(gavel banging) - I'd like to call to orderthis work study meeting of the school board of Independent 64. I would ask the clerkto please call the role. - Arcand.- Here. - Daniels.- Here. - Ellison.- Here. - Newmaster.- Here. - Thank you. We will move into our first discussion, Item B1, Central Middle School Update. Dr. Gillespie and Ms. Peterson. - Chair Ellison and members of the board, I'd like to introduce Cathryn Peterson, who's walking up for us. She's the principal ofCentral Middle School and will be sharing an updatearound Central with us. - Should I sit here? All right, Chair Ellison and the board, first I just wanna thank youfor giving me the opportunity to be here and to share with you a little bit aboutwhat's happening at Central. So I told my staff I have theopportunity to show up today and just brag about what we're doing. And it's really what they're doing. I'm just a small part of it and there's a whole lot of people around me working incredibly hard. I wanna just call out that I have Odelis GarciaAnderson here with me. She is our instructional coach and has been really pivotal in doing this. And together we kind of made the decision. I said I'm gonna defer to herperhaps for some questions, but she's out in the trenchesreally doing the work and so I took a lot of feedback and put together the presentation. Didn't wanna put her on the spot but I need you to know she's the backbone behind a lot of this. So Central Middle School,this is our mission. And I am really proud of this mission and I'm proud of this mission because it centers students,it centers culture, it centers climate and it centers their experience while also calling out thefact that they are scholars and that at the end ofthe day we are really here for their academic achievementand how they enter the world as human beings. We have used this missionreally to help us come together as a team and toprioritize what's important and how are we gonnawork together to do this. One of the things I am reallyproud of this year is that we, I feel like for the first time, have all of the adults in thebuilding on the same page. And it turns out when all theadults in the building are on the same page, giving kids clear and consistent messages thatare focused on how they are as people and what we expectthem to be able to learn, we create really greatconditions for middle schoolers. And so I chose to really call out two of the things that we've been focused on. One is our academic achievement and then we're gonna talk a little bit about the curriculum and instruction. Wanted just to call out some of the things around our academic goals and focus, 'cause at the end of the day,that's what we're here for. As a parent, I wanna knowI send my kids to school and that they're gonna leaveknowing a little bit more than they started with and that every singlechild is moving forward. And what we realized lastyear when we started digging into our data is that our grades are also pretty good predictors of how kids are performing on some of our standardized tests. And so as a school, we seta grade to say that 80% of our students will be proficient or better in all middleschool classes as measured by earning course grades of A or B. We've talked about howyou can cook the books, you can inflate grades, and at the end of the day wehave multiple measures of data to show us how kids are doing. And so at the end of the day, we still want these otherpieces of data, our fast data, our MCA data, to also continue to reflect this improvement. We noticed that we had about60 some percent proficient on the MCA and about 60% of our kids that were consistentlyearning all A's and B's. So there's something that's happening, our courses are aligned. Now somebody could go in anddo a full statistical analysis and it probably would bea little bit different, but we're like, something is happening. So how do we keep really working together to raise that course rigorto engage our students and to figure out why some kidsare being really successful and some are still struggling. Some of the strategies that we are using, we're essentially trying to take, and I keep saying we wannabraid everything together and so we wanna create theconditions for students and teachers to be successful. We're really leaning on ourBARR framework, which is a space where teachers are able to come together to really talk about kidsbeing strengths focused to be able to collaborate. And our CITs meet once a week, and that's a space for ourteachers to come together to talk about instruction, what they're doing instructionally and how that's impacting students. We had our CITs also set a SMARTIE goal. So each group is saying, Here's what we want to do. Math seven, this is wherewe think we can impact. Language Arts, here's wherewe can impact, visual arts. We've really pushed on the new teacherevaluation tool, the 5D+, in regards to looking at the rubrics and just saying, this iswhat good learning is. We don't have to debate it but we can really use it tohelp to guide our practice and to help have some ofthose tough conversations. And then we've worked hard tohave PD sessions aligned to what teachers are saying that they need and feedback that we're getting from them. Odelis helped to facilitateacademics happenings calendar that is being sent outto each of our families and so that they're able to see that and to be able to see a snapshot of like, oh here's what's happeningin seventh grade. 'Cause as much as we can haveall the different classrooms and spaces, when wejust have a landing spot that gives a big picture overview, it's really helped on the communication. Prioritizing some academicdays during our bare time with both including targeted intervention for both reading and math. And we have placed an emphasison student recognition and celebrating students fortheir academic achievements, calling out those things and making them visible for students. These are just some examplesof some of the SMARTIE goals that our CIT set. So anything from 80% ofstudents being proficient or better in US history to some of the courses reallylooking at the kids' progress on our FAST assessments and really looking at how many kids are in the college pathways, how many kids are excellingand digging into that data. We have science identifiedthat it was discrepant, our BIPOC students were underachieving on the standards in comparison to where our white students were. And so really attending to and saying, "Gosh, what ishappening for our students? How do we support them?" To our art department saying, "Gosh, we have some of our malestudents just aren't performing at the same level. They're disengaged and how do we help them toactually make connections and make our course content relevant?" And so teachers really dug intosay, who's being successful and who can I really thinkabout to support differently? Just a snapshot. We took a lot of baseline data. Consistently, our sixth graders come in and we've had a little bitof a downward trajectory, which is not the way that wewant it to be in middle school. We want them to either be like even or to be increasing so that when we send themacross the football field, they're really, really ready to excel. Our sixth graders, wehave a lot to build on. I've been talking toour seventh grade team 'cause I'm like, there'ssomething magical happening in seventh grade at Central. Any of you have anopportunity to come over, come visit our seventh grade teachers and just trying to get into the psyche of what's been happening. They have had some pretty good chunks of growth in the last couple of years. And then we're still tryingto figure out what's happening for our eighth gradersand why they don't appear to be as engaged as the other two grades. I will stand behind the teachers that we have the right peopleon the team in the right seats and they're willing to reallydig in to what's happening and they feel like thebraiding of what we're doing and narrowing that focusis allowing departments to have different conversations and they're really beingvulnerable with each other. This reading data, and thenour fall math data, is similar. I think it also shows thatour kids are coming in with skills and that theyhave a lot of talents and strengths that we can build upon. We've done a lot with celebrations and so we're celebratingstudents of the quarter. Teachers nominate students who have excelled in their content area or who have shown a lot ofgrowth in their content area. Teachers also have anopportunity to write notes of gratitude for students and that is exactly what it sounds like. A note just to say thank youfor doing something different or something that madea difference in my day, made a difference inour classroom community and we celebrate those students. We actually brought all of thekids down to the auditorium, had their names up and wedid it as a grade level because what we wannastart to do is really just to normalize for everybodythat we're celebrating. And we talked with thekids that, you know, by the end of the year we'd love that everybody be recognized in some way and we wanna celebrate that. We also have our first quarter honor roll that I'm really proud of. As I've been in classes, my goal has been to be in a minimum of four classrooms every single day. I think I've only had two or three days when I've been in the building that I haven't made it to four. It has also been thesame for my AP, Mr. Van, and my dean, Mr. Davis, minimum of four. And so 12 a day times fiveis 60 classrooms a week. At this point when we walk in,the kids don't even flinch. They just talk to us aboutwhat they're learning and allow us to participate. And so I'm really proudof the academic success that we've seen so far this year. None of that would be possible without the work of our teachers. And the Central teachers arean amazing group of people who are experts in their area and what I know them to be is people who really value learning and growing. Super excited about thecurriculum review cycles in the four core areas. That has allowed us alsotime to really connect with teachers at Mariner and for teachers to reallydig into their practice. Again, it's that braidingand streamlining of the work. I just believe that wehave to continue to say what are the conditions thatwe are creating for teachers to be able to collaborate,for teachers to be able to really have time totalk about instruction, for them to get to know their students. And I believe thatthese four bullet points provide a lot of that for them. The MTSS minute is my weeklyupdate that I send out. It's shared out every Sunday at five with no expectation thatthey may read it at five, but I also know some people need it in order to start their week. And it is really framed on, these are school-wide expectations, here's family engagement opportunities, here's academic support, hereare things that we are doing to support non exclusionary discipline, just to keep our systemsoperating clearly together. And then we also restructured our buildingleadership team this year and that has been a game changer. So it's our administrativeteam, our student support team, which is our counselors, social workers, instructional coach, MTSS BARR coordinator and our six professional learning leaders. And the focus has really beenon instructional leadership and systems design,focusing on our site plan and the data, and really working on how are we togetherbuilding our leadership and instructional capacity to be able to support our colleagues. And then gathering a lot of feedback. I've actually been doinglearning walks with each of those professional learning leaders so that they're in the classrooms. And we follow the exact sameprocess that, basically, that Odelis does or thatany of the administrators. So we've gone in, done some scripting and then talked about likewhat are things we observed? What are strengths that we see? what are wonderings that we have? And then my question tothem is how do we continue to build this capacity? 'Cause I'll tell you what, I'd be a way better teachernow than I was and that's because I've had an opportunity to observe so many different people. So we keep trying to say howdo we make the learning visible so that we can wonder together and we can learn from each other. One of the teachers said to me today, what I realized was there'sso many different ways that you can call kids back in to reengage and things that I hadn't even thought of. Just having been in spaces, and kids are still a lot more alike whether they're in a language arts space. We went to a language arts space and to a social studies space'cause she was a math teacher. So they present in very similar ways, but we have a lot tolearn from each other. And then they've also been really working on leading professionaldevelopment as well. Some of our areas of focus, we're really focused onformative assessment. Teachers then also chosean area of their own. Interestingly, a lot of the teachers picked student ownership of learning and then student self-assessment. So they're really being reflective on how do I get morestudent voice in the room and how do we get middle schoolers to actually create habits, talk about learning rather than grades, so that when they get to thehigh school they're prepared and they have some habits to build on. We've been leaning a lot on the standards-based learning framework focused on evidence-based practice and then talking a lot aboutthe language of learning. I shared with my staff when I've been doing visits to classrooms, I can say to a kid, "What are you doing?" And they say, "Well I'm doing this." "Why are you doing it?" "Because my teacher told me to." True. That's what seventh graders do. Or I can say what are you learning? And then they start to talkto me about their learning and I'm like well tell me more. And it's a whole different conversation. And so we've been talkingabout the importance of that. The one thing that I'venoticed is over the last month when I've been in class, I have yet to hear kids ask about points. Now do they still do that? Of course. Do they ask if it's gonnabe graded? Of course. But for the most part,it has shifted in class where kids are actually talking way more about what's happening. I've noticed an increase in voice. That was a tough comeback from COVID when we were so far apart, and to get kids back intowhat are those structures, and how do we talk? And there's been anincrease in student voice. And then we've been really working on how do we make the learning visible. It's hard in November to know like are weactually making progress? And so we've been reallytaking time to try to say like what has been working? How do we pause and saythis is a difference? And that's one of the things,just being in classrooms where I just try to stop back in and say to a teacher,"Hey, I noticed this," or "Here was a strength," 'cause we want people to keep doing that and they want them to know like we notice the work that you're doing. The other thing that we didis we've really been focusing then if we have all ofthe student experience, what can our families tell us? And we started with afamily engagement tool and trying to get some feedback and we weren't getting supergreat feedback that was clear. And I just thought, you know what? I'm gonna ask my families three questions 'cause really what's most important? And I just ask them, tell us something that we're doing well. Tell us something we need to improve on. And then give any staff membera shout out if you want to. And it was affirming 'causethe things that they said that we were doing well were the things that we really set a goalfor for first quarter, about clear communication,personal attention, you see my student as an individual, my middle schoolers cominghome happy after school. There's help with academics,organization, problem solving, teaching through sortof those tween years. Things we need to improve on. We need to do better atcommunicating about grading and understanding middle school grades, support for accessing andunderstanding parent view in Google classroom, moreoptions for middle schoolers with activities and athletics. And then just continuing to streamline and reinforce districtlevel communication. So my plan is to be able totake this piece of information and inform some of myupcoming newsletters. So we're really working onhow do we really break down what do grades mean because we are talking aboutthem differently for families. And then what makes us happy and proud? I'm gonna show you the graphic at the end, but educators thriving, survey, data, we took and said this wasthe state of our staff? How do we move forward? And we've made significantgains as a staff to be able to come together and how dowe want to work together. And that's resulted in more collaboration. It's resulted in deeper conversations. It's resulted in staff vulnerability and people being able toshare with each other, like this is hard. It's been clear andconsistent expectations, calm and engaged climate. I appreciate Lisa said, "I walked by and was like gosh are they in session?" I was like, "We are." But I feel really greatabout about the building and how it feels. It's resulted in students speaking up. You know, I used to hearthe narrative of like, I don't wanna say anything'cause then you're snitching. And I've always said tokids, we can say that or you can say I wanna speak up 'cause I don't wanna be in aplace where this is happening 'cause this is your school. And we have more andmore kids coming forward if there's something that's wrong. Speaking up if they seesomething that's happening to somebody else, saying I'mcoming to you 'cause I saw this and I don't want this to happen. And I'm really proud ofour middle schoolers. That's not easy for adults to do. And I don't know if my 12-year-oldself could have done it. So I feel like we arereally living our mission and a huge piece of that. I don't have a mouse. You have a mouse, can you just open that for me Marissa? - Maybe.- Maybe. Well if it's not gonnacooperate I can summarize and when you have a chance. My counselors are perhapsthe most amazing team of people that I work with. By the end of October, theyhad done one-on-one meetings with every single sixth grader. And at the beginning of November, they had started their one-on-one meetings with the seventh graders. They've been doing classroom lessons, so they've already completedone round of classroom lessons. They have over 850 someother individual meetings as well as they havestarted small group work. And then they're also gathering data. They did a survey at thebeginning of the year and that was some of our student data. So just looking at whatthey've been able to achieve, they've already had 852 appointments, 301 sixth grade meetings, 39hours of classroom lessons. And we went from a 27%increase on our eighth graders in their understanding ofwhat a high school GPA is. And so they have been a modelfor the rest of our staff on how we use data and howdo we really streamline and do what we know to be best. That's what we got. - [Ms. Ellison] Alright,thank you so much. Any questions for Ms.Peterson? Ms. Daniels - Kind of more of a comment, I just really appreciate that. Talking about grading strategies, we used to talk a lotabout grading funding and things like that more, but I love hearing aboutgrading strategy in curriculum and subject areas and really collaboratingand working together. But I appreciate that and I also appreciatethat your support team and counseling teamprovided the school board at the beginning of theschool year just lots of information too and they keep communicating with us and so that's really appreciated a lot. And just one comment, I know sometimes we havecommunity members that you know, listen to our taped meetingsor our video meetings and I just wanted you to tell us what CIT stands for and BARR. - Absolutely, thank you. - If you speak to that, wemight be familiar with it but some of our community. - I appreciate that. CIT stands forcollaborative inquiry teams. So it's an opportunity, forexample, our US history teachers to all be able to meetand talk about instruction and what's happening and whatare we seeing that's working and what might we need to improve on, where might we add moreenrichment, things like that. BARR is building assetsand reducing risks. I will steal the words ofJoe Held who describes it as, it's a great way to organize adults in how we talk about kids, but it really does give us asystematic response to be able to say, gosh, we're gonna meet as an interdisciplinary team talk about how are kids doing, right? How are the children? What are their strengths? What levels of concern do we have? And how can we respond in a systematic way so that we're not playing whack-a-mole. - Thank you. Dr. Arcand. - I like what I'm hearing that you're doing instructional rounds of teachers when they'regoing in different classrooms because it allows you to see something in a different curriculum but also allows thebuild and to get together and create that teamwork so it can bring yourstaff closer together. And then when I have a question, I can ask that math teacher, Hey how did you do this? Or how would you do it? So it's a great way tocontinue to build your staff and work together. And then so y'all understandthese are our students. They're not math students,social studies students. They're all our students, whether I have my class or not. So that is really exciting tohear that you're doing that. - Thank you. - Alright, thank you Ms. Peterson. Thank you. We'll move into our next discussion, Item B2 North Star Elementary Update. Dr. Gillespie and Mr. Schmidt and team. - Chair, also members of theboard, as Principal Schmidt and this team are here. I wanna introduce Dan Schmidt, principal of North Star Elementary and he will introduce his dynamic team. - Thank you Dr. Gillespie. Appreciate the invitation. Also Chair Ellison, thank you very much and school board members for us to share a piece of North Star with you. I'm very excited about that. With me today is Julie Nelson. She is our instructional coach and Trevor Putnam isour school psychologist and obviously as introduced, I'm the principal ofNorth Star, Dan Schmidt. As we move forward, we really want to celebrate four things with you today. One is just a quickoverview of North Star. The other is just howwe established a climate and culture within our school setting. How about that instructional framework and how it's all comingtogether as well as our goals. And as you can see withthe slide, we're excited that this is a K-5 neighborhood school as all the elementaryschools in our district are. That gives you some longitudinalexperiences with kids. From when they enter, allthe way through fifth grade, you can really sustain some change and establish change within that. We are in our thirdyear opening this school and we're really excitedabout the enrollment that's happening at North Star. It's probably the ideal size when you're opening up a brand new school. And we're also excited about welcoming ourdiverse student population that we have in place. And another aspect of our school that we're really proud of is the students that have an IEP at our school. We have two cluster based programs that are considered setting three. They predominantly focuson the autism program and it's established sothat we can support kids at a deeper level withinour school setting. And that way we can reallycelebrate the successes that we have with thembut also hold onto them for their period of time at North Star all the way through fifth grade. So we've been really proud of that and for the resources thathave been provided for us. The other thing that's increasing in our school is our multilingual support for students at North Star. And I also want to thank thedistrict for supporting us with those resources. Even now at that percentage, that's continuing to increase this year. Just a quick glimpseof North Star overall, this design establishes ahighly collaborative environment in which all teachers haveto really work together in a partnership, probably that theyhaven't experienced before in a traditional setting. Now teachers are alwaysengaged in giving it their best within the classroom setting. But this is more of a studio environment in which you have clustersof classrooms together. So you have a team ofteachers working not only with their home-based students but with the entire studio of students. The specialists thatare within our school, I've been super impressed with because in all four ofthose areas, which is art, Spanish, music and phys ed, they have taken the time tofind time within their day to create an adaptive curriculum that focuses on those students that could really use somespecialized instruction versus just being withinthe mainstream classroom. That was all on the specialist themselves. And so we have that fluidenvironment within the studio but we also extend that beyondthe walls of the studio. The unique space hasreally been a challenge for us to embrace. We have asked the staffto try to think of ways to test the boundaries of our school and we've done thatover the last two years and it's been fun to celebrate that and also to work through the design and how we can really go further with what has been providedto us by the community. The multi-age piece is something that we didn't realize would be as helpful and as exciting as it was when we started. We have, out of the sixstudios, four of 'em that are multi-age, wehave grades one and two and then three and four. The looping that happens asthey move from one to two and three to four hasreally created a community and some modeling that has happened. And it also allows us to kind of start the instruction alot sooner in the school year than we typically hadexperienced in the past. Because of that we had totry some different things with family conferences andwe started that this year and we've been gettingsome positive feedback from the parents saying thank you for trying to create a structure that allows us to have touchpoints with different teachers within the studio. Now, that was kind of a big deal, that was feedback that we received. And also I wanna thankthe support of the school, excuse me, the schooldistrict and our PTA as well as the media specialists because they provided different thingsfor our student population that normally takes years to establish, but it all came together rather quickly. Now Trevor's gonna talk aboutthese other three aspects of our school culture and climate because when you start a new school, you have to start from scratch. It's kind of exciting. - Alright, thanks Dan.Good evening everyone. So these are the three areasthat I'm gonna focus on that have built our schoolculture and climate. Conscious discipline, which I'll briefly cover what that is. Our STAR commitments and then some extrasupplements, curriculum and sensory spacesbuilt within North Star. So here's consciousdisciplines definition. So it's adult first,it's transformational. So adult first, meaning we talk with adults about self-regulationand recognizing emotions and recognizing triggersand recognizing language. And I'll speak more to that. And it's integrated withsocial and emotional learning, equitable and positive culture,theory and application. So it's rooted inneuropsychology and development and it's research based. And the Collaborative for Academic Social and Emotional Learning, it's a collaborative outof Chicago that focuses on what is the best socialand emotional practices and curriculum and skills thatwe can be doing in schools. It is certified, consciousdiscipline certified by them. So quick overview, consciousdiscipline is aligned with the positive student behavior, the four areas in the district. So that we want all students, and I extend that to my colleagues as well and myself that we want tofeel safe, valued, connected and engaged when we walk into the doors. It builds self-awareness and regulation in adults,as I touched on that first. And that's really tough work and that's a journey thatis individual, right? Much like your our equity journey, this journey isindividualized for each adult. We are shifting our language. So what that means iswe've been conditioned over generations to usecertain language with children and it was more formed on compliance and sometimes even coercion. But we're shifting to languageof noticing without judging. So the one example that Igive for this is instead of saying "Thank you forpushing in your chair," because it's about the adult, we say "You pushed in yourchair, that was helpful so we can keep the spacesafe and organized." So that's just a quick anecdotal example. So we're working onthat. It's a tough skill. So then we're teaching that assertive language with students. So the skills that we are learning, we are teaching with students. So when a kiddo says, "Johnny hit me." And then we ask, excuse me, we ask the child, did you like it? And they kind of get caught off guard as if they haven't heard that before. It's like, "Well of course I didn't." But the kid says no and I then we say, "Tell them you didn't like it. Next time can you tell me with your words that you wanted the ballinstead of hitting me?" So we're really just gettingto the assertive voice instead of passive or aggressive. The last piece that's big in conscious disciplineis the brain smart STARs. So that is a four step sequence that some of us in this room mayhave experienced before, but it starts with theconnection activity. You're connecting withyour physical touch, with your eye contact, you're doing something kind of playful. And then you are unitingtogether as a community. You're doing breathing strategies and then you're doing a commitment. Conscious disciplineis big on commitments, so I will commit to keepingour school family safe. I will commit to doing mybest with being engaged. So speaking of commitments, our leadership team got together the year before North Star opened. And one of many tasks was tolet's come up with our values, let's come up with our commitments. So we went with a STARacronym, which was nice. So we went around andtalked about different words and these were the four we landed on. So that's safe, truthful,assertive and responsible. And there's a lot of alignment there with conscious discipline as well and the philosophies that theleadership team was building. And this was critical because it was educators coming from different perspectives, different buildings, differentcultures of buildings, different values and what theythink a school should be like and what the values should be in a school. So we really had to workthrough that together. And then as Dan mentioned, just to have that K-5building all coming together with the community in mind. So this is our curriculum, supplements and sensory spaces. Kind of a lot lumped into one, but we wanted to make surewe captured the extra things that we're doing at North Star. So second step, that's not extra, but that's our social andemotional learning curriculum and that's in that core instruction. Typically it's about a one lesson a week and really that'sfocused on social skills, regulation practices,building relationships. So it's a great core curriculumthat all students receive. The tier one lesson, so tier one just means all kids get it in a multi-tiered systems of support. So myself, and a special education teacher and social worker, we push in. So we walk into theclassrooms or the studio and we do about a 40 minutelesson with the kiddos and we encourage theteachers to be engaged. And we talk about self-regulation,we talk about sensations of our body when we'refeeling certain sensations of feelings, recognizingand naming those feelings, lowering the stigma about, you know, maybe feeling sad or angry. Those are things that all humans have. And then we integrate thatwith zones of regulation, which is another curriculum. And typically that's for small groups, but we've adapted it so thatthe whole school can have that language. And that just breaks different emotions into four color categories and then strategies that align with those. So it's a nice curriculumthat we can use with all of our staff and kids. The last thing that I'll talk about and on the next slide I will again, is sensory spaces for all students. So within each studiothere's a sensory space and those are those eightsenses that I mentioned that are address in the sensory spaces. So this was in collaboration with our occupational therapist,myself, special ed teacher, and so it's in research. This is a system 'cause of we wanted to makesure that it was systematic and walking through foursteps of self-regulation. And this is more focused on what the body needs to kind of cool off or if they're maybefeeling a little fidgety or something like that. So in our kindergartenthrough second grade, the first is movement and the visuals that you see there, that's through conscious discipline. It's a tool that you stompyour feet, you push the wall. The third thing is a bungeecord, you can do bungees. And then you start doingsome more focused things. So it's counting stars, moving them down, tracing that rainbow. So now you're get starting to get that tactile sensory input. Then step two is just that, it's a calming sensory, more of a choice. So it's about three minutes. They might have sensorytools for your eyes. So that's like the cool, likedifferent colors of water that you like tip up and down and look at. Kinetic sand, so it's justkind of fun feeling sand, maybe kids like to color. So it's just those very simple activities that they flip a sand timerthen go ahead and do that. The next part is you do stretches and we have different visuals and you're taking throughdeep breaths with the kids. And then lastly it's focused breathing. We have those Hoberman spheres. We have like flowers and a little pinwheel that you smell theflower, blow the pinwheel. So this is part of ourlesson that we walk through with all kids and all teachersand we guide them through it. And then I'll just mention upstairs, we have a little bit different, third and fifth grade, it'sa little bit different tools, more catered to third and fifth graders. - Thanks. Now Julie will talk aboutthe instructional framework. - Alright, good evening. Prior to starting our school, we were beginning to createour instructional framework. There were nine elementaryschools represented in the staffing of our school. So while we were gettingto know each other, we were also really intentional about creating highly effective teams. You've heard about ourcollaborative spaces. So we knew the spaces, we really wanted to focuson working agreements, creating team habits and conflict norms. What are we going to do if we don't agree? We also worked with Dr. Dylan and those are the two bookson top to really learn how to use these new spaces and co-create them so they were effective for instruction with students. The picture on the bottom isan example of a work studio. It's kind of hard to see, but around the perimeter eachteacher has their own desk where they keep theirbelongings, their computer. And within the center of thestudio there's a screen as well as a center island. This was a an intentional space creation so that there is informaland formal collaboration and conversationhappening all of the time. So you can actually see there'sa data meeting right there. We also had Sara Florin fromour tech deport department who helped us with the newtechnology in our space so that we were ready toincorporate it with students. We needed to understandwhat the technology was so that students could access it easily. We are really proud ofour studio data meetings. It is part of our multi-tieredsystems of support. So Trevor talked about accessfor all of the tier one. This is really lookingat once kids have access to the core curriculum, what do we do if they're not learning and growing like we want them to do? The big shift for us is atour studio data meetings, we now have representation from all of the adults that work with kids. So you can see the list there. In the past, perhaps we've justhad the classroom teachers, we now have everyoneinvolved in educating kids to have a conversation around data and what's best moving forward. In our first year we reallyjust did data dialogue with data meetings around literacy. This year we've allalready had a data meeting around literacy, math, and new, I think, to thedistrict is the data meeting around social emotional learning and how are we collaborating and making changes to help our students? And then this is evidence that our collaboration is successful. The graph on the left is acurrent third grade student who's in an intervention. Each of the dots is a datapoint that's gathered over time and you can see by the line going up that this student is showing great growth in the instruction that's happening. The chart on the rightis from last school year with our kindergarten studio,and that's all students. You can see, or it's kind of fuzzy to see, but in the fall, 66% of ourstudents were at low risk. By the time we got to spring, 83% of our kindergartenstudents were at low risk. We attribute this to two things, one being our CKLA literacyimplementation year one as well as our strongstudio collaborations. - So I'll continue bytalking about our goals in the academic areas aswell as some other areas. We wanted to build off of what we saw with our kindergarten students last year. And one of the trends that we looked at in our previous two years andprior to that for us opening, is that the trend fromkindergarten to first grade dropped pretty significantly and then that creates anew baseline to start from. And that was concerning to us. And one of the things wetalked about as a staff is that who takes ownership of this? And it was a really healthy discussion saying we all have ownership within this and that we need to moveforward in breaking this cycle. So that's why this goal of 85%may on the surface look like, oh, you're just increasing it by 2%, but you gotta keep in mind that the trend drops significantly and what we're trying to do is maintain and then also increase it slightly. So we're pretty excitedabout this literacy goal. And then in addition to that, we noticed the same thingfrom our second grade scores to the third grade scores, thesame type of a drop occurred and we had a healthy discussion about that and we felt like we alsonot only wanna maintain that but increase that alsoin the area of literacy. What's really exciting aboutwhat Julia just shared, we just got done with someprogress monitoring meetings and we were looking at the data, and the data showing that we are on track to accomplish these goals, but we obviously know wehave a significant portion of the school year you have to go. And then this other academic goal, our last one is in the area of math and it's solely based on the MCAs. And one of the things we've noticed, as you are fully aware, is that fourth and fifth grade were kind oftrapped in this unusual world of learning from the pandemic. And then now we're backto in school teaching, which is very exciting. So what we've learned inresearch is that there were gaps that were experiencedduring the pandemic years and then we also arechallenged to make sure that they master the standards of their current grade level year. And so we feel like thisis a real realistic goal to get to 70% and just pumping in a lot of resources with the students in those grades. And I've just been so impressed with everyone's collective effort, whether they're theassigned classroom teacher or a peripheral support system on how we're really focusing on the students at those grade levels. And then the last twogoals that we'll talk about and then we'll ask for questions, is the student experience goal. And one of the thingsthat people might ask is say the goal is 90%, but why only 90, why not a hundred percent? Well obviously that'swhat we wanna strive for. But when you look at all four areas and you think about students and what they're facing with trauma and other circumstancesbeyond the school's control, we want them to feelsafe, valued, connected and engaged, all inclusive. And as they strive for that, then we know that theyare ready for learning and to absorb the contentthat's coming to them. 'cause we want them to seethemselves as active learners when they come to school every day. We really want to focus on ourmarginalized populations too, to make sure that the resources are there to support those studentsthat may have barriers that we're not even aware of and that we can kind of work through. And then the last goal is an equity goal, but it's a real general one in this sense. It's not focusing onone subcategory or not. Our focus was just attendance. We figured that if kids feelreally engaged at school, they really see this schoolas a part of an extension of their family, thatthey want to be here. And although we feel like we have a fairly highattendance rate already, we can stretch that even further by utilizing the communityengagement resources that we have available thatwere provided by the district as well as through the PTA. And we're really starting to see how kids view North Star as their home. And so we're prettyexcited about the stage that we're at into our third year. So with that in mind,we'd be more than happy to welcome any questions you might have. - Wonderful, thank you. Any questions for the North Star team? Ms. Daniels. - Conscious discipline. I've gone a little bit oftraining throughout the district. Is that going to beextended to other buildings, not just North Star? And maybe that's a Trevor question. - Yeah, I'll start that and then I'll let Trevorcontinue on to it. Trevor is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to conscious discipline, as well as there's anotherstaff member there, Amy Shelby. And what we're findingis that the experiences that North Star are startingto ripple into other schools. And so Trevor's being asked togo to other schools and staff and to start to givethem an introduction of what conscious discipline is like and to see how it integrateswithin their current systems, whether it's BARR or ENVoY or whatever the other system might be. And I don't know if you want to piggyback on that a little bit. - I would just add that last year in the spring there wasa cohort of educators that participated in aeight part series online through conscious discipline. And then we came togetheras a group, I think, three or four times anddiscussed the seven powers and skills of conscious discipline. So it's really just increasingawareness and knowledge of it in adults and I'd say the system. But principals are reachingout to me and asking me to come and do some trainings andconversations with staff, so I'm making that happen when I can. - [Ms. Daniels] Consciousdiscipline really happened organically with the educators and so there's quite a few schools who've done varying degrees. Everyone is interested but it's also balancingall the other things that we're doing. And so we keep leaninginto our framework around how students feel safe,valued, connected and engaged. And then schools get to identify whether conscious discipline is where they want tocontinue to lean into it or we do have quite a littlehandful of other frameworks that people use that wealign to that framework. - [Participant] Other question. So also in the central presentation, the little A in front of the reading and then the little A infront of math, what is that? - That's a really good question. - That is a great questionand I don't know that answer. It comes outta theUniversity of Minnesota. And it's a-math, a-reading. I'm not aware that it meansanything in particular except that's what they calltheir universal screener. A-reading is a readingcomprehension and a-math, general math. - [Participant] I just thoughtmath something special. - Yeah, I'll look into that.That's a great question. - I say we had the word awesome to it. - Okay, good. Awesome.- Let's do it that way. - [Participant] Thank you. - All right, thank you so much. Appreciate your time. We'll move into our nextdiscussion, Item B3. This gets me every singletime Dr. Gillespie, 2025-26 and 2026-27 calendar update. How is that possible?- We do every year. - Oh, Dr. Kazmierczak saysI'm getting old, so that's it. (laughing) - Yes, I'm the only one who has to live in these calendars consistently. So whenever I say nextyear I have to clarify what year I'm actually talking about. I brought my computer 'cause I am approaching the age where I can't always see the screen. Asking for a friend when I need readers. I haven't gotten thereyet, but we might be there. So our calendar parameters,let me pull up what I had. I wanted to remind you that we updated these parameterslast year or the year before and we really workcollaboratively on the calendar to ensure there's a lot of people who care about the calendar,a lot of eyes who look at it. And it's not as easy as onemay think to place the dates. Even though it's prettyconsistent each year, we really have intentional conversation. And so our collectively bargaincontract parameters guide what must be followed in terms of how many professional developmentdays, how many work days, what non-student days are. And so unless we come together on a mutually agreed upon change, we really need to follow the parameters of our collectively bargained agreements. The other piece is like we've identified, we bring an academic calendartwo years in advance, but that's not a finalized calendar. We try our very best to be transparent with our communication with our community and put the big dates that we're pretty, 99% sure that won't change. It doesn't mean that we couldn'thave some nuance change. Then we bring the detailed and final academiccalendar the year before. And so tonight I have the detailed and final calendar still in draft form, wanting to bring it hereto get your feedback. We're still working ona few things internally and getting some feedback. The actual final for approval where I'll request approval will be the next school board meeting. Our non-student days must beinclusive of K-12 students. And so before, we had some unique wayswe were doing calendars that caused us to have one school day be a solely elementary school day. And we really try to avoidthat for our families and have been able to do that as we've made some good changesthat really feel good to us in terms of the support we'reproviding our educators, but also the ways we'recommunicating with our community. And then finally we use ourequity decision making protocols when we decide on placementof non-student days. And then I do a lot of deep dive into district calendars across the area. It's very hard. They're not aligned and thereasons people choose things are really very specificto their internal needs. But we keep in continuouscontact around calendars. So the process that I utilize and have for the past few years is we have a calendar committee which consists of representativesfrom various stakeholders in our system. I work with that calendar committee to ask feedback in different areas. We don't have a ton of flexibility, just by the way, consistent holidays that maybe we've scheduledbreaks around and have to, as the calendar has beenlike this for a long time and it's what our community expects. Additionally, we talkwith district building and staff leadership to provide feedback through those meetings. And then we also have, in partnership with our educator union, got surveys as we make some changes. And then really the finalcalendar format is determined by us as district leadershipand brought to you. Sometimes the decisionsare really hard to know what's exactly right to do. With feedback from the community, often people have verypersonal reasons they want a calendar to change. And so we have to determinewhat really is something that will be representativeof our whole community and what is something that, unfortunately, we just can't make happen. So new things for these twocalendars that I will be talking through is we are moving towards district-wide trimester model for reporting purposes only. As you remember, recall thatyou approved our high school to move to trimesters, which means our grades are moving from being reported semesterly, which historically was in January, to now three different times a year. We really talked deeply aboutwhat that meant for our system and what are the pros and cons of moving towards trimesters for elementary and middle school. And it's a unique changethat I've done before. Normally I get a lot of feedback and really know where people are. And so in partnershipwith our teachers union, we were able to do a survey 'cause I wanted to makesure it was pretty quiet and people weren't reactingstrongly to the proposed change. But what I found out is we actually did have trimesters back, I don't know how many years and elementary and middle school reallyfound that to align better to the ways that theyneeded to report progress. They're not as tied in termsof grades, GPA, credits. And it doesn't mean that we don't, the grades is the way that we choose to communicate progress. But really they are excitedabout moving back towards that. Obviously we don't have a hundred percent of people feeling those, but overall that's whatpeople are feeling. We do have some logistics to work out that we're still working and we'll work with thecalendar committee on. This aligns our whole system. You know, we stillwouldn't have K-12 days, any day that would solely beelementary or middle school, but it does allow us to stillvertically work together in terms of everyone havingprofessional development on those days, everyone havingwork days on those days. It also aligns withour assessment calendar and screening testing requirements. The redact has strengthenedthose requirements that we already followed for elementary, but also in the middleschool and high school. And so it'll allow us to bereally able to have a lot of data to report to our families. And we work towards doing that right now. But as we shift some of those things, it seems like trimesters will allow us to do that even better. And so you'll see thatnon-student days are adjusted to accommodate for trimesters. And so there are some daysthat will look unique to us 'cause it's a new change. Some of our staff mightremember it when they were here. However, for families they'll notice that it does alignsimilarly to other districts who are on trimesters, whichwould be Anoka-Hennepin, Roseville are really tooclose school districts that I've looked at their calendars and we're not misalignedto what they do in terms of how they handle trimesters. Additionally, our schoolswill no longer serve as voting locations. We're working with the community on where those polling placeswould be this school year. It was solely Otter LakeElementary that was. And so for the past fewyears, we've really felt like we wanted to make sure that when we had voting in our schools, that we created space for our community, obviously, but also keptour schools feeling safe when you have so manypeople coming into school. So we had the Tuesday off every year. We tried, I think it was my first year, so it was a while ago, wetried just having Tuesday off and it wasn't receivedwell from our community. So we've really had to have the Monday and Tuesday around electionday off for quite some time. And so the calendar committee and administration is feelingvery good about being able to have more flexibility around that time. So you'll notice those days aren't off, but we were able to kindof spread out then learning and non-student days throughout the year. - And we're still workingwith the county on whether or not we will be a polling site. But I think we move ahead with this and if it ends up being a polling site, we're not gonna changethe district wide calendar for school any longer. We'll figure out, we'll out how to manage it.- Okay. - But we're working on it. I know Tim's been incontact with 'em quite a bit and there's just limited number of locations that work for certain wards, so we're trying to figure it out. - [Tim] We should be hearing back from the township tomorrow. - Yeah, anyway. - So the '25-26 calendar, the start of school issimilar to how it has been for the past few years. We have sixth to ninth grade start on the Tuesday after Labor Day. That really has been wellreceived by students, our staff. Parents understanding those are really pivotal transition yearsfor us, for our students, and we wanna make surethat they are onboarded and welcomed in those schools well. The first day for everyoneelse except for kindergarten, would be that Wednesday and then kindergarten starts on Thursday. And then early childhood startsthe Monday after Labor Day, which has been what we'vedone for the past few years. October, you'll noticethat we have in the past, it's always hard to remember 'cause I work so many years in advance, how many years it's been, but it's been quite a fewthat we've had the day before the EducationMinnesota Conference, MEA off. And as a professional development day, that really feels like it falls well and it allows, you know, families who may choose to travel,to travel differently. We've received positive feedback on that. The end of trimesterone would be the Tuesday before the Thanksgiving break. And then when we come back in December, what we do is becausepeople are reporting grades, we have a non-student day so that educators can calculate grades and make sure we get them to families and students in an efficient manner. So that Monday after Thanksgiving break would be a non-student day. That's very similar to other districts who have trimesters andhow they handle that. We did look at what could we do, is it possible to have maybeall of Thanksgiving week off and what that looks like. And it just really, with thenumber of days for trimesters, there are a lot ofother competing factors. And when you talk to people,you'll get one person who absolutely wantsto have that week off. You'll get another personwho likes the Monday off for various reasons and personalreasons that are all valid. And so when we looked at this and aligned it to therest of our calendar, it felt like the right thing to do. Winter break, the holidaysfall interestingly, and so we often try togive families and students and staff two weeks off. It's not easy because no matter whatyou do with winter break, it extends the school year. It's just the way itworks in your calendar because we have to have somany instructional hours to make sure that our funding's complete, also aligned with our contracts. And so as we looked at it, having a couple days rightbefore the holiday coming in, but then having the full week off that's surrounding New Year's is how it fell for these years. It hasn't fell that way always. And you'll see the '26-27is also a little bit unique. Having the non-student day in February, we've had that before. March is unique for the next few years. And when I say few years,I'm talking March '26 and March '27. The way spring break, it isthe end of trimester two. And so many school districts that do that will have it end on a Thursday. The timing of the daysfor those trimesters to have 'em equal works well. That Friday would be thatwork day that we talk about to make sure we can efficientlygrade things that we need to and get the communication to our families. Spring break, which we alreadycommunicated to families, is March 9th through the 13th. As we're looking at how tomake sure our calendar is supportive of familiesin terms of families, you know, their religious beliefs. We look at a variety of religions. Of course, we don't knowwhat families really, what their personalreligious backgrounds are. However, we have looked, aswe've got received communication around Jewish holidays. We really, on the 20th,that is when Eid falls for our families who are Muslim. And we always have good Friday off. And that is because we know we have staff that would take it off andwe wouldn't have enough staff to be able to run school efficiently. And we know of many of our families that's important to them as well. And so when I get to '27,you'll see what I mean. But '26, the 20th is a non-student day to be supportive of those. And then Friday, April 3rdis that good Friday day. Then we go to the end of the school year. School ends on Friday the fifth and a workday for staff would be June 8th to wrap up those final grades. Chair Ellison, do you wanna pause andsee if there's questions about this calendarbefore go the next one? - Sure. Any questions about '25-26? Nope. Looks like it. - Okay, so then we'll go to '26-27. Labor Day is later in '26-27, which actually skews the whole calendar. In order to start school beforeLabor Day, we would have to, at this time, apply for a waiver. And we are diving into whetherthere's an interest there. I would say right nowit's coming out 50% yes and 50% don't touch it. So there might be someways that the waiver becomes more easily accessible 'cause there's conversationat the legislature, but we're not sure thatthat will take any hold during this next legislative session. So we're still really looking into that. So I anticipate that ifwe were gonna change that, there would be a changelater in the school year. Right now I'm not hearing enough unless as we process with Dr. Kazmierczak, we would choose something different, but that we would shift thestart to earlier in the year. So the first day of schoolfor students would be Tuesday, September 8th, which followsthe same exact cadence that I just talked about in the previous school calendar, '25-26. It's just that it's laterbecause Labor Day falls on Monday, September 7th, October, we're aware that we would have when the Education Minnesota conference is and that we would have the day before off. Thanksgiving break is similar and what we've done the past few years, the end of trimesterone, because it shifted with the late Labor Day would actually be Thursday, December 3rd, and then the workday wouldbe Friday the fourth. Winter break is even alittle bit more unique. But again, if you remember, anytime we add ontothat means later in June and we're already a week later in June because of Labor Day being later. Then March 27th is similar towhat I talked about before. Trimester two wouldend Thursday the fourth with the workday Friday the 5th of March. The spring break, Eid on thecalendar is March 9th and 10th, so that would be our spring break week. And then Friday, March 26th is when Good Friday falls in '27. And so that is how we'vedone those non-student days for the past few years as much as we can, and so we would continue that. April, May and then June,the last day of school for students would be Thursday, June 10th with the workday forstaff Friday, June 11th. This is not as detailed. There's still professionaldevelopment days that we need to place, non-student days, but those are ones thatwe haven't placed yet would be flexible. And so we always take feedbackthat we get the previous year or you know, other circumstancesto place those days. So this is as many dates aswe feel comfortable placing and communicating that farin advance to families. - [Ms. Ellison] Okay, great.Any questions about '26-27? This is a very complex business. - It is. I try really hard not to have to bring multiple updates to you. Some years I'm moresuccessful than others. - No, this is helpful.- And so I will work with our calendar committeeand administrators and any feedback that we've received and bring any updates toyou for and ask for action and approval at December 9th. - Wonderful. Thank you so much. And then we'll move intoour final discussion. Item B4, 2025-26 course proposals. Ms. Babiash, Mr. Reetz, and Ms. Barth. - Sure. Good evening, ChairEllison, members of the board, student representative Dr. Kazmierczak, thank you for hearing us tonight. We are gonna be concisewith our course proposals. There's a lot of excitement going on with the new schedule next yearbeing a trimester schedule, so we will do our best to be concise and answer any questions. And so I'm gonna haveRuss Reetz, our principal, kick us off. - Thanks. We took a lot of time and effort in collecting input and feedback from variousgroups along this process. And so I just want to say a very big thank you publicly first to our teaching staff who began engaging in newcourse proposal work last April and have continued to stayengaged all the way up until this week. What additional newcourses could look like, additional trimesters, our new schedule. Also our team at the highschool, our administrative team, specifically CarrieBarth sitting next to me, which will be very helpful inanswering questions tonight. Her assistant Lisa Sutherland and our other administratorsin just all of the work that it took to get here and all the work that it'lltake for us to be ready for school next year. We continue to use our three questions and our four core valuesin helping guide our work. And so helping our students answer yes to those three things wenta long way into deciding on what courses we would have moving forward. We wanted some more student choice to be involved in their daywith the new trimester schedule. Students will enjoy 12additional elective credits over their four years at WhiteBear Lake Area High School. But we also wanted to provide a little bit of choice within theirrequired courses as well. So tonight we're gonna share some of this information with you. We will also come to you inDecember for final approval. Some other key considerationsthat we discussed in our recommendationtonight was student interest and where we were seeingenrollment trends. So if we were seeing courses that hadn't been offeredover the last three years because of lack of interest,those courses were removed. We also want to maintainour BARR programming. And so as we move to trimesters,what might that look like? We have teachers in ninthgrade that team together, and if courses are onlytwo of three trimesters, that teaming can be alittle bit more difficult. We also wanna maintain ourAVID programming as well as keep in mind the burden onstaffing allocation as well as scheduling in our classroom facilities. So all of that led to much of the decisions we bring forward tonight. We also kept in mind our collegeand career readiness goals. We want to ensure that we're working with industry partners to provide as much real life experienceswithin our courses that are gonna lead tojobs either next day, next year, or in the next four years. And then we want to ensurethat we have equitable access for all students to gainaccess to those courses that provide articulated or- - Concurrent enrollment.- Concurrent enrollment. Thank you. So all of that to say a lot went into the decisions made in terms of the new courses being provided tonight. So I'll just take youthrough those new courses by department and then we'll have a chance to answer questions here at the end. Art is going to add a Sports,Photography and Media course. This could eventually be part of a career pathway in sports management or sports administration. You'll see there's a threadthat you could maybe pull through many of thesedepartments related to that potential pathway down the road. We have business, orsorry, AVID is adding- - [Participant] Hang on, Russ, could you mention the grayedout areas just as you- - Oh sure, yeah. - [Participant] Why they gray and why we're not spendinga ton of time on 'em. - [Mr. Reetz] The coursesyou see in black or bold, they are new courses beingproposed for next year. Anything you see ingray are course changes. That could be a course title change, a course descriptionchange, grade level change. It may also mean that we'readding an additional course or we're like, in thisAP Art History example, we're taking the currentAP Art History course, which is a year long course and breaking it into twoindividual trimester courses. So it's really just course changes that you're seeing in gray. - [Participant] So giventhe volume of the changes, we decided to focus on the new courses. 'cause the other onesare less you, you know, there's not as big of a change. So that's- - [Mr. Reetz] You also seesome course removals offered in gray. So we have more new course proposals, then we have course removals. So we will be addingquite a bit of courses to our overall course guide. The next department is AVID. AVID is gonna move totwo trimester required for those students who chooseto enroll in our AVID program within a third trimester as an option. So we will combine ninth and10th graders into one course or combine 11th and 12thgraders into a course if students choose to takeit all three trimesters. By doing all threetrimesters, you chew up one of the additional electivecredits being offered. So we didn't want to makeit mandatory all three. Next department is our business department offering a Personal Finance 2 that would be taken in the same year as their Personal Finance1 or in a year after that. Again, a Sports & MediaMarketing course that would tie into that art course you saw earlier. We're pulling out DECA fromour merchandising course. So if you remember, merchandising runs our school store. This year, it's DECA and merchandising. And in that DECA part of the class, students are using theschool store as an option for competing at the state national level as one of the projects. We will still allow DECA students to use the school store asa project for competition. But for the most part, the merchandising coursewill run the school store and students will have many options for entrepreneurship typeprojects that they would like to compete with in 10thgrade through 12th grade. The DECA class will be one trimester? - [Ms. Barth] Yes. - The next slide is oureducation career pathway. So if you remember the GrowYour Own grant that was passed at the end of last year. We've added Intro to Urban Education on the course guide for this year. The other courses listedthere will be added into the course guide for next year. (person speaking) And the Future EducatorField Experience is also being offered this year. So next semester students will take Intro to Urban Ed fifth period and they'll have their fieldexperience happen sixth period at one of our elementary schools. And students will earn an hourly rate while completing their field experience. So we're excited about that. But these are courses that are funded through the Grow Your Own grant. In partnership with Minneapolis College, students will earnconcurrent college credit for completing these courses. And we hope we'll jumpinto the field of education and come back and teachfor our school district in the future. The next slide is our Family and Consumer Science additional courses. They're adding FashionIndependent Studio as well as two Child DevelopmentExperience courses. We already have onechild development course, so this would allow students that are interested in child development to take three courses in their time at White Bear Lake Area High School. In health education, we'readding Social Relationships and Sexual Health as anelective course offering. Students are required totake health or PE elective in grades 11 or 12. And that isn't new, but that will now be acourse that they could take to satisfy that elective requirement. We're adding a course calledImproving Athletic Performance. It's really a sportspsychology and mindset course. We're also adding Basic LifeSupport-First Aid and CPR, which is a concurrent enrollment course with a Anoka-Ramsey. So students would've anopportunity to earn college credit through that course. And language arts, you won'tsee new courses being proposed, but several course changes there. The most significant iswe'll have the option of taking yearbook in the fall, winter, or spring, depending on how many trimester studentsare interested in serving through that yearbook course. If they take two of those trimesters, they'll get their writingcredit for graduation. And you can see there'sa few more changes there, but we won't touch on those. The next slide is math. We're adding a trigonometrycourse for students in grades 10 through 12 as an elective optionas well as Math for Trades that will be part of the Pathway program. And then a course calledDiscrete Math offered for students in grades 10 through 12. Students could be done withmath after their junior year, so we did want to providesome sort of continuation for those that want tocontinue taking math into their senior year. The next department is media. We'll be adding ComputerHardware Technology, this course similar to school grounds and the school store course. These students will take the course and then provide serviceback to our student body through the Tech Depot connectedto our learning commons. Also adding Media andInformational Production that will be taught by a media specialist. This could include anything from podcast to our daily video announcements, website design, those sort of things. Multi-lingual learner education, really what we wanted tomake sure we allowed here is that our ML students could take a language arts replacement course in grades nine through 12, and that they'd also have access to a study skills courseall three trimesters if they choose to, nine through 12. In music, we're offeringa Unified Music course which would combine special ed students with general ed studentsin support of one another and making music togethersimilar to our unified PE course. I'm very excited about that one. In physical education, Power Volleyball and Power Basketball would be courses that are going to focusspecifically on the technical and tactical approachesto those two sports. Everything from officiating to gameplay, offensive/defensive strategy,those types of things. We're also going to offer anin-season weight training. It'd be a zero hour hybrid. This would be offered to athletes that are enrolled in a fall,winter, or spring sport. They would do their weighttraining in the mornings, either two or three days a week and earn credit for that weight training so they don't have to do itduring their practice times. Offering an Officiating andCoaching Education course. These students would earn someofficiating certifications and be able to step right into youth or even ninth grade officiatingin sports like soccer, volleyball, basketball,lacrosse, and we need them badly. Introduction to Exercise Science would be a concurrent enrollment course with an Anoka-Ramsey. And then as well as Wellnessfor Life with Anoka-Ramsey. In science, be addingPlanet Earth and its Climate as well as Green Foundations. These are the foundation for a future sustainability pathway. And we're also adding Aviation & Aerospace along with Drone Flight Academy, which would also be two coursesthat would be the beginning of a possible aviationpathway down the road. More courses were proposed, we're really taking it just acouple courses at a time here as we get closer to offeringa full fledged pathway in those areas. The two areas that werethe highest recommended by our community partners, our, what do we call 'em, our?- Industry partners. - Industry Partners, thank you. Social studies, the History of Sports, again, one of those courses that could land in a future pathway. And then World Religions and Mythologies will be an elective coursein social studies as well. In our special ed department, we're going to offer a coursecalled Unified Class Partner. This would allow a general ed student to take a general ed course in support with a special ed student in that course. The general ed teacherwould be the instructor of record there. But we would allow our generaled student to then partner and help that special edstudent in that course. Similar to our service learning credit. In tech education, we're really breakingdown our Auto II class into three separate courses. This was a recommendationby our industry partners. One course, steering and suspension, the next, brakes, the last electrical. These could be taken in any order and out of order in different years. But this was recommendedafter our Auto I course, Intro to Auto. Questions on any of thenew course proposals or any possible course changes that you might have seenthrough the presentation. - [Ms. Ellison] Wonderful. Any questions? Dr. Arcand. - I like all the classesyou're bringing forward. My question is, as we'retransitioning to trimesters, have you set time aside because these semesterclasses are gonna need time for writing, and then you'readding these other classes to fit in that trimester schedule. So what is the size for writing time for the teachers so they can prepare? - Well, all new courses will receive some summer writing hours. Current courses we're using our work days and our professional development days to provide time for staff to look at their scope and sequence and figure out what a 12 week course or a 24 week course means totheir current course loads. But yes, a lot of work. - And then next spring orafter you've got through it, it's always nice to have some time because now that you've taught it once, now you're realizing you haveto make a few adjustments to the curriculum. So that'll be important to remember too after they've taught it one year to give 'em some timeto make those updates. - Agreed.- Thank you - Dr. Newmaster. - And just one other piece ofthis evolving credit class, whatever, at what point, because it all is based on enrollment and what the kids are gonna take and it looks really good,they look really tasty and the kids are gonna want to try them, but maybe you only get eight kids. So those eight kids, it used to be like the absoluteminimum was something like 18 for a class to run, at leastget a first trimester sample. Are we gonna have a little bit of a runway to try 'em out? - Yeah, right now, last year we used, it was actually ourthreshold was 26 students and we looked at our enrollment trends. If we ran around 85% ofthe original registers, we would run the course. It really all comes down tototal staffing allocation as to what that numbercould be or should be. - I also think though, wegive it a good three years before we would removeit from the course guide. So we try to give it a couple years, you know, student interest is there but they just couldn'tfit it in their schedule. So that's kind of usually our threshold before we would then removeit and not offer it anymore. So we definitely try to giveit a shot with three years. - And the other thing I wonder about is, I do remember for example, when we started offering ASL, all of a sudden we gotone hour students coming from our neighboring Montenita. Is that still an option? 'Cause I remember we had threeboys that came and took ASL because Montenita didn't offer it. And obviously that'llhappen again with some of these new cool classes. - We haven't offered the ASL for a while because typically what has happened in the past is we would openthose up to other districts through our 916 Career Tech or courses that we were concerned about or like we really need the extra students to potentially get these to run, we haven't done that like per se with ASL, obviously, for a few years 'cause we have enough nowto sustain our own students within that. I think that's gonna haveto be a wait and see, 'cause we really don't knowhow these courses are going to be received by our own students. - [Dr. Newmaster] Yeah, I'mjust using that as an example. - Right. - That's one way sometimesa brand new course gains new fans. - Yeah, well I wouldbe open to it for sure. - Thanks.- Ms. Daniels. - Just curious about Math for the Trades. It just sounds so interesting. Is that collaborationwith another department or is that just something thatthe math department is gonna create on their own? - It was proposed throughthe math department, but it's been something that our tech eddepartment has been curious about for a long time. It doesn't replace algebra or geometry, but we believe there'll besome components from both that would be helpful to those trades. So we'll see. It could potentially bea course down the road that meets specific standards and qualifies to replacea required course. But for now it's an elective. - I have a quick questionabout social studies. As I'm looking at Global Studies A and B, is that gonna be trimester A, trimester B? - Good question. So currently geographyis a semester course and so it was going to bedetermined to be a trimester and social studies has asked if they'd like to pull world religions out of the world historycurriculum in 11th grade and put it into the geographycurriculum in ninth grade. This helps us with BARR. So we can have two trimestersof geography instead of one and it will be fall/winter orwinter/spring or fall/spring. We don't necessarily knowthat there'll be consecutive, but it'll be twotrimesters in ninth grade. - That are required.- That are required. Yeah. - And I mean, as it says, it would allow for expanded content too, which is good. So it's not just onetrimester of geography. And then my other questionabout social studies, removing AP psych hybrid, is there an AP psych that's not hybrid? - Yes.- Okay, so it's just that particular?- Correct. - Okay.- It hasn't run in quite some time. - Okay. Great. All right, any other questions? - It's not a question.- Oh, Ms. Daniel. - [Ms. Daniels] I'm excitedabout the Unified Music class and other unified class, I can't remember. - The class partner.- Yes, thank you. Yeah, that sounds really good to me and really open someopportunities for all students, so that's great. - Great, thanks. - All right, thank youall so much for your work. And now I would ask fora motion to adjourn. - Chair Ellison, I move adjourn. - A motion by Dr. Arcand, and a second? - Second.- Second by Ms. Daniels. All in favor ofadjournment, please say aye. - Aye.- Aye. Opposed, same sign. We are adjourned. Thank you.