into the system with some additional identifiers
for race ethnicity um home language and IEP status so this will be the first year we can look at those subset groups and see how they're doing so that's on target for this summer and I will pass it off to Lisa hi I'm Lisa stino's Early
Learning manager um okay um so I'm going to talk a little bit about um our ECF program which is educ a um as you guys know this is very specific to Minnesota this program and it's a wonderful program um designed to
provide support to families enhance parenting skills um and really get our little L Learners ready for school um we focus on helping parents and you know our classes always have a parent education component to
them child education component um and really focuses in on those social emotional skills for kiddos um what else the goal of our program is to Foster strong family relationships which we pride ourselves on very much at Early Learning um and ensure children have a
solid foundation for future Learning and Development uh tuition is based on a sliding fees scale so we never say no to families we want everybody to have access to this program so we never turn anyone away um in addition to our ECFE classes at the early learning school our
parent Educators do home visits um for families looking for that more individualized support when we surveyed our ECFE families at the end of the school year 91% said that they feel a connection and a sense so I think it's really rare that
our ECF families don't feel that it's just wonderful program um all right next slide so kind of hand inand with ECFE is our community outreach team we do do ECFE classes out in the community because we know know
Transportation can be a barrier for some families and we really want all families to have access to these programs um so we do have a team uh that goes out into the community we do ECF classes at Community um apartment complexes housing
communities in the district um we do connect in plays and they also do home visits our Outreach team and then we also do our early childhood screenings out in the community so this past year we did 136 Early Childhood screenings at
local daycare centers or at um living communities so that's good um and then this year we had a new position in our Outreach team our Outreach co- teer um which is a and I funded this position and she is amazing and she works with I
see Sarah saying she's amazing she works with she'll go to local daycares and work side by side with the teachers there to make sure that those kiddos are getting the high quality instruction that they're at the early learning school so while not everybody can come to the Early Learning school at least
our teachers out there um spreading spreading their knowledge to local teachers as well what else I think she worked with seven community child care centers this year this year yeah she has 10 on her list so three she's gonna work
with next year she's in demand she's she's very demand of people waiting to work with there um and we we held 64 ECF and connected connect and play classes in the community this past year ready I'm ready so this this is
connect at 3 which is an initiative that we started this year in 2023 we launched it um as a way to make sure that families are getting the support they need from the time their child turns three so early childhood screening
can begin at the age of three and we really encourage families to get in early and get their children screened at 3 before kindergarten entrance um to get any services that they might need early um rather than waiting until
right before kindergarten so what connected 3 does is so families would sign up receive a connected 3 email and then we would send them information about um Community Ed classes things that are going on in the community um learning Events maybe just Child
Development topics of interest that parents might have with three-year-olds um it's free and then we would also send them information about registration for preschool things that they might not get otherwise um so really wanted to kind of build a community early on for these
families um we really wanted to Target three-year-olds and then this year 36% of the children we screened were three years old so we're going to continue targeting those three years old and hopefully get that number up even higher um I don't know if we said this
already we did 886 Early Childhood screenings this past year and what else I think that's it connect at three great thank you Jessica was going to do our preschool so I'll cover that for her
but um our Early Learning Preschool is fourstar parent aware rated and um really um we operate out of a 10 different locations so the early learning school and our nine elementaries the focus of this program is really to provide a safe environment where children can learn to interact
with each other explore solve problems solve social problems sort of navigate that you know newly being with other kiddos so we use the Early Childhood um standards to plan we use creative curriculum and teaching strategies gold which you saw um and then we have a
bunch of professional development opportunities for our staff um we enroll students from all backgrounds and all income levels we have scholarships available I I think I mentioned our partners at ocp and caring for kids really they they we have focused their
dollars on our two-year-olds who we can't use any other state scholarship for and it's been um a huge bonus for our Littles to be able to start school early so um that's been great we work on building those relationships with families helping them feel like they
belong to not just early learning school but wisett a public schools and that they're a part of the district um we help them navigate when they have concerns comes up quite a bit um we partner with adult basic Ed and provide either preschool or child care
to adults learning English um and then throughout the year we collaborate with Early Childhood special ed we're kind of interwoven as much as we can be but we also have District nurses and um wisett a kids Wisa cafes just to name a few so
um along with our advisory Council we really um have a ton of parent involvement and um do some fun activi ities during the school year so uh Laura's going to talk about Rising KS hi everyone I'm Laura pwth Early
Learning manager um so Rising KS is a new program that we started this summer so we currently have 23 staff members all of which are school year teachers and assistants um we have 118 students that were registered and 83% of those students attended a school year program
it's just been a really nice program to have all of our teachers from full day um in one building and we've heard many comments throughout the summer from them we're about halfway through now they're like it's just nice to be able to collaborate with one another and just to have a program focused specifically on this one age group um so it's mirrored
very closely to how Yetta kids runs their summer program about I would say half the day it's kind of like your traditional preschool class and then towards the end of the day in the afternoon they get more of that choice time option where they get to rotate through different activities different classrooms have more of that free choice
um here's some pictures of them just doing some fun things and getting outside as much as we can it's been tough with a lot of rainy days at the start of this summer uh but we're hoping that with some in-house field Triads we have coming up that will have a lot more fun pictures to share and this is just a quote that we have from one of our
preschool assistants that has worked with the district for 24 years and has said it's the best summer so far and next week we have the llamas coming this Friday oh this Friday this Friday llamas are coming so um thank you
Laura so um Early Learning initiatives you may have heard me talk about these before but we do have three key initiatives that we've been working on um the first one is classroom engagement model in the classroom engagement model we work to ensure that every child is
engaged in learning um I say almost all we have a few new staff that have not been trained but all of our staff to the most part have been trained by the wonderful Melanie n team behind me um and we um have 15 classrooms that we
coached this year so Melanie does the training and then we have a Cadre of coaches that go in and we coach to the Fidelity of the observation tool and 12 of the 15 met Fidelity in the first year which is amazing so we have wonderful staff um the pyramid model is something
that's been in wetta forever and ever it's sort of the companion to um oh no I totally blanked PBIS thank you but in my opinion done much better um it focuses on classroom practices to help children learn to navigate social
emotional skills and development and we've been doing that for a really long time and then the last one evidence-based quality intervention practices is really around our birth to three home intervention staff we call it equip and we have four staff that have
been trained and coached in equip and three out of the four met Fidelity this year so we're super excited about that all um considered best prct practices in early childhood through the state of Minnesota so we're super excited about that um I'm sure you probably have all
heard that the read Act is coming to Early Learning um it's rare that mde includes Early Learning and part of these things so we're kind of excited actually um but we've been working with our partners in teaching and learning to really digest and understand what it all
means so thank you to Dana and Abby and Austin and they've been kind of feeding me information we have a schedule we think it's going to work um we will be training our staff uh 40 up to 43 hours of training next year um we have all the
books they're sitting in my office they're ready to go we'll roster everybody in Delia they'll provide the asynchronous learning and then we'll have two seven-hour days where we're live online with Alexia trainer so we have to pass with
80% so fingers crossed all of us get the material and pass the tests so we can be uh quality early learners but we've looked at some of the materials and we're really excited about what it has to offer and Lexia was the only one offering specific training for Early
Childhood teachers and so that's why we went with them really excited um lastly we want to say thank you so thank you to the school board for having us today thank you to all of our colleagues for collaboration and inclusion thank you to our early learning staff who play a
vital role thank you to the families who trust us with their kids and then um since we didn't think it was wise to bring you four-year-olds we we brought you a video of the children saying thank you I know other schools bring their Littles but here you go this is our
little people it's gonna get stuck in your head all day what don't go too loud it is my great honor to introduce to you today graduating class as they turn the page to the next
chapter of their lives they'd like to say something very speci to [Music] you two words two
words two little words good it's the end of the year [Music] [Music] you you you
every [Music] youder you thank you everyone thank you for all you [Music] us [Music]
us you thank you everyone thank you for all [Music] you thank you thank you thank you every thank you for
[Music] all thank you than you thank you everyone thank you for all [Music]
you thank you thank Youk you everyone for [Music] all [Music] y now you know what it's like in our
classrooms sometimes you just got a bus to move so thank you I don't know if there's any questions we presented or yes I'm sure there are questions uh thank you Michelle and thank you managers I hope the manager that had to leave for family emergency has be able
to take care of that so thank you so much both colleagues any questions yeah have you yeah go ahead first thank you so much it would have been really nice to have them here in person but thank you for sharing that video running all
over yeah so few questions so I'll combine first two together so when we looked at numbers 23 24 versus 2425 MH there is a sort of reduction in enrollment is that because just the
nature of demographics or there is also that bar that says you know scholarship available right yeah so is that the factor um maybe not everybody gets scholarship that's why people are not able to enroll or is it it just I think
it's I mean this is if I compared this year's numbers to last year's numbers it's pretty typical we're going to get a rush here in July and August where parent parents are like oh my goodness preschool I kind of forgot about that so I anticipate will be you know at this at
that 44 n orish and we will still enroll kids in September October November so we're almost enrolling all the time and with our early childhood special students when they qualify for service we if if they need a preschool spot we
have some reserved so some of that is reserve we reserve spots for scholarships we reserve thoughts that we know will fail but we just haven't yet so I'm not concerned about that we do have scholarship money so if there is kids out there um Chase is Gonna Roll
his eyes but transportation is can be a bar so we're working on that okay great that was my second question um we don't turn students because of scholarships right meaning we have money if you turned anybody down in my two years I think so we do have dollars to spend on
that and um I think you know more more is that our classes get full rather than our dollars are gone okay makes sense um so my next question is again I'll combine two together um with home visits right what is the criteria usually like
do you spot it where to go or do you collaborate with other community members how do we know which homes to visit to begin with and then one thing which at least I didn't catch anywhere where you talked about uh special ed right I mean
obviously that that's part of it too U I didn't see anything specific called out for special Aid so is there anything in that program that you would want to call out or yep so they were called out on the numbers part of the program for
Early Childhood special ed we do have um 269 students on ifsps and IEPs um and those those programs are really interwoven with all of our other work in preschool and home visiting and um so the home visiting question though
there's a couple different ways that happens every month we get hug data from the county that tells us who's been born in our district okay and then we send them a card that says welcome to wetta we'd love to do a visit here's how you
can sign up and then we also have parents that just call us and say I'm worried about this I'm my kids are not play nicely together or my child isn't potty trained yet and I'm worried about that and then we'll do a visit for that so it doesn't just have to be a newborn
visit it could be that and then we in early childhood special ed we have a intake coordinator Greta fantastic um she did about um four to 500 intakes for Early Childhood special ed and in that
case she would set up a home visit or an intake visit for anyone who has a develop conern okay thank you and the last question is the graphs how do we read it so when you look at one graph we
have at Target under and above right and the blue one is the winter and then the gold one is the spring yep so we should see how do we how do I say okay we are on track I I couldn't follow how to read
those so I can I can speak to that so this is the gra so in this this is this box says below the target this is half their age Target and this one is exceeding Target y so if if this blue
graph is taller than this one and this one is so we want these two y these two to go up got and this one to go down and in this case the one I'm pointing to this one went down the yellow went down
but this one went significantly up so more kids move from meeting and age expectations to exceeding okay perfect and then the the two are threey old and foury old different age group different age group okay thank you
yep Ahad question just to uh I just want to make uh comments as an immigrant I um attended qac C classes and I learn actually lots of information as a parent things I didn't know about dentist about
our teeth I use it with my kids and now at school I'm also saying about danger I mean if you want to keep your teeth you don't want to you don't want to drink juice from straw and I I am able to explain why because ecv was um inviting
rep uh somebody from like dentist office and they were explaining so uh that kind of parts I learned and it is very useful I um I didn't get that kind of care and but I would like obviously my kids to get the better care and then I can share
with other kids second one uh it's peppermint fence used to be obviously we join uh wi when it was used to be uh peppermint fence it was interesting even though my neighbor said you need to log in like 755 I was able to put credit card
information because I was nervous nervous at 805 I got my second choice I was wow I was amazed how popular this program and when I saw that it is nice um it is hard sometimes to deal with
your own kids they don't want to listen to you but when you have a chance to send they learn some skills some especially small uh motor skills then based on that you can uh start working on that and I like that you um are
trying to take from the whole Community even if some people uh cannot afford you are making it affordable so that V kids especially I suspect V kids need some more boost and you are doing it I've seen it in the past and obviously you are doing it thank you you're welcome
yeah ECF is very valuable and we still are competitive with our registration Lisa processed the full day ones and it was full by 806 so I made a lot of people cry yeah when they didn't get in yeah they couldn't they couldn't fathom
that they got in at registered at 805 and it things were full so it's a testament to our good programming we still have part day options but the full day goes really fast first of all I want to say thank you for coming I love hearing about our
early childhood learning because I know what it does for kids is incredible throughout the rest of their educational career getting that um early love of learning is really important and and having confidence to be able to know that I can solve my problems and I can
communicate clearly that's really really incredible um and for parents to be able to see that growth in their students too is the I mean the change from Fall to Spring is really incredible so thank you for doing all that work um I do have a follow-up question um how are we doing
on space from your perspective I mean I hear that our classes are filling up quickly um how how's the space going the space is going okay um um we we booted out our friends upstairs we love you guys but um and so we um we are in the
midst of um some revitalization of the upstairs and making some decisions about that we moved all of the adults that were officing on the main floor up or we are moving them um their stuff is upstairs but they don't have cubicles
yet but that was one thing that we repurposed one of the spaces upstairs for adults and made another classroom downstairs cuz we would really rather have little people on the main floor and big people upstairs so that's one and then we are in the midst of like that
planning stages of what would it look like if we add more classrooms upstairs we want to be thoughtful and not do that too quickly because we can fill slowly we won't fill six more classrooms I mean if we did full day at the elementaries
we'd fill six more classrooms but at the early learning school we'll we'll it slowly and we need to think about parking and we need to think because that's one of our chief complaints is parking is very tight so um and then
just Logistics of getting more families in and out of the doors the front doors so Logistics is is always a problem but we're working on it working on it is a good thing yeah thank you y thank you
friends it is lovely to see you and uh we so appreciate the partnership um I want to underscore a couple of things as we've talked about um wanting to make sure that we include each and every child and and make sure that we reach and we have our logistical of the parking and the access and all the
things and so it's exciting to hear that there's a can um continued effort for transportation um we know our kiddos that are that are isolated uh due to a lack of Transportation could use our classes more than anyone else so thank you for your persistence and
in in that piece of it um another thing that I just want to highlight and say thank you for is uh the commitment that you make to our community to making sure that all kids in our community feel connected to the district I think that level of connect at three in addition to being accessing developmental age
screening just feeling like a part of the district and then um for us for our kiddos that might be special education but are not at the early learning school and so they're going to one of our other child care centers the level of support that you give to our kiddos to either be bust for half days to be where they are
or to have that Outreach the the Outreach co-teacher this year with the AI funds has has really been a GameChanger in increasing the level of excellence and and making sure that all kids have that and so um I know that was a lot and and it worked really well too when we had new to Country families and
and making that connection too that's a whole another thing that happened this year this past year so thank you for your commitment to our entire Community both those that are in the walls of the early learning school and those that will be coming to the district when they turn five it's our passion you know we
think we have about 38 to 40% of the district kids coming to us the three four and five year olds but there's 60% out there and they're all headed to kindergarten and District school so that was part of the Outreach co- teer was really to get into all the places where
the kiddos are that we are not and our team has done a great job including that co- teer she's just fantastic yeah can't tell you many times I've seen her laminating and bringing materials and talking to people and coaching teachers and really just teaching alongside so we
picked a good one the whole and the whole team right that Outreach team the whole Outreach team is fantastic amazing so thank you to them y thank you again for that presentation and U you know I appreciate everything that you're doing for the community for
the kids and for the district overall I have actually three questions one one is an extension of paras's question the enrollment um do you keep track of what the numbers were last year at this time so do they look similar
they do look very similar yes um I would say we're you know we're we have one or two classrooms that have changed configurations so instead of a three-day class it's now a four or five day class so that changes a little bit of the numbers so I wouldn't say we're going to
hit exactly the same enrollment but it's close and we think that having kids come more often with more intensity matters so that that would be comforting right to know that they're about about the same as last year at this time good um so in I think it's slide 13 I believe I
don't know if the slide numbers have changed but the slide has some talking about the sliding fee scale for ECF so can you explain what that is a sliding fee scale yeah so our ECF classes um
they're tuition based generally but depending on what the family's income is is how much they pay so if their income is like under I'm like number $133,000 it's free um and then it just goes up based on the income level um however we
would never turn anyone away from an ECF class you know so they self- select when they register which which income bracket best describes their family and it talks about income and how many people and then they choose what works for them and
there's no checks and balances they just get to pick and then we get ECFE funding from the state of Minnesota to offset the cost y very good thank you that speaks a lot for Equity I think that's inclusion Equity all of that combined great and then the last question I have
is you had three models up there the uh engagement model the pyramid model and the evidence-based intervention uh do they have any connection is there a way to determine which model works the
best or no um in terms of resarch they're all so good and they all focus on something different that I think um having all three is key um so I don't I don't they're all nationally sponsored one is
from the University of South Florida one is from Robin McWilliams in North Carolina so they're they're pretty renowned um initiatives that we're doing that are that at one point were sponsored by the state of Minnesota um we just ended our equip jpa or joint
Powers agreement which gave us money to make sure our teachers were trained so they all really have a different nuance and a different importance but I think they're all three important okay thank you and that's all the questions I have on this yes I have one hypothetical
scenario based on what you just said so 38% of students um they come through Early Childhood so hypothetically if and again going back to her question or comment um not everybody gets in right because the spots get filled quickly how
scalable the model is so tomorrow let's say suddenly we get 60% of our population they want to enroll in early childhood education can we even scale it up or we just want to stay at 38 to 40% and that's it what did you say
Jase um I think there's a number of factors that we would need to consider to scale up so um we'd have to find staff y that's that's a huge and we you know we want to be thoughtful about who we hire because we want the best um and then we would
need to think about the spaces so we currently have an empty is upstairs that has early learning spaces dedicated but we don't have a funding source right now to make them into classrooms so that's a con consideration was that the nice way
to say it Chase and then we have um the logistics of getting people in and out the building so I think there's there's solutions to those things but if you ask me how soon could I scale six five or six more classrooms at early learning
school I would say it would need to be a three to five year plan oh okay okay just because I think we would need to we we are not currently turning anyone away we may not be giving them their first choice which leads them to go somewhere else got but we're not well besides
schol day in our part day preschool we have a preschool option that we can offer somebody it might not be what they want okay got it okay sometimes there's that yeah you know I only want mornings or I only want full day right that might not be what's available right now yeah
okay thanks thank you all right thank you again Michelle thank you managers we appreciate all that you do again thank you uh next item on the agenda is the audience opportunity to address the board Amy I don't think we have anybody
today so we'll move on all right moving on to administrative reports and recommendations there are no reports from the superintendent office and teaching and learning tonight but we do have Financial reports presented by Executive Director of Finance and
operations Scott Le H Scott perfect thank you uh board chair soney board members and superintendent Anderson if you guys don't mind I'll just go from here today um I promise I don't have 50 slides and it won't take two hours so I just looked at Dana and said do you think I could just go from here so um
she said yeah she asked me how long I was going to be tonight so um just kind of these are obviously the reports that come to the board on a monthly basis so um nothing really to highlight obviously we're through 11 months of the fiscal year as you can see I'll just go through a few things on the revenue that's up
there right now um on our two biggest Revenue sources were right in line with prior years and where we expected um Federal AIDS I know I mentioned this last month but we'll have a big receivable on those we're just being super careful how we draw those because
it's um it's a challenge to have have to reverse any of those with the state if we would um have any adjustments at year end so that will be aable for us um at um for FY 24 um Food Service Revenue if you recall last month that was down um
we received those payments that were mentioned at last month's meeting um community service fund is actually up above forecast just like it has been the um last several years uh Jenny obviously does a fantastic job with that program
and they're seeing a lot of growth and success um if we go down to the expenditures scroll I don't think I have the power do I there we go perfect all right um if we look at our biggest areas um salary and benefits and purchase
Services um salaries and benefits are right in line with what expectations are salaries are right in line with prior year um benefits obviously based on our adjustment from the revised budget are right in line with what we believe they're going to end um I know Director
of Finance David draskovich mentioned um at our cfac meeting last week that we are very very close obviously as the fiscal year winds down and those last payrolls hit um us accounting nerds log right in the system to see where we're ending up versus budget so we're feeling
really confident with that um purchase services and capital expenditures kind of go hand inand it depends on um where we're coding the invoices that get in that's also where our transportation is and some of our other services and so those can vary depending on when we're getting those
invoices um if you look down to the Food Service fund um they are right on par with where they were two years ago um in alignment with expectations community service fund um is slightly down um in their expenditures but um I would argue that's based on the fact that they have
they're above their projection on Revenue so they're probably benefiting from a little bit of the economies a scale um and then finally The Debt Service fund that's pretty self-explanatory um and then finally on the last document um this is just
basically I know it says um it's our investment summary but um this is the time of year and I know uh Director of Finance Dr which mentioned this last month but in May and June are when we get two of our um huge property tax payments so I know in may we Reed 20.8
million and in June on 6524 received 25.3 million and the remaining of those dollars for the current year will come in in October and November so this is a time that um we do sit uh with a lot of cash and then it uh
depletes throughout the year so any questions at all on any of the reports thank you Scott any questions I have I have one Scott if you go back to the expenditure statement
yeah right there um maybe I don't understand this stuff but the construction fund there are no numbers for the year to date no there's no comparison yeah we've never had that in there we've talked about it a lot and I know that's
been asked at um the board in the P um because it's so variable um it wouldn't it wouldn't really do it justice to compare year-over-year in a lot of ways I would argue it's like our purchase services and capital expenditures it all depends on the time of year that we're
you know we could take on a project that we're not aware of it could come up middle of the year so it VAR so significantly that we've never um put those on but we absolutely could look at that in the future if you'd like okay and then the other question I have is about the uh revenues Federal yeah
numbers are they always going to look like this in every statement we are still going to keep getting um that's what I was kind future time um it won't be the case next year so a big reason for this is because of the um car's dollars and we're shifting those around
to use them for eligible expenditures and so um like I mentioned the worst thing that we could do from my perspective is to draw those down because we have to have them spent before we can draw on them um and if there's any shifts or there's any shifts if we do any payroll adjustments um we
would then have to um basically go to the state and say hey we need to pay you back some of that money or we need to adjust it and also in addition to that um is the complexity of mde switch systems this year so everybody can sat
tight all year because you couldn't even draw prior year funds um which you always draw first to spend down before you go to current year funds so it was just kind of a complex year so um I absolutely don't think that will be the norm going forward we absolutely hope it won't and if you're call from um last
month the budget presentation our federal um budget is much much smaller this coming year so thank you great question yep thank you hey Scott can you remind me on this slide so the the tax that have come in y
those have already been budgeted for right this is just the cash coming in yeah this is basically our cash position have nothing to do with budget or anything y baked in this is just the cash coming in on interest per perfect y absolutely
thank you right there are no other questions thank you Scott thank you all right we move on to the Human Resource Services reports presented by executive director Stacy was Stacy has two items for board
approval first we have a recommendation to approve the salary schedule and handbook changes for the unaffiliated staff uh Stacy would you like to tell us a little bit more about this absolutely good evening um school board members
superintendent Anderson um before you this evening um I do have the unaffiliated salary schedule and handbook changes uh for you to review a summary of the language uh changes are for the unaffiliated staff levels 1 through n unaffiliated staff as you may
or may not know is just any of our staff that is not covered by a recognized bargaining unit this recommendation includes a salary schedule Improvement of a 1.5% for the 242 fiscal year this recommen recommendation is within the
district's budget parameters changes were made in the following areas an increase of vacation days for our level two employees 403b contribution eligibility in year one for our employees in levels two and three um
the early retirement incentive is sunsetting for level three employees and we added career increments to our unaffiliated ated levels 7 8 and N to be more in alignment with our principal contracts the human resources board
committee has reviewed the recommended changes and the proposed um recommendations are before you this evening thank [Music] you colleagues the recommended action is to approve the 24 2024 25 salary scheduled and handbook for the
unaffiliated positions as presented is there a motion I so move a second thank you mov and seconded is there any discussion uh yes I would like to if I can um clarify some things I uh
printed out unaffiliated salary schedule so based on um in I clarified some questions uh of I got some answers today but I still have some uh questions um first of all it's about vacation time uh
what is what did um of why we decided to move from uh to change uh vacation time to be honest when you calculate vacation time and Si days in many uh like if private
businesses uh they do not get that amount it's uh pretty generous and especially when we're in a Cost Containment uh it sounds uh quite generous and we can use money somewhere else like for example thinking about
class sizes so really good question um at a first glance looking at why would we offer more vacation time to our employees please note that that was just for our level two employees um so that is I believe
um how many employees is that um 18 of our support staff um they were originally um receiving um 12 days and we just bumped that up to 15 well you have to remember with unaffiliated employees is we don't have Subs people
can't do our jobs um if we're not there so even though um we're extending their vacation days um it doesn't necessarily cost the district um any additional funds because there are not substitutes in place for those
employees and the sick leave along with vacation they're for two definitely different purposes and while I don't disagree with your interest in exploring PTO um in an organization as large as
ours that is a considerable lift um our teachers uh the WEA um Association uh in their contract that we negotiated last summer they have a memorandum of understanding that outlines their interest in exploring what PTO may look
like and so we will be taking that on but as from my perspective it makes a lot of sense to start with our largest bargaining unit because then we could put things into place and then I would need to negotiate those changes with all
of our other bargaining units and once that was in place our unaffiliated employees of course would come along um as we make those changes but we always need to be intentional um in regards to significant changes that we make like
that in addition right now with the earn sick and safe time um we have to have the time separate just because of how we're set up um and our current sick leave allocations are in alignment um
with those expectations so um I could see where you would wonder why we would be offering that time off but some of that time off is mandated um and some of it is you know our employees deserve a break they deserve a vacation um and in
an effort to recruit and retain our employees uh we need to make sure that we are offering them those things that make this a good work environment uh you may or may not know I send out an email uh prior to creating the unaffiliated
handbook changes and I did have uh probably two or three of our level two employees reach out to me um requesting that I review and look into the number of vacation days that they have uh thank you I actually uh I have
to admit that I uh originally missed that it is just uh concerning level one and two and looks like at level one we don't have anybody um a second concern is about uh the amount of salary increases uh yes it is saying showing as
if it is 1.5 uh% increase but when you factor in Step increases the people receive the actual impact will be between uh over 3% and uh even all the way to uh 5% so to be honest I think
that as a taxpayer it will be very useful to see how much in total it is costing us I mean I don't want I'm just trying to ask to be transparent so that um we uh as a public or as uh taxpayers
and see how much it's actually cost uh because when you calculate from um step by step the increase will be even 5% correct and those are considered rollup costs and so those costs are
automatically assumed into the costing model so and again we have a seven-step salary schedule so every year we roll up so if you're in Year One as an employee and you roll up to year
two that is automatically calculated in the costum model what employees are interested in knowing because their step up as a part of the salary schedule is assumed everyone's interested in the new money so that is the uh percentage that
is reported uh to the board if I'm asked um that's what I report um to our organizations in regards to the settlement packages that we have um negotiated with any of our bargaining
units so when I reported on the teachers it was a two and a 2.3 uh percent increase of new money but because they have a 30 step salary schedule the costy model just rolled up those costs as teachers moved from one
step to the next or even from one lane to the next because they also have the added complexity of um they receive additional monies for credits that they acquire and it is complicated to explain
all of the layers of an overall salary package but you are correct that some of our employees would have more of a 5% I think actually um the
average improve what was it was a 3.54 um percentage package overall but I think I was just saying that what the average for um the dollar increases per
FTE was about $5,000 and that takes into consideration the roll up and the new money on the salary schedule oh I understand it is complex and trust me for me it's even more complex I had to sit down and kill
calculate and figure it out um my asking is um let's say that for if um employees are interested just to see what percentage uh fine but it will be nice for public uh to see how much it is actually costing after all the increases
then based on that even for me for example uh I will I will vote based on um what I see uh versus for me I had to spend quite a bit of time actually uh calculating in checking uh I think that
it'll be more transparent uh that's all what I'm trying to ask and and that's just fine we welcome the questions thank you anyone else have question comment if not thank you um I'm sorry
you oh your s okay so this is a roll call vote if the clerk would please call Dan janra I Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Sheila
prior yes Heidi ker yes Valentina SS as I stated uh because of because of what I stated I am are voting no okay Milan Sone yes thank you and the
motion carries thank you all right we move on to the next item and this is a recommendation again from Human Resources uh to approve the supplemental salaries in several
categories Stacy would you like to go over the recommendations for the board yes thank you board chair members of the board um this is the annual review of supplemental salaries for the 24 25 school year again these are wages
that are not covered under a bargaining unit nor were they covered under the unaffiliated handbook so it is recommended that the board approve the pay rates for the 2425 school year which includes an increase of pay for our
Reserve teachers uh represents a $5 increase in pay for level one substitutes and a $10 increase in pay for level two substitutes and long-ter term reserves for the 2425 school year
um the five and the $10 pay increases um helps us to remain competitive um with our West Metro neighboring districts the technology department our casual employees we updated the high school student rate to meet minimum wage
requirements for the 2425 school year and a 70 Cent increase to the hourly cap for the second tier of high school student Tech workers our classified staff substitute pay guidelines changes include updating the
Food Service sub rate to the Food Service assistant rate and an increase for the RN and LPN Health office Subs that will be based on the administrative professional paraprofessional contract settlement all other rates are aligned
with the amounts in the identified contracts consistent with prior years there will be no changes to our activity fund wages for Community Education Service hourly rates we represent a 3% pay increase for facility
attendance for the 2425 school year and have removed positions that no longer exist for early learning school which is formerly known as peppermint fence um please uh note that we still have a few peppermint fence instructors who are not
currently covered under our Community Education contract um and so as we Sunset um their positions we still are allowing for increases in their rates pay so we are
um asking that you approve a 1% pay increase for those employees and then for our Wisa kids site managers um we are in alignment with the unaffiliated new money salary increase of a 1.5 pay
increase for their services as well thank you colleagues the recommended action is to approve the 24 2024 25 supplemental SES as presented is there a
motion so moved second moved and seconded is there any discussion hearing none will the clerk please take a roll call Vote heider Yes
Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Sarah Johansson yes Paris bende yes Sheila prior yes Milan soney yes the motion carries unanimously thank
you all right next item on the agenda is other board action and Dr Anderson will recommend approval of the attendance area guiding change document which uh Dr Ray queer had presented at the last board meeting work session I think it
was Teamworks Dr thank you Mr chair members of the board so included in this document uh as was referenced to at the work session on June 24th is the guiding change document that was put together through input from our strategy
leadership team and also the school board at the uh work session and the document included uh some of the process uh paramet and the work that's before us and also the guiding change document so as was indicated at the June 24th work
session uh we share that we'd be bringing it back for board action uh tonight on July 8th uh for uh uh moving forward this will serve as guidance as we uh move through the process I will just read uh what's on the script here
um starting with that second paragraph since I kind of covered the first part BTO Public Schools is the need to address and make plans for growing enrollment and changing school capacity for elementary schools middle schools and the high school Teamworks International which is our consulting company of whom uh Ray Queener who was
here last month represents will conduct an enrollment and housing study which will include a second phase for determining optimal School attendance areas uh which will be put in place or implemented with 25 26 school year Incorporated within this larger document
is the guiding change document that's the document that I referenced before core uh that was reviewed as a guide for moving forward with this project taking place uh the summer of 2024 through December 2024 when it is expected that Schoolboard action will be taken on School attendance areas so the
recommended action is to approve the guiding change document which is included in the packet thank you Dr Anderson colleagues the recommended action then again is to approve the attendance area guiding change document as presented by Dr andon
is there a motion I so move second thank you moved and seconded is there any [Music] discussion hearing none um will the clerk please take the role
call Harris bende yes Sheila prior yes Heidi ker yes Valentina SS yes Dan janra yes Sarah Johan yes Milan Sone yes thank you the motion carries
unanimously the final item on the agenda is board reports uh this section of the agenda provides an opportunity for board members to update fellow board members on school board related work or to make announcements of interest to the public
I believe the director gestra has a report thank you Mr chair I had the great privilege of attending the get on the bus event several weeks go is sponsored by just Intermediate School District 287 we visited two uh summer education schools in the West Metro that
dealt in a variety of services mostly uh in a summer camp setting we had all sorts of very interesting coursework and classes um you know early problem solvers Young Writers even a club on Harry Potter it was you know very diverse and certainly very interesting I was joined by um our chair uh Dr soney
for a very interesting um visit I want to thank uh you know DRS Allan Rogers and Voss for their um stewardship of the program leadership and mentorship of all of us during the process it was very in-depth and um conclusive visit um as well as thanks to their uh to our site
managers at those respective locations for all their hard work and sheering these students along and the programming along and making sure the kids have you know adequate Transportation opportunities and and everything um under and above in addition at our June
27th uh meeting we approved our budget uh District 287 so my gratitude to uh Brian Schultz our Director of Finance and Gloria w Wilder who's our finance manager so um we have our budget uh completed as is the case uh here I'm
sure Mr Lage here is very happy to smile upon that so I'm really thank you to our 287 team for all their leadership and allowing us the opportunity to view what what all is going on you know this summer at at um at the intermediate so um with that I yield back to the chair
thank you um I was also very fortunate to attend that uh ride bus ride it was a very hot and humid day but it was 4 hours worth spent there were kids that were learning how to produce movies
there was kids that were learning how to write poetries there were kids that learned how to know play the music these were very very young kids these were not I think they were all elementary school kids right yes sir okay yeah not very old but they were all very talented and
gifted so thank you for the opportunity I look forward to doing that next year again any other board reports colleagues if not um our next board work session will be held on Monday July 22nd at 4 p.m. this
concludes the WIA Public Schools regular board meeting I want to thank everyone for their participation in a process that is focused on students in our district is there a motion to joh i s MO is there a second second all in favor
say I I oppose n the motion carries the time is now quter 8 the WIA Public Schools Board of Education regular meeting for Monday July 8th 2024 is adjourned