all right after some logistical moving arounds uh we'll call the July 16th Schoolboard business meeting to order start off by saying the Pledge of Allegiance if you so choose I pledge allegiance to the plag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and jce thank you I think we are going to start with welcoming our new student representative M SCH so I think we're going to head you want to meet me up there yeah all right ready it is an honor that you were selected to guide guide the education of our community students as you recite the oath of office you assume a tremendous responsibility for Equitable quality education of every student in the district because as a board we must be accountable to the community we must ensure a continuous assessment of student achievement and all conditions affecting the education of our children as board members we serve as education's key Advocate on behalf of students and our community schools to advance the vision of our schools as a board member your leadership and contribution to the freely Public Schools is valuable you must strive to work together with the superintendent and staff to lead the district toward fulfilling our mission which is to challenge and Inspire our students and our community to become caring and knowledgeable lifelong Learners who inquire to take action to create a better world now it's up to you if you just want to raise your right hand and you can recite that okay I hear I publicly affirm my commitment to the both of office I swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and of this state and that I will discharge Faithfully of of duties of the office of school board member of Independent School District number 14 to the best of my judgment and conratulations [Applause] okay now next on the agenda the chair would entertain a motion um to approve the agenda for the July 16th 20124 meeting do I have a motion so moved motion made by Meisner do I have a second second second by start all those in favor signify by saying I I all those opposed motion passes next up turn it over to Dr Lewis for a superintendent report thanks chair I'm I am AB absolutely thrilled principal mcconville to have you come up and share this wonderful news come on up I'm G to bring everybody up and we do have a student online yes hi kesma all right there she is there they are um I am honored to be here to represent for the high school and our amazing Scholars who are here tonight uh we have almost all of our six diploma recipients with us we have five of six and um I just want to thank the school board superintendent Dr Brenda Lewis and the leadership and the commitment of the entire School District to have this happen so um it's an incredible feat and I'm going to have Katie Snider our DP coordinator share a little bit about what it takes to be an IB diploma recipient thank you Mr marille um these six students they are some of the only 76,000 students in the globe worldwide to earn their diploma um it takes a ton of work and here's just a glimpse um they took 15 exams and they have to have high average scores on those exams to earn their diploma so right away 15 tests back toback or about 3 week period it was a lot would you agree yeah I'm sure C yes they're shaking their head um they completed seven essays along with all of those courses with those um Assessments in their classes um one of which was a 4,000-word research and analytical paper that they pursued on their own without um the help of a a teacher in class every day they had to seek out that support from their supervisor um I helped a little bit but it's really them 4,000 words is a lot um to be writing so that was another piece they prepared three different um presentations or oral interviews they have to do these with their teachers um an inclass in front of class they do it in their theory of knowledge classes they call it's called an exhibition um they do that for their um language be courses so in Chinese or Spanish um they're doing an interview with their teacher tons of prep workk goes into those as well and they also have a thoughtful detailed reflection about a community project that they've taken over the last two years so if the tests weren't enough if the assays weren't enough um um uh they also had this project to complete and they also maintain their grades they were applying and being accepted into colleges um performing in musicals competing in athletics holding down jobs um just being great kids to um for us at school and their parents who are here to support them so I'm very very very proud of all of them um I'm going to ask them to share a little bit about what they learned um any words of advice for our future candidates here um um anything they would like to share even if it's like an essay they remember writing so um from the few let's start with Ethan andler one of our recipients uh Hey guys nice to see you all um you know this was really challenging for all of us but I would say that one thing that's kind of taught me is just like the importance of collaboration because when you're in the middle of your one of your 15 tests your hand wants to fall off you know you can just look around and look at the people next to you and you know they were there they're there with you they're in the same position that you are they're probably also struggling even though you don't see it and even though you don't know it and so I think that just that realization that you have people with you and people surrounding you makes us all stronger and so some advice to you guys use your friends they help they lighten the load and it's just it makes it all more fun uh Pac Baka if you would like to come up um one thing I learned is just how to be balanced and manage my time cuz there's a lot of stuff going on at the same time with full full DP and so like if you fall behind a one thing you fall behind it on all so I guess some some advice I have is I just like try to be on top of everything it's okay like if you fall behind a little bit but like try to catch up and just stay balanced C we'd love to hear from you if you don't mind sharing something you've learned or a word of advice um are you able to hear me yeah we hear youf perfect okay um so one thing I definitely learned honestly is just like prioritizing what you needed to do first because with the broad scope of all the things we had to do there was definitely times of like oh this is a sign now but oh this one's a lot more pertinent we had to like focus on this aspect first and just juggling where to manage our time while also doing extracurriculars and all these other fun sorts of things um my piece of advice would be just plan ahead start to think about what you want to do way early on because it makes managing the course load a lot easier and know what you're getting into look to your upper classmen who have already done what you've maybe wanted to do and try to learn a couple things from them hear their tips and tricks on how they balanced everything andone thanks GMA Emily tuba do you like to share hi guys um I kind of just want to Echo like what everybody else is saying like it's it's basically a balancing act like from me having a job being in sports being like a leader of a club and doing full DP it gets to be a lot and like making sure that you know how to balance your time and um while also like realizing when it is too much and when you do need to take a break and like take time for yourself I think that's important and yeah like all of us full DP kids kind of started becoming friends and we kind of just started like helping each other and like Miss SNY I know she helped us a lot too to like get through it but yeah so just balancing your time and leaning on your friends basically the same as what everybody else said but yeah um our last uh diploma recipient in attendence is Hannah hooi um I would say one thing I learned um after completing the diploma program um was that I could trust myself to do hard things cuz starting out I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do really hard classes um and another thing I learned um through that was it's okay to ask for help and I need to ask for help sometimes and that's the best thing I can do um so my advice to um uh future candidates is make sure you're asking for help whenever you need it um from your teachers or your peers see they're amazing right um all these students are College Bound um enrolling in the fall um kasma are you in New York right now yes I am I'm actually in tutoring right now I have like a couple things I'm working on um days are long you know cute little cute little College up here but it's been really fun to the summer program so far and definitely the IB Program also really prepared me for the rigor that is this col very happy it's showing to prove off already excellent um tremendous group of students were very proud um and so if you have any questions for them I'm sure they'd love to answer I I think it's fantastic obviously by the work you put in and I also get a sense that when you go to college this fall it might be a little bit of a break for you yeah yeah yeah actually relax a little bit and just maybe focus on one thing uh does anyone want to share what your aspirations are what you're going to be pursuing coming up in the fall in college I mean Ethan shirt says it all right [Laughter] engine no okay oh maybe you want to yeah it's okay to not know your major yet that's totally normal just so as it probably says I'm going to the University of Minnesota uh for college of Science and Engineering for mechanical engineering I plan to focus on electrical Vehicles so awesome anything within that field well thank you all very much congratulations [Applause] congratulations all right Fridley alums you can stay or you can go um the rest of the presentation is um not as exciting so it's up to you if you want to go but thank you for being here and we're so proud of you okay next up I am thrilled to welcome Michelle Cox who will be sharing about our construction projects I might have missed something nope we're good good okay perfect board chair board director student Representatives superintendent Lewis it's such a pleasure to be here my very first board meeting um I'm the new senior officer of operations as well as system alignment here and tonight I'm going to be focusing on our construction projects um you know I just look at this amazing group of students and I think about the Investments we made in their education and for me investment into our fysical environments here at Fridley is investment into our students and their academic outcomes um one of my first days superintendent Lewis taught about three things that were her focus and that was access opportunity and belonging and I've taken that with me through my twoe journey um of looking at getting up to date on our construction projects so I'm happy to be here today to give you an update so first of all the good news is all of our projects are on time or ahead of schedule um as we know especially with supply chain issues that hasn't been a problem for us and that really goes to the good planning that's happened before I've come and um my goal is to keep us on time and ahead of schedule um we I am meeting with all of the construction projects weekly so Tuesdays and Wednesdays I try to wear my sensible shoes as I'm you know going through construction projects and as we go um our expectations that we're setting right now is we do have some change orders that we're processing as needed so things that might have been missed in a um in a plan something that came up that we weren't expecting so we're managing those um to make sure that our costs stay low um as well as we don't go way over budget for this uh for these projects I also want to let you know that we have filed an insurance claim for the water damage at the fley community center due to one of our construction projects so that is in play also so here's the fun part I'm going to give you an update about each of our schools um or properties and what going on there so the first is the Fridley Community Center we have a new parking lot so those of you who are here in the building you can just look outside and see this one I love taking this picture I took this early in the morning and I thought it just really um really talked about like the mountains of work that have going into this parking lot and if you go out there tonight you'll see this was taken Monday morning the tremendous process that we making out there we have an estimated completion date of 820 on this we're hoping it's going to be even earlier here currently we're leveling uh leveling and surveying the parking lot and what's next is we're laying concrete and pavement and we'll have our first coat of that coming in this Saturday um our next project at Fridley High School we have a couple things going on we have our Alternative Learning Center remodel currently we're painting the walls what's next going is as you can tell on this photo is flooring we also have a new fire alarm installation which I should have taken a picture of because it would literally be a lot of wires hanging down um all across the building but we have an ex an estimated completion date of 825 right now and interesting as things change and you think about new things added to a project um we learn that we have um not numbered all of our rooms at the high school nor have we updated our plans as to where we've built walls or taken walls down so um a shout out to our new buildings and ground manager Heidi um SE Pope who just joined us uh Monday uh she has taken on that project and is going around renumbering um all of our rooms or adding numbers and we will um have signage all that will have to be in place before the fire marshal comes to do his inspection um we also have a new kitchen cooler installation project um coming in um I know today I approved an order for the uh racks the cooler racks for that um the walls have been started and so that project is coming along at a really good Pace at the Fridley Middle School not as much going on but our um students receiving special education services um we're building out a kitchen area for them to work on life skills um you can see here new cabinets going in as well as using existing um uh different appliances that we currently have there the next is what I think one of our biggest Transformations is the Vista Ed education center and I love these pictures um you can just tell by the coolness of the feeling like I look at this picture and I get really calm I'm like yeah I would like to be sitting on that couch um this remodel has been a total revamp um both inside and out of the school as we look at our new fedal setting 4 program fedal fting 4 is the most intensive services for special education um students um completion dat by 8:20 we're making remarkable progress show you a few more um love these green chairs you can see as they're starting to get set up moving things in um when I was there the other day all furniture was there moving things in moving things out as the alc and and um this new program kind of switch places so we're really excited about that one Stevenson Elementary so we have a couple projects going on there new construction our special education we're adding um walkways between between classrooms we're adding bathrooms that are more accessible we're also um adding sensory spaces for students um we also have vinyl flooring happening in the art room which you can see there and then also new carpet throughout the classroom so very excited did some walkth through last week with the principal and assistant principal and they're very proud and and showing off all their new things Hayes Elementary school is going through the similar special education remodel um we're currently painting there as you can see on the walls and what's next for them is flooring going in and then finally I would be remiss not to say a few thank yous before I leave um our custodial staff has been amazing so if you can imagine doing all the summer cleaning that happens in our buildings as well as now inviting and managing and welcoming and assisting all of the construction that's happening so big shout out to them our principles have also had to navigate that as we think about uh programming that's happening in the building making sure staff and students who are in the building are safe as well as me calling and saying hey we want to resal your parking lot so when would be a good time to do that so they've been great about navigating all that our athletic department has had to navigate us uh working um on parking lots and for their different events that are happening and where their practices are our nutritional service team our CL iCal teams and our contract contractor teams um I would say coming in I've worked on several buildings um and several remodels um in my career and these um contractors really care about kids and so they're doing a great uh a great job and I told him I would say that at the board meeting tonight um and then of course all of our construction workers as theyve weathered the weather um both inside and out um as we been doing abatements and different projects and and the weather so let's keep our fingers crossed for no rain next week that would be great um and I'm here to take any questions if you have any otherwise thanks for giving me the time to do the update tonight no questions thanks for sh all right thank excellent job thank you I'm so excited to welcome Dr Amy fing to share about the work she has done already uh with the team on welcoming our future tigers and I keep having to remind myself that our new cabinet members have only been here like what 12 working days maybe something like that so it's just incredible to see the work that's already been done so thank you for that okay well thank you so much for this time superintendent Lewis board chair and board directors I was a little worried I wasn't going to be tall enough for this but I just barely made it so we're good um so yeah so my role is really um surrounding Early Childhood birth through age four age five um up to kindergarten and the transition from preschool to kindergarten as well as our engagement of our families um in Fridley um I'd like to say the city of Fridley even though I know that includes other school districts but I believe if we're frle Public Schools we do represent the city if you live in city in the city um and so my charge really has been to take kind of a close analysis of our birth through age5 Services look at um what's happening and how do we increase enrollment aggressively so these are some of the things you're going to hear tonight are things that um we're just getting started on um and then with Stephen here at the community center of course and all of his um relationship building and and helping showing me around things like that um where we've come so far um so as relle mentioned um again same thing with the access opportunity belonging I think um I mentioned earlier that I've been out in the community one of the things that I did um this past or last week was I visited all the apartment complexes that are in the Fridley um attendance area and I talked to the property managers and um all of the property or lease managers were very excited to have me there um they say they quite frequently get asked questions about schools um they're not sure where to direct families other than to say look up frilly Public Schools right and so one of the biggest things you'll hear later is how we're going to engage our property and Lease managers so that they're equipped to to be able to give an elevator speech about our school district um really birth through uh grade 12 and then that's where you're going to get the belonging but we first have to really um kind of bring in that access and that opportunity with the information but then um move up into the belonging so the three things that I'm going to touch on tonight are screening preschool and enrollment um so screening um it it took me a little bit to understand how we do screening in frle public schools and um we actually have a pretty good system set up what we need to do is increase the number of students that we are screening before kindergart enrollment um quite simply on this chart or on this table you're going to see that in 2324 that's the total number of students that we screened at age three four five and six now six is really late that means we screen that student after they had entered kindergarten the other thing to look at is how much revenue we receive when we screen a student it's not much but it'll make a difference if you increase the numbers of students that you screen so you can see at age three you'll receive $98 per student for every screening that you do and then um by the time they're age six and they're already entered school it's $39 if we um if we increase the number of students this means we're we're getting back out into the community ages three and four and especially before they start school you're tripling the amount of Revenue right and one thing that interesting is when you look at screening Revenue it usually never pays for itself because it is such a small Revenue amount however you can impact and you can create more um avenues for families to be engaged in your District the more you bring in screening because when they're here that's when you share information about your District that's when you share information about resources that's when you bring kids into your District so that's kind of the the larger piece of Revenue so to speak other than just what you get from the state for actual screening numbers so our screening Revenue from last year was 12491 again it's enough to be to make a difference it's not going to pay for a full-time person right but it's enough that if you bring in then 100 more students because you screen them you brought them in they get to see the public school the district Etc then that you know exponentially grows um okay so screening so here are some four or four next steps that we have with screening um I'll be taking over screening as the Director of early childhood Stephen and his staff have done an amazing job holding down the fort but we've had Laya map who is our ECFE lead and then we've also had Courtney Courtney green um and she's our Equity person we really want them to feel like they can engage in the work that they were hired for and not have to be involved in the technical spe piece of scheduling and actually doing the screening and so um I'm going to take it over and then we're going to rework how we're doing Staffing so that it's not an increase in cost but an increase of amount of students we can serve um changing of location so typically screening is here for the month of July um Laura and her team are taking it on at the vista Center um but we really want our screen to be mobile you can do it mobile right so you can go to houses you can go to events you can go to um Community places Etc and get the screening done so that parents don't always have to come here so right now we're putting together a mobile screening unit so that we can just bring it around you can set up in a classroom for sure but you could also set it up you know in the conference room in an apartment complex for example and just have people residents come down and get their screening done and um let them know that they get to go to Fridley Public Schools um we also will have two classrooms that will be available during this upcoming school year for screening so like I said we're going to kind of move around staff to be able to do the screening but then we'll have kind of a home base here too as well in the community center for families that need to come here um for the screening and then we also will have walk-in screening so we you know sometimes you a busy parent you have something scheduled realize you can't make it no big deal just come on in so we're going to adjust staff schedules so families can walk in and get the screening done instead of having to try to reschedule Etc so those are some um points that we'll be putting into play starting next year um we've also talked about having a calendar versus using Elio Elio is a great system um in the past District I worked and we also had Alo but it does require having to be able to log in and do do a lot of things we don't want our families who are just interested in screening to have to go through all of that I understand registering for activities and events and things like that but for the simple task of screening not to go through all those steps um so we'll have a calendar that our schedule will be able to use but that will be accessed by a lot of other departments like ECFE our health office nurses special education preschool so we all have eyes on the students that are being screened and we can constantly be looking at that calling fam saying hey we saw you got screened have you enrolled in preschool Etc so we all kind of have that Master list um and then I kind of mentioned this before but we will have dedicated staff then for screeners we're looking at um including our preschool teacher as part of a one of our preschool teachers as a screener because again you're trying to connect the dots for families right so if you're a three-year-old getting screened by a preschool teacher hey I'll see you next year it's a friendly face and we really want to show that transition um and then we also want to make sure that we have summer screeners so that again making sure that our walk walk-in screening is available so having us scheduled for the summer all right moving on to preschool well that's kind of loud um it wasn't that loud when I was making it but colors are kind of loud all right so this is the most updated information I have um Lori um D pulled this for me earlier today or yesterday um so right now in the Fridley attend Fridley Public Schools attendance Zone okay and including those who are in the Northwest integrated Suburban District we have 191 families who have four yearolds that are not enrolled in preschool okay that's a substantial amount right and so when I saw that I was like wow what are we going to do with this 191 right what I learned is that they've already been sent mailings a few times they have not responded to the mailings they have not enrolled they have not called so we just were not sure where they're sitting with the idea of preschool so we took the 191 list and we started curating through the families that already have siblings attending for for the public schools because they already know our district they already probably have a favorite teacher or principal so we should not be strangers to them so from that list we've been starting to do calls home so we've attempted to call every single one either left a voice message or talk to the family directly myself and then in beand who works in the preschool program as a coordinator she and I went and did some actual home visits where already knocked in the house and and it was fun because you saw kids like oh hi because they knew Karen from when she was a preschool teacher whatnot um and made the connection but you know really clearly said we know that your child hasn't been screened we know you're not enrolled in preschool how can I help you um get those resources and get that done and we had very very positive very positive responses to that um of course those take home visits in person take time so we did not visit 191 homes in two days um because again we did the apartment complexes but also um we're able to um get kind of our feet wet in some of the places um with home visits that we knew there were siblings already enrolled so here's kind of where we s with the numbers now remember we have 200 seats for preschool 200 seats we used to have 165 last year we got 55 more seats awarded to us so we have 200 total seats 20 of those seats go to to community ed to do full day preschool okay so the preschool part has 180 seats between a.m and p.m. right so in the AM we have 57 students who are registered but only 38 of those 57 are actually enrolled so that means we need to make sure that difference of students actually gets the paperwork in ETC so I'd like to be able to take enrollment on the go and go to those homes get what we need so they actually um get fully enrolled but do have like a reserved seat um 35 of the students of those 57 in the AM are in District and 22 are out of District so either you know they're choosing to transport or they're through the Northwest integrated Suburban District in PM we have 100 seats available and we have 43 registered but of of the 43 only 29 have actually enrolled so again there's some work to do with capturing like hey we heard that you really want to be here we saved you a seat but you still need to sign this form or turn this paper in right and sometimes all that takes is a quick home visit or a phone call to have people do that 29 of the 43 are in District and 14 are out of district for the PM now what you're going to see is there's less students enrolled in the PM than the am so we're kind of starting to take that apart and figure out what do families need if more interested in the am then we have to start thinking of about thinking of program program changes right you can't keep offering PM if no one's coming to PM right another thing to start thinking about too is we have the full day preschool with um in partnership with Community aded um very strong program that afternoon component requires pay though because it's our child care um I like to call it you know Community is an Enterprise fund meaning what you make is what you spend right and so we also probably will need someday in the future an option for our families to have full day but without pay right we also need to look at Transportation because if we find that transportation is a barrier between for our parents to be able to pick up their kids at certain times right again you're looking at the best start for our Scholars right then we should be able to fix that Transportation issue as well so and that would go back to relle um okay so here are the next steps with preschool moving right along so we do have those additional seats a thing that I've been spending a lot of my time is on revenue and expenses in VPK um I've been working with the state really looking at our screening Revenue as I just went through we also get School Readiness and then of course we utilize pathway one pathway 2 and CCAP those are generally used for our full day uh preschool so that our parents that cannot pay can utilize those scholarships but knowing that pathway 2 and CCAP take a long time and pathway 2 is capped so once we're out of the money we're kind of out of the money right um and so we want again our parents to be able to engage in Early Learning Without a cost um and then programming um we have our self- study with IB so that's just part of being a part of the IB um program or the Continuum so that's happening this year we are also in year two of the pyramid model that really works on student engagement at that younger age and then all of our educators will be trained in letters um for this upcoming year and so I mention this just a little bit but we started our home visits on July 9th um one of the things to say to all of you with our apartment and Lease managers is that their families their residents their tenants that come in um have are what I heard from them is that they're all very interested in fridly public schools they just don't have the information or the means to get the connection from school from home to school and so we were at one apartment complex that I could probably walk to from here and you know the apartment manager says you know I keep asking do you know know somebody do or the families keep asking the apartment manager do I get Transportation you know that should be a very easy question in elevator speech are property managers have that yes of course you get transportation and here's the stop right um and so that's all the information that we're um going to be putting together in a folder and then hopefully we have just kind of a place within the management office that Fridley Public Schools is there and I said without permission from the superintendent but I did tell every property manager that we're an opt out District not an opin so when you move into our attendance Zone automatically you're a Fridley public school student if you choose to opt out you can go find those resources and do so but when you're here we want the property managers to say Fridley is your your District Fridley public schools are your schools right parents have all the information we make it as easy as possible for them um today or tomorrow we'll be sending out additional letters to that 191 again we've made some edits on it because once we sent out of course some of the information was a little bit older um so we're going to be sending that out again we're going to keep calling um all of our homes one thing that we found is that we were missing phone numbers for a lot of families and what was concerning is that we were missing phone numbers for families who had siblings enrolled in this District meaning those schools don't have an active phone number for their current student you know and so that's one thing that um I mentioned even today that I'm willing to go out to the home and say what's your phone number you need an emergency phone number my goodness you have a student at Steve ston or Haze and um we need a working number so that's also something that when I met with Veronica the principal at Stevenson that I said I very much was willing to help with because we need to make sure we have um up-to-date information on our families um enrollment so some of the things this is going to be a work in progress um because I think system-wise and tech-wise we're going to have to get more aligned but we want to make sure we have a mobile enrollment process meaning that when we're at a community event if we have a family interested in our public school system at least getting them halfway through enrollment getting all their information and then setting up a time maybe they come and bring in their um confidential information Etc but we do want to make sure that we're out in places and have access to um our families being able to enroll if they have interest in it um a lot of our enrollment is paper form so making sure we have electronic and then with electronic translated documents um could be video could be voice over it doesn't matter um but we want to make sure all of our families have that access um alignment to elementary middle and high school so thinking about um when we're talking to our birth through five being able to very clearly say your trajectory in E we call E through 12 Early Child through 12th grade so you saw the diploma candidate standing right here right we need to be able to as preschool birth through five staff be able to articulate how we're going to give them a great start for their scholar to be a DP or CP candidate right like it has to all be able to tie together and not kind of stop and start so that's some work that we're going to have to do and then of course with our student Support Services looking at our students um early intervention strengthening up those pieces so that we are very clear with families and getting them the support they need as earliest as possible um so marketing for enrollment um we want to make sure that we for Early Childhood at least our present at events so for example the Middle School and High School open house or I forgot what it's called but black party is coming up you know and um I was sitting at the meeting I'm like I need a table by the high school table you know um because again we have families coming in with multi-age children right so you might have a high schooler but you also might have you know a little one um and so we want to make sure that we're catching families at the place that they are like you all showed up for a fun time so you know here's stuff that matches um all of your children's ages um we also want to so I brought this as an example so I was down in the basement the basement here and um we found this sign I was like look at this sign it's really cool but then we realized it has class of 203 so it's dated and you can't use dated material so we're not going to throw all these out that'd be a waste of Public Funding so what we're going to do is we're going to get a strip put our fry Public Schools contact information we're going to start handing it out to families and get these out in yards because we have them already it's not going to cost very much to get something to cover this up so these are ideas as I'm kind of scaming around Stephen's taking me to the dark spaces of this community center that I'm finding opportunities that are um almost cost neutral right for things like that um and then there's a lot of other ideas here but um today I was researching healthc care hospitals places where that we'd have entry points to talk to the social workers talk to whomever there to be able to explain you know the services we offer as a public school district and this should really be the first stop for families um before they have to start investing their own funding into getting support for their own student um and then the last thing I would say for enrollment is really making sure that we have dedicated staff that will follow up that's the the biggest piece I had two calls today yeah no it wasn't through one was a hangup so two calls today where um I not 100% sure but I'm pretty sure the families were calling us back CU they received a call about preschool and I the I'm pretty sure he was the father but the way he worded it was something like I'm calling you back because someone called me and said I had to enroll my child in preschool I was like you're right you have to so apparently the phone call that went out was maybe a little bit more threatening than it needed to be but um but it did the job he called and we're going to get back to him and get his students enrolled so um but but those are the things you know when you call back and you're persistent but with care and with kindness because this is about the student um and being able to Serv as them um families respond so positively to that so I just wanted to give you an update kind of on our focus on enrollment for the young ones so before I leave um these are my top four priorities as I'm moving into the month of August so screening we have um our July screening appointments but then August we're really trying to fill all the slots make sure we get students screened one for the revenue piece but two because it gives us a chance as a public school system to get students enrolled and their needs met before um the first day of school um we need to fill all our preschool seats so that's why you all got bags also um earlier this evening but we do have a we're about halfway there of the 200 slots so we do need to do some work in getting the rest filled um before the start of the school year um we're going to continue doing home visits um like I said I met with Veronica the principal Stevenson so we're going to take two days in August and we're going to go to a lot of the homes of Stevenson families and um her team is going to be with me and we're going to ensure that their students are enrolled and ready to go invite them to the resource fair but then also catch any of the Litt that are not in our system yet and then the fourth thing is sustainable budget working with um our finance group through ciso and then also with the state to ensure that we have a sustainable budget and that we are also continuing to build our um fund balance our assigned fund balance in early childhood so and I can take any questions I kept passing notes to Jake oh no and the first one was like all of this in 12 days and all caps because I feel like this is a Year's worth of work and I'm not quite sure how any of this has happened like all of the our new team um it's just really impressive um I want to sign and Huntley my 2 and a half-year-old came home from efe with one of the little tiger t-shirts like PE that's in the bank and he gets so excited when he wears it and he walks around like a tiger and like growls at people and it just like this sense of branding when he was little um he calls Jake and Mickey emt's mommy and daddy emt's mommy and daddy gave him a little tiger um off of hey is no it was the giraffe it was the giraffe and he loves his little giraffe and he carries it around because he's going to go to Hayes and so I just think that these marketing and these branding things they really work and people recognize that and it's really really exciting and you know we grabbed a Spanish bag our neighbors are Spanish speakers and their little girl is a year older than Hunley so it's perfect timing and it's just this kind of stuff that gets everybody so excited but I don't know how you did it in 12 days I'm not sure either but here I am and I'm I love being here and it's just been an honor and a blast to be able to do this work so with obviously the partnership of Stephen and his I mean they've been so welcoming and showing me around even the basement I don't go down there alone but I would just add to the your level of community engagement and Outreach is something that we're not used to and that is just fantastic it's it's not going to be just enough to send an email or a letter to make these one-on-one personal connections knocking on doors picking up the phone that's something that we're not used to and I I fully expect it is going to pay off for us in the long run so thank you for that work you're welcome and jumping in man that's that's fantastic you're welcome anyone else got anything for no well and just Michelle too like going out and wearing your comfy shoes and getting dirty and monitoring everything like I just it it's everything that we've heard so far feels like it could have taken a whole year to do and so in less than two weeks it just kind of boggles my mind thank you thank you excellent presentation Amy thank you so much okay now we are going to move into our newly debuted referendum website so Lori is going to click on here um several different ways to get to the referendum website we have a button on the main page all of our socials will have um the address that can be linked in directly or typed in directly um so as you peruse here you'll see that this is not something that's fully built out and that's with intention this is where we have started and each week multiple times it really grows then you'll see uh that tax calculator here you'll see where we talk about question one which is the operational question two the building and Facilities needs um you'll talk about you'll see we have the actual ballot language there any uh individual can calculate their tax impact we have our FAQ document that continues to build one of the pieces I wanted to specifically point out is the Open Enrollment tab um open enrollment is complicated in Minnesota how does that funding work am I as a homeowner paying for other people's children to come in how does that work so this is a pretty detailed piece but I think it really talks about Open Enrollment on a pretty deep level here but it's still something that's understandable I think to the average um person that wants to explore that in open enrollment sometimes we talk about districts that are quote open enrollment winners Fridley is definitely an open enrollment winner so what I mean by that is we receive over $8 million and well over 70 million this past decade due to our open enrollment this helps us to maintain our lower class sizes you will get a little preview here uh stay tuned to our socials for next week where you will see us talk about that class siiz study and see the actual data around Fridley Public Schools so this is a piece that I think um school choice in Minnesota is something that we understand in theory I think we understand it in practice how does the financing work so I would really like folks to tune in to this page to really learn how does that break down it also talks about too how much revenue do we generate in state aid and then local Aid so just a piece I wanted to Elevate there and just keep coming to this referendum page because it continues to evolve the next piece I wanted to share with you here is our strategic road map which we have been working on um quite some time here with all of our stakeholder groups including our board this is still our draft road map there's um changes that we're working on with respect to grammar and those pieces the overall messaging the discussion around um belonging rigor accountability stewardship partnership this is all of our Collective work I think when we embarked upon this last summer it seemed like it would take us a minute to get here and I think we've done a really nice job of not spreading it out over too long but really taking the work that had happened prior to my time here in Fridley and really enhancing that figuring out where did we miss as far as Community engagement what do we have for Community engagement and how do we build that out I will say that while I enjoyed thoroughly as the superintendent all of the sessions my favorite was honestly that one where we had all of the folks dating back to was it 57 um so they literally sat and um shared with us from the folks that were here in 1957 when we started all the way forward and just to see the generations represented and the pride was just so exciting so I think this really represents us as well it talks about our priorities it also will help us as we Contin continue our work around um fiscal health and you've heard me uh talk with you a number of times about please make sure that the budget supports the work that we are doing and that the budget doesn't drive certain decision making um and I think this grounds us really well in what that looks like and how we celebrate for and the ways that we have to grow so you will see this um one pager not change too much other than having uh pieces that are cleaned up from a grammar standpoint you'll also see if you scroll all the way to the bottom Lori we're going to have a built out page on our website for our strategic plan as well so we're excited to V at this point and then as we launch the school year of course we'll be doing a lot of work around this and and really invigorating that next I wanted to give you a year in review I will probably do this at uh more like May June next year um but I wanted our new team to really be a part of seeing this um we've had some definite moments of celebrations and we've had areas for enhancement I think we've really done well together around that focus on academics um f focusing on Avid IB the levinia work that has been the summer rise work at our Middle School the levinia work that has really been Deep dive into math this year at the middle school and now next year at the high school as well and really using our data really talking about like we did tonight here's the number of students that graduated with um full DP from our district here's where we are with proficiency what does that look like as we break it down in our student groups strategic plan I will not say too much more on that uh I think we've done a lot of great work that's authentic work I don't think this is one of those pieces where oh check mark we've done the Strategic plan I've also appreciated the level of work that we've done at the board level with the Strategic plan and I've equally appreciated that the board also valued that work from our community and our uh employees and knew when to step back and when to lean into the the work so thank you for that our budget I think it was my second meeting here when we had a really hard conversation around the budget and that conversation actually resulted in us being able to be very thoughtful very deliberate and very intentional and it caused us to settle with our um bargaining units in a way that I felt signal to them you matter to us you matter and fredley I think we weren't the first to settle but I think we settled um in a very good amount of time and I think we really messaged yes we have budget work as does every District in the state but we matter and we're going to invest in you chair I'm going to put you on the spot what was our ratification percentage with the decimal again at the teach 97.8 five 97 well I'm going to go high okay fair I like to round up too I'm just go 98% how about that the board chair once said in my presence thinking it was a compliment oh we settled our contract at 97% and I glared at him and I said it was 97.5 and I was serious I was offended by that so I'm okay and now condition higher than I like the round up we're good at that but I think the board really took time there to say we need to invest and tell our sta staff members whether it's our teacher unit our custodians our independent contracts our clericals our Paras um you were very thoughtful and very deliberate to say we need to invest so I appreciate that and I do believe while we have worked to do ahe for Budget I think that we've seen we know where know where we are we know the factors we know how big of a role enrollment plays into our work the next piece I really wanted to elevate is school resource officers I think we continue to remain the only School District in Anoka County that has sro's back I think there's parts of Anoka henpen School District that have them but I don't know that they're school districtwide we hung on to our sros throughout the whole fall um and throughout the school year but this fall was tough um as some districts saw sro's exit through pieces of legislation that were good intention manifested in a way that needed to be corrected um I'm really proud of that I'm also really proud of the way we handled this the attack with officer Nico I think we all remember that day I think there were a lot of racial dynamics that could have played out in that and I was so proud of our police force I was so proud of our staff I was so proud of our students and families and that was a moment that we aren't trained as school staff to be able to know how to respond when a police officer and a was Gravely assaulted and I'm really proud of that I'll never forget that day every board member either came up or called or texted it was a rough moment uh but I think we handled that well I think that really showed the significance of our relationship um so I'm really proud of the work obviously with our SRO this is also an area where as soon as the chief is able to be fully staff everybody oriented we're able to bring on that third SRO which is so exciting so it's clocking out looking around the January time frame and that third Sr will be able to provide um more supports to our elementaries to our setting for uh excuse me to Vista as well as to our FCC so I'm really excited I think you heard tonight our focus on our facilities a fellow superintendent of M uh texted me and said said are you really doing construction on every single building in your District I said absolutely absolutely we are I didn't misrepresent the middle school but I didn't say it was like on the smaller side I think we can still vouch that it's construction I think we're messaging to our students our families and our communities you deserve to have outstanding facilities you deserve to have friendly pride and we also to message and continue to work on repair with our community that we value the assets that you gift us and we want to take care of them and I think this building is a clear example so I'm just really proud of the work that we're doing with that Staffing I think we all know that we are fully staffed for teachers and special education Paras other than the districts that I've walked hand inand with I don't think they can say that so I'm just really excited about that still have work to do around custodial Staffing student nutrition services I wanted to pull up this demographic data which I am so proud of um but I can't click into it what am I doing wrong couple okay thank you um so what you will see here on the demographics is um here's the 2220 3 demographics 100 new hires um 27 hires were hires of color and then you'll see based there on race and ethnicity if we look at our 2324 yay almost half I am so proud of this I am so proud of this and I want to publicly acknowledge Laura because of all of her work and her belief in the international program um not all of the these hires are international but um that also helps with our fill rates and our statistics I want to show you where we're clocking right now in 2425 you will also see that we are significantly increasing our hires that racially identify as black so we are so excited about this um I think that we've really shown uh to talent and to uh folks the folks want to come to Fridley they want to be a part of what we're doing so I'm just really excited about that behavior um that's an area that we have really worked on Behavior looks like having the supports in the schools having uh the setting four uh program that we have having the assistant principles come on board having our work around Behavior really helps our work around instruction um so I'm really proud of that are we um to to a place where I can say you know I think all of the supports that we have built out for next year that's going to really be magic and and we're good I don't know but I think we're a lot further than we were so I appreciate how the board has really intentionally leaned in to us building that workout and and trusting in that and investing in that setting four is going to also help us on our behavior um and also if it's problematic when we have our students who need a setting four small percentage who need a setting four and we as the resident District aren't able to serve them in setting for they deserve setting four that also helps our students success it also helps our students that are in our neighborhood schools helps with an environment that uh feels a little bit different as well um and I can't wait for you all I went over and saw uh Vista again today and it's just beautiful Laura knows I picked it apart in a loving way I don't like how this paint Mark is literal example but it's out of love right I said I will not have students served in this building with anything subpar often times we have our students that are in Alternative Learning Centers setting fours uh ala suspension served in subpar spaces and I will not do that budget realignment we really worked to bring I believe a fabulous group of talent into our district while still um realizing an $800,000 savings so I'm proud of that our grants I'm really excited about um Andrea baker has just been amazing on all things Grant grants Laura writes these Laura I don't know if you know these statistics we have written uh nine grants totaling 7,530 1851 we've been approved for $9 24,840 dollars we've declined I'm going to round down on this chair we've been declined for a million dollars a little tiny bit of rounding down we're still awaiting to hear 547 th000 I think that's awesome congratulations for your work on this and you know I think we have a really track rate with what we're getting and as we continue um you see the publicity around the media around the international Talent we're getting those grants that help with pipelines and pieces like that so very very excited about that um and communication I think we've worked really hard to message the good and the not so good and I think our community trusts that I think we appreciate that I remember um we had a very serious incident the morning of a football game and a mom came up to me it wasn't related to football she was just at the game I was at the game and she said I've never felt that my kids are more safe than in fredley so I'm proud of that I think we're open I think we're honest I think we're transparent Lori has been amazing at all of our social media our media stories Fry's been in the news and we've been in the news a lot and for very po positive reasons so I'm just proud of this work in November we will do an annual report which really dels into all of our data like we did last year but just wanted to do this kind of year in review of where we were where we've come from and where we need to go so with that I'll entertain any questions and I is this the end of my superintendent update yes okay any questions for Dr Lewis bet you're went fast it was full it was a full year but it went fast yes it did just for clarification Dr L um you had mentioned some of the the staff movement and and realignment that was $800,000 per year savings so that's $800,000 realized this year for the um 2425 school year and then unless we bring those positions back on top of what we have that would be continued realize savings makes sense and just to be very clear most of that is in Personnel costing a little bit of that is we have done some significant uh work around the contracts that we going out for contracted services around buildings and grounds awesome thank you yeah good question okay so next up we have um our business action items and Dr Lewis is a su as well so can you speak to this yes this is um and board members I had briefed you minus Nikki sorry about um every year we need to authorize our uh fiduciary responsibilities around ltfm with 916 we're a member uh District of 916 we benefit from their services that actually goes beyond serving students in a setting for there's other places uh that we benefit and we as a member district OE fiduciary responsibilities so I'm asking you to approve our annual review of the 916 ltfm plan chair would entertain a motion to approve the 916 plan so moved motion by Meisner do I have a second second Jones second by Jones this is a roll call vote uh signify by saying I or nay Miss Anna I Miss Jones I Mr carop is I Mr Meisner I miss Stark I miss Amed I miss sh I motion passes next up we have the consent agenda uh we chair entertain a motion to approve the consent agenda which includes minutes of the work session and business meeting held on June 18th new contracts amendments leaves of absences resignation retirements and the Strategic plan final draft and also the Historical Society lease for the 5year plan 5e period of 2024 to 2029 do I have a motion for the consent agenda so moved motion made by Jones I have a second second second by Anna all those in all those in favor signify by say I all those opposed motion passes then looks like we're just up to the next uh important dates coming up um short list this month fly Community Center I'm sorry the frle community theater will present foot loose on July 19th 20th 25th 26th at 700 p.m. and on July 27th at 2 p.m. at the district Auditorium um we are cancelling the work session and public form scheduled for August this change will allow board members who want to attend the community input session regarding Commons park which is also scheduled for that time however we will still have the 7:30 business meeting here at the Fridley Community Center with that the chair would enter entertain a motion to adjourn so moved motion made by Stark do I have a second second second by Anna all those in favor signified by saying I I all those opposed and we are adjourned at 8:38 thank you everybody