- [Attendee] I would like tocall to order this independent, this work study session ofindependent school district 624. I'd ask the clerk to please call the roll. - Daniels.- Here. - Newmaster.- Here. - Streiff Oji.- Here. - Thompson.- Here. - Arcand. Here. Beloyed.- Here. - All right, we'll get intoour first discussion item, the review of fiscal year'24-'25 preliminary budget. Tim Wald and Andy Johnson. - All right, good evening, everyone. Tonight we have the, we're bringing the preliminarybudget to the school board. We start with looking at the budget cycle, and just a reminder that the process for developing this budgetbegan back in July and October when an independent audit, our annual independentaudit process occurred, and that prepares ourdata for the audit report that occurred in January. And that's the summary of this year. Upon receiving the audit results, we create our mid-year budget adjustments that we bring to the board inJanuary, February each year, and the projected budgetfor the following year. The projected budget is adocument that allows us to, that guides our planningfor the next year. As the legislature goesthrough its process, and as they wind up, then we have much betternumbers that inform our budget, and we bring the preliminarybudget to the school board at the work session in May, and then in June we'll bringit to you as an action item. Like to just put this slideup as a reminder to the board and to the public thatthere's been a long history of underfunding of our public schools. And if you look at this document, it shows the general educationformula allowance over time. And the blue line indicateswhat that funding level would be if the funding levelhad just maintained pace with the rate of inflation since 2003. But that orange line indicates what the funding level has been, and this document does include the current biennium funding. So you can see that reallyover the last several years, we continue to lose significant ground. This is important because thisis the general fund budget that allows us to hire staff, that allows us to pay formaterials and resources that we use to educate our children. So this is something thatevery school district in the state is very painfully aware of, and likely every school board in the state is well aware of. So we just like to remindpeople of that funding and to continue to challenge leaders in the state of Minnesota to fully fund public education. Okay, so let me look atthe projected budget, and Ms. Johnson will walkus through all the numbers. - Good evening. So before our view, wehave the preliminary budget for the upcoming '24-'25 school year. That's the column that's shaded. So those are the numbers thatI'll be focusing on tonight. For next school year,we're looking at revenues of about $142,343,000 andexpenses of $141,544,000. So more revenue than expensesto the tune of about $818,000. So these amounts factorin the budget adjustments that the school boardapproved earlier this spring. That $818,000 then getsrolled into our fund balances, which are laid out down below. So all of our expensesend up going through certain fund balances basedon the nature of the expense. The bulk of our general fund operations flows through that blue line, an ending fund balance unassigned. So for next school year, we're looking at an ending fund balanceof about $11,075,000, which would put us at 8.2%of our total general fund expenses, and that excludes our long-term facility maintenance expenses. The school board policyrequires that we maintain an 8% fund balance, sothat's always our target as we present this toyou as a school board, showing that we're gonna be maintaining that 8% fund balance. We also show a projectionfor next school year, and these are now preliminary. The legislature just wrappedup their work over the weekend, so there's nothing built into that based on what the legislature's approved. And we also know that nextyear will be a budget year, and so there may be some changes in that projection for '25, '26. But currently, based on what we know, we are looking at an ending fund balance for next school year of $11,128,000. It assumes some projectedbudget adjustments of about $1.7 million,but it's pretty early to be sure about those. We'll continue to monitorwhat's going on around the state and make some changes down the road, as we know, next winter. So then we have three other funds that we present to theschool board for approval, the Nutrition Services Fund,the Community Services Fund, and the Debt Service Fund. So the Nutrition Services Fund is all of our lunchroom activities. So all of the meals,the breakfasts, lunches that we serve to our students, I recognize as I look at it, it's very small on the presentation, so apologies for that. As you know, there's been a lot of change at the legislature when itcomes to nutrition services. We had free meals, then we didn't, and now we do again. And so this is showing a projection of about $6.5 million ofrevenue for next school year, and then $6.9 million of expenses. So we're looking at spending down some of that fund balance. We were able to grow our fund balance in the Nutrition Services Fund because the reimbursement rate that we had been receiving from the feds for the COVID reimbursement rate was higher than our expenses, and so we're able to spenddown that fund balance for the next couple of years. They're looking at an ending fund balance in Nutrition Servicesof about 1.9 million, which is 28% of their annual expenses. The Community ServiceFund also had an impact related to COVID,unfortunately the other way. As COVID was rampant, wehad a lot less students and families signing up for activities, but we still had someof those fixed costs. So we're working our wayout of a deficit there in the Community Services Fund, but we do have a plan to get us back up to that target 8% fundbalance in that fund. For next school year, we're looking at just shy of $8.5 million of expenses, and then a revenue and about$8.2 million of expenses. So looking to grow thatfund balance by $234,000 for next year, makingthat about a negative 2.9% fund balance as a percent of expenses. And then the Debt ServiceFund is essentially like where our mortgagepayments flow through. So if you think about your house payments, that's where all of ourbond payments flow through. And that's all drivenby our debt schedule. So the voter-approved debt,we have a set schedule. All of that revenue is tied to those debt payments coming out. So about $30,610,000 ofrevenue for next year, $31 million of expenses. So we're gonna spend on thatfund balance a little bit. That's just set by theDepartment of Education. We'll end up at about $4.5million for next year, or 14.6% of our expenses. So I threw a lot of numbers at you. We'll be bringing thisforward for approval at the June regular board meeting. But if there's any questions,happy to take them. - Open it up for any questions, if anyone has any questions. Okay, I just have one regardingthe nutritional services. - Sure.- And just seeing the difference in therevenues and expenses. Are we expecting that tocontinue looking that way? - No, no. One of the really great things about having that additional fund balance is we're able to tacklesome one-time expenses. So we're able to plan forsome equipment replacements and upgrades, and so no, we're not continuing to project a deficit. You may see a deficit, again,for another year or two, just as we have that high fund balance. But it's not a structuralimbalance, I would say. - Great, thanks. That's it. All right. Anyone else? Okay, we'll move on toour next discussion item, which is Birch Lake Elementary Multi-Tiered Systems of Support Update. Allison Gillespie? Dr. Gillespie, no? Okay. - Oh yeah, we have Julian Stanke, Principal at Birch Lake Elementary. I'll let him and CynthiaMueller introduce Kelly. - All right, good evening, everyone. Members of the board, thank you very much for this opportunity and the time to share with you about our multi-tiered systemsof support at Birch Lake. We're excited to share and learn our learning and growth and collaboration and our hopes for continued growth for our Birch Lake bears. So thanks for this opportunity. I'm Julian Stanke, I'm thePrincipal at Birch Lake, and I'm here with two ofmy wonderful colleagues. - [Kelly] I'm Kelly Pylkas-Bock, Instructional Coach atBirch Lake in Willow Lane. - [Cynthia] And Cynthia Mueller, Principal and Special Assignment District Literacy Specialist. - All right. So what you can see hereis our Birch Lake mission. And one of the corecomponents of our mission is that we want to educateand enrich the whole child as an individual through a vital system. And what we're gonnashare with you tonight is that that vital system is our multi-tiered system of support. So if you're not familiarwith it in a few slides here, we'll get back to thekind of the bigger picture of that scope with Cynthia. But we'll start talking a little bit now about our tactics at Birch Lake. And this was done with the work of our leadership team last summer. And it really is two prongs. So the first prong islooking at a literacy focus, and the second was to focuson access for all students that are coming through our doors. And so, thank you. Here's a quick look at ourdemographics for Birch Lake. So we are a small but mighty school. We're about 225 students. And what's reallyimportant for us at Birch is that about 40% of our students are receiving free and reducedbenefits in our building. That can mean a variety of things coming from a range of food insecurity to housing insecurity, or evena high level of transiency. And that heavily impactshow students learn and how they come readyto learn at school. Another big distinguishing factor that you'll notice on there is that we do have a high MLpopulation for our building. Right now, we're out hoveringaround 17% of our students are receiving ML services. And that does include new to country. So for our building,it's around, right now, just shy of 40 students that are receiving those services as well. Something that's really unique and I think special to Birch as well is that if you come to visit, you'll hear in thehallways or the classrooms a lot of Spanish being spoken. And that speaks a lot to our identity as a building right now and how we're growing andshifting and changing. So like I said, next, Cynthia'sgonna talk a little bit about the MTSS bigger picture. - Yeah, so MTSS stands forMulti-Tiered Systems of Support, which really is a continuousimprovement framework. Minnesota Department of Edencourages school districts to adopt an MTSS approach. Great news for us. We have already been onthat path for quite a while. And MTSS, broadly as a framework,has multiple components, one of them being multi-layeredpractices of support, which really is how arewe responsive to students, ensuring this guarantee for all students, but then that we havemultiple ways to support them for whatever their needs are. So MTSS, prior to MTSS, it was often calledresponse to intervention, which was just a verysmall portion of MTSS, but commonly associatedwith that is the triangle. And so we still view thetriangle as far as understanding that we wanna ensure lowrisk for our students, that whatever we are doing,that we're reducing risk, we're helping them really flourish, and that we have supports inplace for if they're not yet, that we can be responsive to them. So I bring this up, the pyramid,for an important reason, as we look next to our dataand then the approaches Birch has been puttinginto place around this. So our universal core instruction, often our goal is atminimum 80% of our students are successful with just thetier one core instruction. And then we know we alsowill need to be responsive to approximately 20% of students in other ways having additional supports. And as we move through those tiers, it becomes more intensive, more resources, more opportunities for studentsto respond and get feedback. So when we look at ourintervention modeling around academics orsocial emotional learning, we're always looking atthe data in this framework. And then also as ameasure of how effective is our core being. So when we look at the next set of data, what you're going to benotice is the color coding is going to match thetiers of instruction, but the color codingalso goes to risk level. So with that, and similar when I was here with Principal MattMenier from Willow Lane, we looked at the kindergarten data. This evening, we're going to look at, focus on the kindergarten data again for a couple of reasons. One, this is that first entry point into our K-12 system here, as far as elementary moving forward. Thank you. And then the otherpiece is when we look at in terms of literacy, again, we're focused on our literacy data. Our kindergarten teacherswere the first one to complete letters training, and they are fullyimplemented in terms of CKLA. So this is really where we're looking at those leading indicators of success around what we are doing and working on in terms of literacy. We also will have some lagging indicators, one of them being the MCA, and including some of our FastBridge data, screening data in the older students. We are seeing someamazing promising results across the board, but tonight, we're going to focus on kindergarten. So what I have here is theFAST Early Reading Composite. Again, the Early Reading Composite takes into account multiplesubtests in reading that are highly predictiveto future reading success. And so it kind of combines those scores, those subtest scores, so you can see overall as a screener how our student's doing. What we have here are threedifferent sets of data. Wish we had had the spring data in time for this presentation. We're getting really closeand it's really exciting, but we did officially havethe fall and winter data. What I wanna show here though is, so we have the '21, '22 school year, the top left, the '22, '23 top right, and then this school year. And this is specific toBirch Lake Elementary. What we can see is with lots of work, we are still increasingsome risk with students. Now this school year, we are seeing a reduction in the risk, which means our green is increasing, which is the exact directionwe want to be going. And so when we look at data like this, we put some things into place, and then it's also reflecting on what has led to these results so we can continue to replicate that, build on that, multiply that. So this is the broad screener data. Then we have a few of the subtests that Kelly's going to highlight. - Yeah, so the next few slides will give you some informationon three of our subtests that are highly predictiveof later reading success. The first one I'm gonna talkabout is word segmenting, which is the one you cansee on the screen right now. So you've got data fromthe winter on the left, and then on the right you've got data, oh, data from '22-'23 winter, and then next to it you'vegot data from '23-'24 winter. So in winter of '22-'23, we had a significant amount of risk, about 60% of our kids were at risk. If you look at the data from '23-'24, we decreased our risk nearly by half. And what we're starting to see, if you can look at the bar on the right, is that we're starting tolook more like that pyramid, where we have a small slice of our kids who we know will alwayshave, will need lots of help, kids who will need a little extra help, and then the rest of our kids who are responding wellto the core curriculum. So next I'll talk about letter sounds, which is really excitingand highly predictive of future reading success. So as you can see, we've gotthat winter data from '22-'23 next to the winter data from '23-'24, and we were very excitedabout how things had changed with our letter soundsfrom winter to winter. However, I have even more exciting news. I have some preliminary spring data. So right now we're looking at a tier three of our kindergartners at 10%, which is so much more in line. So then we know when we'reservicing those kids, we're really truly servicingthe kids who need it the most. Our tier two is now at 27%, preliminarily, and then 63% in the green, low risk. So that's just, to me, I've never seen datalike this in my career, and it's just beyond exciting. And so the last one is nonsense words, and this is a really important one, because this is where we put some words in front of our kids, three,typically three-letter words that they decode orthey read on their own, and we're looking for howmany can they do in a minute. So they're applying theirletter sound knowledge, and then they're also applyingthat phonemic awareness that we're always looking for. And as you can see, we're looking from winter to winter again, and you can see we diddecrease risk pretty, I mean, we were pretty excited about this. But again, I looked at the spring data, and our tier three, innonsense word decoding, which is highly predictiveof later readability, is down to 3%,preliminarily, preliminarily. Our tier two is at 23%, which is also right inline with that triangle. And then we're looking at a 73% no risk for our tier one kids who areresponding to that curriculum, which again, we've neverseen data like this, so this is very exciting. So I'm gonna pass it to Julian, and he's gonna give you more info about what this approach entails. - So how, right? Like that's the question with this. How does this system best function, and how we found the success? 'Cause it's really exciting. We're just a couple weeks away from sharing this informationwith our teams individually, and we are just solooking forward to this, because it's a lot of hardwork that's gone into this. The first point is through alignment. And through that alignment, we're increasing the cognitive load, but we're ensuring that we'realso using common language and common practices and common resources. So it's not adding morenew different things in these small groups. It's a continuation of what'salready being practiced in the classrooms. All educators at Birch havenow been trained in letters, which is the science of reading training. Myself, and I believe it'sfour of our special educators are left to do year two next year. So I'm wrapping up myyear one with that team which has been a really fun training. And then the last piece is through ourcollaborative data analysis. So what that looks like is that we're doingscreenings three times a year. That's that fall, winter, spring. And then we're doing progress monitoring for our tier two every two weeks. And then for our tier three, we're doing progressmonitoring on a weekly basis. What that allows us to do is respond to individual studentneeds almost immediately based off of consistent sets of data too. - So a little bit more detail than that first point around alignment. So this is something also we've worked on as an entire elementary system is that aligned student experience. Educators have heard thisphrase quite frequently. We want an alignedexperience for students. What we mean by that is what's happening intheir core instruction. How did that language, the methods and approachesthat are evidence-based, how are they also happeningin tier two and tier three? So the student doesn't have to do kind of this code switching between the adults thatmight be working with them. So this is one example of those aligned curriculumexperience expectations that we have provided tobuildings and educators and then done a lot of work around. So in terms of alignment, our scope and sequencearound phonics instruction, what's happening in the core instruction, it's also happening intier two, tier three. So we can use those assessments fluidly. The routines and approachesthat are in our core curriculum, which are really thosemultisensory components when we talk about, especially our students thatare struggling with reading, might be students with dyslexia. They really need thatmultisensory approach and our core curriculum does that. We're pulling those intoour tier two and tier three. So the students have those same strategies no matter what tier they are in. And then also our materials, our core curriculum hasa robust set of materials to give the studentshands-on access to reading. And so we're incorporating those into our tier two and tier three. So students get repetition. They really need that repetition and practice to solidify those skills. And so this has been a key strategy that we are using to align. And then-- - And then I get totalk about some examples and I'm so excited becauseour intervention team at Willow or at Birch Lakehas led the way with this. They have provided a lot of leadership for the rest of the district with this. And so what is represented on the slide is what if I were a first grader, I might walk into myclassroom and see a chart just like that or on the bottom, it's a little hard to see, but it's an individual code chart where kids get to keep track of all the sound spellings they learned. I would see that in my small group and then I would alsosee it in my classroom. So as a child, I am seamlessly flowing in between these tiers and truly not, it's not increasing my cognitive load. I don't have one teachercalling it the bossy R and one teacher calling itthe R-controlled vowel, right? It's the same. And so that reallydecreases cognitive load, which increases cognitive deskspace for our kids to learn. - All right, so as Kelly referenced too, really proud of ourintervention team at Birch Lake. So it's Tammy Reed, JeanLodermeier, and Michelle Gratz. And they have really beenleaders across the district in the collaborationwith our greater system and ensuring that all nine schools are getting to the same spot with this and that we're being consistent. So they were one of thefirst teams on board to be fully using theCKLA assessment tools. And that's a big part of why we're seeing such great success, we believe. And so the three datameetings that we're having after each screening, alot of that is the work of our intervention team. And then alongside with Kellyis our instructional coach. So they're following the data meetings, they're checking in with theteachers every six weeks. They're having individualmeetings as they're needed. And like I said, with the data points of our progress monitoring, that can be as often as truly needed. And then they alsoplayed a significant role in our communities of practices here, being advocates, especiallyaround our progress monitoring, because that is a newpractice for our building and to this degree and specificity. So they've been champions for this work. And then when makingdecisions driven by the data, where the data is not just limited to our literacy components that we've been talking about tonight. We're also talking aboutsome of our social emotional screeners that we're doing as well. And we collaborate and we collaborate not just with the classroom teachers, but our coach, our interventionists, our school psych, our socialworker, student support. And we consider the whole child as we present our interventionsand the plans for that. This also promotes our collective efficacy and our collective responsibilityto each student at Birch. So with that, are there any questions? - Do you guys have dataon the different cohorts, like the second tier and third tier data? 'Cause you've got like21, 22 kindergarten class. Do you have the onward cohort data? - Yes, not on hands here tonight, but yeah, we have inour edu-climber system. We've tracked the cohorts ofstudents throughout the years. - So what's the data looklike year two, year three after implementing? - Yeah, so where we'reseeing our greatest decrease in risk right now arein our primary grades, the ones that have had theletters training the longest. They're still at thosefoundational reading skills. We're definitely seeingsome leading data there that's showing some success. Our older grades, I'mreally anxiously awaiting the spring data to really see, 'cause now this will be a full year of the new curriculum under our belt and seeing how students are doing there. The fall to winter, wesaw a pretty steady pace as we have historically. We didn't see any significantreduction in risk yet. - Ms. Daniels, and then Dr. McMaster. - So this is great. I was gonna ask a similar question because the first few slideswere different cohorts and different groups of kids and it was a pretty aptcomparison kinda the same for your friends groups, butI really liking the sound of all your webinar data. That's very exciting, and I also noticed that multi-lingual program, rather than, we don't say EL anymore. EL is not something we use anymore. - Correct, yep, we've moved to align with the recommendationaround multi-lingual to look at it as an asset-based approach. So still though, federally, they are going to say English Learner. - And then just knowing that you have some setting degreeprograms in the building and the moms are veryfamiliar with that program and seeing that those kids are included, right? And those kids are included sothey're at risk for reducing particularly if you have alarge setting of these programs it's really exciting too. - Can I respond? Yeah, and I think just thinkingabout this cohort of kids as they matriculate up, there's no better time to reduce risk. There's no more cost-effective, more human resource-effectivetime to reduce that risk than from the get-going kindergarten. And so that's the exciting piece of this is we have really narrowed it down. And so those small percentagesof kids who need help, they're the right kids. And we can have more resources because there are fewerof them who are landing in that at-risk category. So it's just really, like I said, I've never seen data like this. - Any other questions? - I had a couple of similar questions. It obviously looks good and I've been following this development. And I wondered, because I was looking atthe bar graphs and things, everyone looks like there'sa lot of improvement, but you really can't tellwhere a certain group, like if it's free and reduced lunch, how do those kids compare to, are the same kids improving alot and everybody else some? Are you gonna have the data to know where the at-risk kids plot? - So we have that data, but I would just, I can speak anecdotally because we will look atthat data once this spring, once we're all done, we've got it all collected and together. But just preliminary or anecdotally, what I see, especially at Birch, because we have so manystudents who are coming in and they may know how toread in their home language, they may not. And so I see them coming in though and whether they're fluent intheir home language or not, they are decreasing their risk. I can't give you specificson that right now, but that's anecdotally what I'm seeing. We've got kids who can readin Spanish and English. - Well, when you look at, for example, just looking at, we don't have all the data for this year, but you have it for last year. I guess I'm just wondering, 'cause we always put things in and the kids who do well, do well and better. And the kids that are struggling, I mean, how do you know inyour data somehow it shows? - Yeah, we can disaggregate and we do disaggregatewhen doing data analysis by different demographic groups and looking at, yeah, who are we reducing the risk for? Who are we not yet? Those are all part of like when they talked about their data meetings that they have in theirbuildings throughout the year, they do those. We also, every summer wehave kind of a data retreat. And we have all of thatpreliminary data too to just, as we said, building wide goals around instruction and improvements for students. We have all of that data disaggregated. - Okay. - Yeah, we have it.- I'm just wondering how specific, and the other thing, when I was looking at the demographics, you know, the numbers don't add up because people pick more thanone category, I'm assuming. - Yeah, demographic data-wise, yes. There could be an overlap around. - And then I'm just gonnaask my other question is you've talked aboutcollaboration with everyone. And I realize that you don't have much of licensed media specialists, but you do have a little bitmore than the previous year. And they're an important part of literacy. So how is that collaboratingto nurture kids and broaden the cultural experiences in reading and all kinds of media? - I can speak to that. So we collaborate with, Molly Lee is our specialist. We collaborate with heras much as possible. This year, she's been spread across several different buildings. And so making it to our datameetings was very challenging. However, next year, we have more media specialisttime than we've had. And so that could be an integral part of our data analysis team, for sure. - And our media specialistsare also participating in the letters learningand the letters training. Both Molly and Emily havebeen doing that training. We've really relied on them too as we've implemented the new curriculum and looking at opportunitiesto bring in additional texts. They are an amazing resource, wealth of knowledge andhighly collaborative with their classroom teachers. - Good, I'm hoping the state will continue to provide more funding. - Yes.- Yes. - This sounds really good. HRCH has always been itsown special little pocket. - Dr. Irking? - I'd really like to see the numbers and see how they're growing, but I also wanna point out, letters is a great training, but it's the boots on the ground. It's the teachers and the teachers that have chosen to continueto push and move forward. So we have to rememberthat this doesn't happen without their hard work and dedication. We know there was weekends,we know there's nights, they know they've been doing things and that we would appreciate that. The other thing I really like to know here is the excitement that we're celebrating even the smallest successesas we move forward. That's helpful becauseevery little success builds to a bigger one. And so that's exciting. And the biggest thing I look forward is we share this across the district because if we're having success and somebody else is not by sharing that, then maybe they can. And so we can all move forward together, but it's exciting to see, but I wanna make sure we understand that the teachers are the onesthat are making this work. - Can I respond to that? 'Cause that is my favorite part of my job. Especially with our kindergarten teachers, I've been an instructionalcoach for three years and we have tried everythingto move the needle. And we celebrated all those, when we were so excited last year when we moved our word segmenting and our decodable words just a little bit. We wouldn't have imagined. We've got the training,but now we have a tool. And we know how importantthose two things are. So we saw the training impact last year, but now the best part is our teachers are finally feeling good about data because for a long time, data was really hard to look at. And they're feeling good about, my kindergarten teachers are so, I mean, my favorite team right now 'cause they're so energizing. They're so excited. And I cannot wait for that to matriculate to our upper grade teachers. They're just filled with hope right now. - Yeah, I appreciate thatacknowledgement, Dr. Arcand. Letters is, it's the gold standard and it is intensive and does require a lot out of the educators. And our educators have reallyrolled up their sleeves and dug into this andthey're making it happen. - Anyone else? - Can I say two things? - Yeah. - I just wanna say to build on that, I think in White Bear, one of our greatest strengthsis that we're really humble. And so we should acknowledgethat we are a leader across the metro area andour educators and principals, we are letters, not everyonewill get to do that. And that is the gold standard. And so people leaning into thatin a really difficult time. And so this data I'm reallyproud of and very thankful. And then the fact that we're implementing a brand new curriculum K-5 right now, isn't an easy lift, it's huge, but it's really having impact on our kids. And so we don't often sing that story 'cause we just kind of put ourheads down and do the work. And so I just wanna say that. The other part is, isour elementary principals and all of our principals will be coming to work study sessions starting next year. And we wanna celebrate that. And Julian was so awesometo be the first person to do it in May. So I just wanna say thank youto Julian, Kelly and Cynthia, 'cause right now, as we know, it's a really, really busy time. - Thank you. I just have some comments. The preliminary data is likejust cheering all over inside and the thought of the children, right? Because for them, theexcitement of learning is so rewarding and to see it happening and to see it so quickly happening. I mean, I know that it'snot so quick, but it is. I mean, like for you to saywhat the preliminary data is already for this, I mean,that's really exciting stuff. And to have our multilingual learners, I feel in kindergarten going home and bringing that into the home and who knows who they're helping learn how to read English, right? Who might not know how to, because they are learningit and retaining it. That is really exciting. And so I'm also just sothankful, as Dr. Arcand said, that, I mean, this is a lot of hard work and it is a humble school district, but nothing good comes from easy, right? We have to work hard inorder to make great things like this happen. So thank you so much, 'causeit's really wonderful. And these are the fun work studies that we get to have withsome of this good stuff. I would also like to seethe data more broken down by our tiers and our studentsand the demographics, just to kind of see where, you know, just to see the overall,'cause I see it here and it is affecting those students that have struggled probablya little more than others. And so to see it happening in actual data would be nice also. So if we could get that, that'd be great. But thank you so much for your time. - I thought of one more piece of, and you maybe mentioned it briefly, and we've talked aboutall of the folks in school and the kids and supports. How is it going over with parents? And I remember our parentswho were so concerned about their students with dyslexia and the programs we were using. I mean, how has thatbeen merging together? - Quite nicely. (laughs) - 'Cause they were just passionate. - Yeah, yeah. And I had spent some timeearly on in my career here in White Bear Lake with them and just watching theevolution of our relationship and real to a partnership now. And their desire to say, our goal actually is that we're not having to meet with you guys. And we're honestly kind of at that point as much as I absolutelyenjoyed meeting with them. They're delightful. We are, I think because ofmany of this kind of standard that we took as far as the gold standard of letters training, really ensuring all of our educators are the most knowledgeable around this. We've just really taken a focused effort and I think they're seeing that. And I know when we were here earlier with Principal Menier,he had talked about, he had been at a conference and there were some familiesof dyslexia advocates and saying, oh, we'retalking about White Bear. So I know the word is out there and the relationshipis a really solid one. - That's good. I remember they had a particular plan that they were hopeful for. And I'm wondering howletters is working in, probably looking at a similar. - Yeah, I think what's also exciting, when you look at the read act legislation and all the requirements there and how we could lookdown that list and go, we are already well on our way with all of those requirements. And we know how much they were lobbying and advocating for that. And we were already on that path. - I would add our teachersare much more confident also in teaching students with any kind of reading struggle. We just know more and we know how to approach students who are struggling farbetter than we have. There's always room to grow and learn, but far better than we ever did. - That's great. - To say yes, we hopethat the colleges adopts your teachers policy. That's so bad (speaks faintly) and the training, not thatwe don't wanna continue providing that trainingand those good workshops and all those things for our teachers, but we know too that college programs need to also participate. And I think they're hearing that. - They are.- Yeah - Well, thank you so much. It's great news. And I think part ofthe overall helping too is that everyone's aligned, right? So everyone has the same thing to look at and go, this is how we're gonna do it instead of, well, here it is. I'm gonna do it this way and I'm gonna do it that way and everyone. So I think that reallymakes a big difference and that's a piece of it too. Hopefully that is helping everyone to be able to lean on each other. So that's a good piece of it. So thank you again somuch for coming tonight. - Thank you.- Thank you. - All right, with that I willask for a motion to adjourn. - Chair Thomson, I movefor an adjournment. - Second.- Second by Ms. Daniels. All in favor? - Aye.- Aye. All opposed? We are adjourned.(gavel bangs)