- [Scott] Good evening. I'd like to call now call this meeting of the White Bear Lakes, the School Board of Independent SchoolDistrict 624 to order. Will the clerk please call the roll. - [Kathleen] Skaar? - Here. - Streiff Oji? - Here.- Arcand? - Here.- Beloyed? - Here.- Daniels? - Here.- Ellison? - Here. - [Scott] All right, our first order of business is discussion item B1, overview of back to school events, Dr. K. - Thank you, chair andmembers of the board. So in September, our first meeting, we'll have a more detailedopening school report. But this is just apreview of where we're at as we enter the school year. We've had a busy summer, and it's fun to get tothis point of the year. So we've got a lot ofinformation on our website, on the back to school page. It's been streamlined soit's easy to navigate. Parents will be able to find a lot of information therespecific to their school. School specific communications to families and school specific back to school events havebeen shared with families. So make sure you're checking emails and communicating with your schools. There's a lot going on, sotry to keep on top of that. We're still enrolling students even up until the intothe first week of school, we still have students coming in, so we're excited about that. We can help families navigatethat process quite easily. We're generally pretty well positioned as we enter the school year with hiring. There's always positions inan organization our size. So if anyone out thereis interested in working for the school district, just keep on checking the school website. We're ready to roll, and we're ready for thestudents to come next week. And we started off this morningwith our convocation event. So we'll talk a little bit more about that in a little bit here. Construction update. You had a constructionupdate last board meeting. So Central Middle School and Mariner Middle School, phase two. Those are wrapping uphere in the next week or so as we enter the school year. And then Sunrise Park, I've been stretching itout to by spring break. It's supposed to be mid-year, but you know how things go. By spring break that things should wrap up and then that'll be it for all of the majorconstruction projects. So that's exciting to be at that point. Let's see. Okay, we have a fewevents I want to mention. So on September 4th. So our senior center hassettled into the new space here at Sunrise Park. We've been here about two or three weeks and it's great to havethem in the building. We hear the ukuleles quite frequently. It's pretty cool.(audience laughing) The wood carvers are hereand making pretty cool art. But anyway, we're going tobe having a grand reopening of the Senior Center from10AM to noon on September 4th. So feel free to join us for that event. Homecoming Week, September 21 to 27. Always a highlight of the school year. So we'll be kicking off Homecoming Week with a bounce house carnival on Sunday, September 21st from 4 to 7PM at the high school in theBald Eagle parking lot. Very fun-filled event. Bring your family, enjoy the excitement. Last year it was very well attended. We had a lot of kids there. A lot of excitement built for that week. On Friday, September 26th, we'll have our homecoming parade at 4:30 in Downtown White Bear Lake, followed by the football gameagainst Forest Lake at 7:00. So yeah, mark your calendars. We'd love to see as many people out at that as possible. - [Scott] Dr. Kazmierczak, is at the 25th or the 26th for the parade? - [Wayne] 26th. - [Scott] Okay, because theslide says the 25th up there. - [Wayne] Oh, oops. Okay, 26th. - [Scott] Okay, thank you, I'll make sure. - All right. And then to close out the week, the homecoming dance is onSeptember 27th, Saturday, September 27th at the High School Union. We also have the community open house at Central Middle Schoolfrom 4:30 to 6:30 that week. And that also coincides withthe talent show, correct? On that evening. So you could hit both, you could hit the CentralMiddle School open house and then also head over to the high school for the talent show, again. So you can check out the newgymnasium there at Central, the expanded cafeteria,new learning commons, and then renovations made to former district center toturn that back into a school. So that's part of CentralMiddle School now. All right, so few picturesfrom this morning. Sincere thank you to our student groupswho came and performed. And Carla Triggs, our teacher of the year, did an amazing job. She had a great message, and you know, it was very festive andlots of people were there, which is they're supposed to be there, but it was great to see them. And again, a lot of excitement,lots of conversations, lots of getting back in touch as people come back tobegin the school year. So it was a great wayto kick off the week. All right, that's it. - All right, well, thank you. We're excited to start the school year. All right, we're going togo on to discussion item B2, Dr. Gillespie and Educatorsof Thriving representatives. - Chair Arcand and members of the board, thank you for having us tonight. I have Hallie Fox who's herewith us from Educators Thriving and Hallie will lead the presentation and then we're both here should you have questions at the end. Welcome Hallie. - Thank you for your time andfor inviting us this evening. So I'm Hallie Fox, Head ofResearch at Educators Thriving. I am joined by my teammatesKatie and Laura back here. We have been partneringwith White Bear Lake for the past few years and wanted to share a littlebit about the work that we do as an organization and also the work inWhite Bear specifically. So we as an organization exist because we believe that educators can and should experience workplace well-being in order to reach their full potential and that they work in a system that actuallymakes this possible. So we are all former educators. I'm a former special education teacher and administrator myself and recognize the immensevalue of feeling supported in my work in order tomake outcomes possible for my students. So we work towards thatmission in two main ways. The first is by offeringdirect research-based personal development strategies to educators to supporttheir individual well-being with opportunities to really identifyevidence-based strategies that support their well-beingas an individual educator. And then the second is bysustaining educator well-being through system wide measurementand continuous improvement. And we have been working inWhite Bear on both levels, so we'll tell you a littlebit more about that. We do this because webelieve that educators can and should be well, but more importantly, it's because there aresignificant outcomes when we focus on supporting, those working with kids. When educators have higher well-being, we see not only higher student well-being, lower student distress, butalso higher student achievement. So supporting educators allows them to support their students and receive really thebest possible outcomes in terms of their well-beingand their academic achievement. We offer professional development for educators offering arange of session topics. You can see a sample ofthese session topics here. Some are focused on individual strategies to help manage the inevitableworkload of the job. Some are also relatedin building team culture and working through conflict, for example, and really understanding the ways in which we work alongside one another. As I mentioned, we also measure educatorwell-being across a system. As an industry, we spend a lot of timetalking about educator burnout and the reasons why educatorsleave the profession of which there are often many. But we orient towards understanding what actually contributes to keeping professionals,to keeping them well in this particular workplace. So to answer that question, we partnered with educators across the country to really understand whatdrives their intentions to stay what allows themto experience well-being as an educator. And through that research process, we identified that there are a number of key predictive factorsthat contribute to longevity in the profession. Most significantly isresponsive leadership and supportive culture. The survey that we now provide to educators includes a number of items that begin with somethinglike, "My administrator." And that is becauseadministrators do set the tone and create the conditionsin which both staff and students alike areable to do their best work. We also know that educatorsneed key foundational supports and working conditions for themto be able to do their jobs, whether that is fair compensation, resources in their classrooms,appropriate staffing. And finally, there area number of key mindsets and dispositions that we know contribute to not only well-being, but also retention and sustainability overthe course of one's career. So when we survey educatorsin terms of their experiences, we're both looking at how are folks doing in terms of their individual strategies, but also how are we doing at a school site and district-wide level. What we have found in our research and has been confirmed innumerous other studies is that when we think about culture and retention, principals are actuallya really key indicator. Principals ability to createpositive working conditions for staff and collaborativesupportive learning environments plays acritical role in attracting and specifically retaining staff. As a nation, we spend a lot of money and have put a lot towards intentions, initiatives to support retention, but none specificallytowards improving leadership and school climate. White Bear, I will say, is an outlier in terms ofreally thinking about the ways in which we support leadersto support their staff and their students, because we know principals' leadership is the strongest dimension of school climate thatmatters to teacher turnover and ultimately to student outcomes. We've been giving the survey in White Bear for the past three years. It's an opportunity to assess at baseline how people areexperiencing their work. We've used that data toidentify priorities both at the school site andthe district-wide level in order to respond withappropriate leadership, support professional developmentor site-level changes, gather feedback along the way, and reassess to see what improvements or needs to be addressed. Our work in White Bearhas been a partnership between our organization, the district, and the teachers' union, the White Bear Lake Area Educators. We have been really fortunate to have a really collaborative partnership across all three organizations with each having a specific role in supporting these initiatives. We began our work herenearly three years ago through a pilot project with the American Federation of Teachers. Through that initial program, we provided professionaldevelopment directly to educators during the summer and saw really incredible gains in terms of their personal well-being and lack of burnout and intentions to stay in the profession. Through that success, we brought the work to the district to launch the first educator well-beingsurvey district-wide. The following school yearwe partnered specifically with the middle schools, given there were a lot of new initiatives at the elementary level. We readministered the survey that spring and last school year weoffered support to all schools across the district. It has been very principal-driven and so principals have opted into the levels of support thatthey feel their staff needs and over the past year plus we've supportedevery school site with at least three professionaldevelopment sessions and multiple touch points with principals to understand their school data and make changes accordingly. We've also been doing somework with the district cabinet for them to think about the ways in which they are leading their teams. We administered thesurvey this past spring and are launching ourthird year of partnership during workshop week thisweek with a number of PDs across the district. Based on the data, we identified a numberof priorities at district and school site levels. You can see here some of thepriorities that we observed from educators and some of the actions that districtleaders took in response. So for example, there isnumerous concerns two years ago around the movement towardsa unified high school and navigating that challenge in terms of merging twodistinct staff cultures. There were needs across the district to tightencommunication structures and really think aboutways to collect teacher and staff input along the waybefore making key decisions and building more shareddecision making structures to align district andschool site priorities. We have continued to hearconcerns from educators around student behavior, particularly as there have beensignificant shifts in policy at the statewide level and really understandingthe needs of both educators, families, and leaders. We also recognize that amidst all of this, elementary educators specifically have had pretty intense workloadswith redact implementation and finding ways to appropriately balancetheir workplace demands with well-being. The union has led their owninitiatives to encourage strong and open communication between building and site reps to problem solvetogether and proactively. And there's been that similarwork at the school site and cabinet level. The union offered supportthrough a personal and professionaldevelopment app to educators and provides events forcreating a sense of community and creating a strongersense of connection across the district. This past year we surveyededucators across the district and saw increasinglyhigh participation rates. We strive for 80% of all staff to partake in the survey that isinclusive of all roles, not just classroom teachers, and the scale that we use is a 1 correlates to strongly disagree, to 6, strongly agree, and what you can see Here is an overview of how educators respondedacross the district. So what we observed in termsof responsive leadership and supportive culture wasan improvement over time. Educators reporting stronger connections at their school site and support from theirschool site administrators. We continue to see concernsaround foundational supports, things like compensation,staffing, adequate resources and high levels of individualeducator dispositions. We encouragingly see veryhigh growth orientations from educators across the district, really strong motivationsto develop professionally and moderate levels of depletion. Having three years of dataallows us to see shifts over time and what we've been really encouraged by is a steady improvement in all domains, specifically in responsive leadership and supportive culture. I have been incredibly fortunate to work alongsideprincipals in this district and see them taking the well-being of their staff very seriously in making adjustments inthe ways that they support and communicate. We've also seen a significant decline in depletion since we firstadministered this survey. A few things that stoodout to us this year in terms of bright spotsdistrict-wide, as I mentioned, we saw significant gains over time. Majority of educators reporting that they're highly motivatedto learn new things at work, which is up over 13% since 2023. We saw increases inadministrators encouraging staff to set boundaries associated with work and increases in educators' adaptability and able to respond to the inevitable challengesthat they experience over the course of the school day. In terms of areas forexploration, district-wide, these were items that weremarkedly lower than others. But in each of them you'llnotice we still saw significant gains since we firstadministered this survey three years ago. Finally, in terms of foundational supports and structural priorities, as I mentioned, this is an area that educators continue to feel that there areopportunities for increased support, particularly in the realm of staffing, compensation, andprofessional development. For this coming school year, we have a number of focus areas. We are leading PDs at 10 sites this week and hosting today our firstever PD for classified staff. I had about 60 paraeducatorsparticipate in the PD at the high school this afternoon. We'll be continuing to offerin-person PD opportunities during the school year, one-on-one sessions with principals over time to understand their data, make shifts and receivesupport along the way, and a three-part professionaldevelopment series for them. We will continue to offerdirect to educator opt-in PDs and look forward to ourongoing work with everyone across the district. - Great. Thank you. - [Scott] Mr. Skaar. - [Daniel] So with this survey we've been doing this, we started in 2022, is that right? So what problem are we trying to solve through this initiative? - Addressing educator well-being and burnout and increasingopportunities for retention, and of course, for student outcomes. - It's also part of ourcontinuous improvement model for our principals. And so the specific questionsaround responsive leadership and culture are given to principals as part of their priority personnel data, in a sense of getting feedback from how's their staff feeling about how they address problems,how they're communicating, how they're creating a culture that really centers theeducators that work in our system and how we are addressing the challenges of our job that we have. - So just, so this is to addressteacher burnout and turnover. It's principally designed around that. Is that true? - And to provide support to school site principals who receive data about their school site leadership. And in most places, principals do notnecessarily receive feedback from staff on the ways inwhich they are creating a productive workplace environment. - How did you determinewhether we had a problem here in White Bear Lake to address? Did you do any survey work? How did you determinewhat our issues were? - Sure. So the first opportunity we had to partner with WhiteBear Lake educators was in the summer of 2022. And what the union president and others were hearingwere increasing stress and overwhelm amongeducators district-wide, that educators were experiencing a lot of disillusionment with their job, feeling like they weren't necessarily able to commit to the professionfor the long haul, wanting to find opportunitiesto address their needs and ability to manage the job, and not just think about surviving, but actually regaining thatsense of connection and purpose. And so we partnered withthe teachers' union. We saw that educators who opted in to that professional development were reporting significantlyhigher levels of burnout and higher depletion thanthose who had not opted out. We actually did a comparison group between educators in the program and those who did notparticipate in the program and saw pretty significant differences in those who chose to participate. Those who chose to participate were much morelikely to say that they were considering leaving the profession and were much more likelyto report higher burnout and after participating in the program, reported higher intentions to stay, higher job satisfaction andlower degrees of burnout. - Do you know what our teacherturnover rate was in 2022 and what it is today? - No. We would have to getthat information for you. But we do know from the surveythat we have a high level of teachers indicating thatthey want to stay with us, which you would better be able to talk about the national average, but we would have to get to you in terms of the specific data. - Wouldn't that be an important metric to determine whether thisis successful or not? Is seeing what our turnover rate is. And if it improves, it meansthat this program is working. - This isn't a program specifically. Obviously the professionaldevelopment is part of it. The other piece is how do we create that continuous improvement so our school culture willcontinue to look at that. We do want to be competitive and have people who wantto not only stay with us but attract others. But that wasn't the main reasonthat we leaned into this. It was how do we make sure that our educators arefeeling most equipped to lean into this role and this jobamongst White Bear Lake. And then really leaning in around, it wasn't specifically identifying, okay, this retention rate. We are seeing positives around that, but there was a broader. We were addressing broaderissues around that. - So wouldn't it be important to know what our turnoverrate was for teachers in 2022 and what it is today? - We do know that. I just don't know itoff the top of my head. - Okay, all right, I see. So what I did a littlebit of research on this through some surveysthat were done last year. I think "The Wall StreetJournal" published one. One of them had a lot to dowith classroom disruptions, classroom discipline, expectations, mismatch between what teachers expect or what parents expect of teachers and what teachers expect of parents. How does that factor into, and these were major drivers for burnout. I don't see those in this at all. - Yeah, so actually the core items on our survey related withequipped educator mindsets and dispositions are stronglyassociated with resilience and ability to sustain the profession. So we know when educatorsthemselves are feeling like they can handle difficult situations, they can accept a difficult conversation. They have the innerresources to handle conflict, to help re-regulate and reset a classroom. When they are able to dothat, students are as well. There's a lot of evidence whenwe think about co-regulation in classrooms whenteachers have the skills that they personally needto handle the disruptions, support and connect with parents, even if it might be adifficult conversation, that directly impacts the way that students experience learning in classroom environments as well. So there's a very stronglink between the ways in which educators areable to manage themselves and their well-being and the ways that they create positive pro-social classrooms as well. - So how do you recon, I guess one thing is howdo you reconcile policies that are set by the stateor at the district level that don't require progressive discipline in the classroom whichcan contribute to this? How do you reconcile, is there a change inpolicies that you recommend or do you work aroundthe existing policies and state mandates to say, "This is what we are dealt with, this is how to handle it," regardless of the policies? - I'm not sure I entirelyunderstand your question. Are you speaking specifically about non-exclusionary discipline? - [Daniel] Yes. - So what we've heardfrom educators in year one of that implementation wasthat it was challenging to roll out because expectationswere not clear necessarily from administrators and from teachers and what people wereexperiencing was stressful because it was new. And so some of the work thatwe've done in our surveys and focus groups is really understanding where are educators andadministrators aligned, where do we need to better communicatewhat our processes are, how can we bring familiesinto this conversation? So we recognize that policychange is an inevitable stressor in public education. And one way that we support that is really understandinghow we can better align and communicate along the way, figure out what's working and what's not. And so what we have seen and heard from educatorsthis year is really a desire to align in their school sites to make sure that theprocesses that are in place, people are really clear on that. There's more communicationbetween families and parents and administrators when discipline occurrences happen. So we know that student behavior is a significant contributorto teacher stress. And what we have seen and heard is thatcontinuing to communicate, create aligned processes at the school site level is one way that really supportseducators and students alike. - Just one last comment, and then just kind of a suggestion. It would seem to me thatit would be important to know what this overallsatisfaction level is of everyone in the district, you know, teachers, and by classification. And that's a fairly easy survey to do. And it would be something that would be to see if this is effective to benchmark what you're doingwith satisfaction survey, which would be could be three questions. You could use the Gallupsatisfaction 12 questions. There's a lot ofdifferent ways to do that. - Yes, we do actually ask overall job satisfaction net promoter. So the intention that you recommend to your school or district. And we've seen significantimprovements in job satisfaction and that promoter scores over time. We do see some differencesby role in terms of classified versuscertificated staff, for example. So we have all of that data available if you were interested in seeing more, but it's been really encouraging to see how stronglycorrelated educator well-being and job satisfaction are. - And it's gone up since2022, I'm assuming. - [Hallie] Yes. - Okay. All right. The other thing I was just as a comment is I know that we do these. We have these, are they DIRS? Is that what they're called? Disciplinary reports? - [Hallie] That's the statewide, yep. DIRS, the DisciplinaryIncident Reporting System, what we report to the state. - Is there a way to correlatethat with this survey to see if that's trending down or up? That may have a direct correlation with teacher satisfaction and overall district-widestaff satisfaction. - Yeah, we can get that. We do look at that by site, and we haven't looked directly together, but we could talk about it for sure. - Thank you, thanks. - [Hallie] Yep, thank you. - [Scott] I thank you, Ms. Ellison. - Yeah, thank you. I've got two questions, but first I want to saythank you for your work. I feel like there's very few professions in the world that ask people to make such significantspecific decisions for 30 different people at the same time. And it's really complex. And so I appreciate you lookinginto this for our teachers. So my questions are these. I appreciate all the studiesthat you've included. Do you do any work on a national level? And how would you say that, what the progress you've seen or the changes thatyou've seen in White Bear, how does that compare on a national level? - Great question. We are about to release our2025 annual well-being report. So we'll make sure that that is shared. So we work with partnersacross the country. To date, we have surveyedover 20,000 educators in a variety of roles and school contexts. So we work in predominantly public K-12, but also charter andindependent school environments, serving a really wide variety of roles. And I would say White Bear to date is outpacing the national average in terms of educator well-being. And that has improved over time. So we work in a few otherdistricts locally here in Minnesota, but span the country in terms of region and context. We have a number of partnersin California, Ohio, Texas, Florida, New Jersey. So a really wide spread of educator experiencesasking these same questions. And we have seen that White Bear has notonly made improvements, but is also starting tooutpace educator experiences across the nation. - I appreciate that. Thank you. And then my other question isin looking at the priorities, the structural priorities,so where we need to improve. So what are the next step? And this might be more for Dr. Gillespie. So what are our nextsteps to address these? - So in particular, professional development isone that stands out for us. It doesn't mean we'realways talking Matt, Tim, Dr. Kazmierczak, and I, around what staffing dowe need in the buildings, the compensation, but when you look atprofessional development, we were disheartened tosee the low satisfaction. And so each one of our schoolsalso receive a school report and they're all sharing that data with their staff this week. And what we need is partnership around what we're trying to do, these collective goals that we all have. And I think, I believethat we've agreed on that. So then where are we missing the mark in terms of offering peopleprofessional development that feels meaningful to them? As you know, we've had a huge push at the elementary level for letters. My guess is that thathas consumed a majority of our time for multiple years. It would be fair for people to say, "Okay, now we want to be able to apply this." And it's just, it is a huge heavy liftthat our staff did. But each one of our principals has data, but it is low at each one of those areas. There wasn't we first try to look are there areas thatare highlights that we could kind of dive in and see where that is. And everyone is leaning into it. The other piece, I believe is also gettingbetter at how we communicate. We have different leadership structures that are partnerships between teachers, administration that really make decisions around professional development. And so how we make surepeople understand they do have a voice in that, even for district-ledprofessional development. But that will be, that is, we've talked a lot aboutit already this summer and each one of our schoolsare leaning into that as well. - Yeah, I appreciate that because letters hasbeen a pretty heavy lift over the last couple of years. And then coming out of Covid, what do our teachers need and what do our students need? It's different, but I appreciate it. And you know, just anotherreal brief comment. Today at convocation, I ran into my son's third grade teacher, and when he was in thirdgrade was the year Covid hit and he was having a lot of trouble before he was throwingchairs in the classroom. I mean, that was a rough yearfor that kid and that teacher. And I saw her today, and she is so happy tostill be in this district. And I said, "I'm so gladthat it wasn't my kid." But I think that the trajectorythat I've seen for him and for all of theteachers who supported him during those difficult times, I'm really glad that we're taking a moment to ensure that ourteachers feel that support because it really does impact our kids. So thank you. - All right, Ms. Streiff Oji. - So I had a question onthe structural priorities, but you answered that. I appreciate, I just want to say this, because I work withdistricts across the metro, lots of districts and charters, and I see the morale, but to see it beingaddressed in our district, not only at the teacher level, but at this site leadership level and district cabinet level as well. I know it does trickle down, and I know that when teachersare feeling taken care of and supported in their role, it does impact a lotof things in a school, academic data as well as discipline data. So the partnership between the union, the district, and thewillingness of everyone at each level to partner andtackle this is very helpful. And the data that's sharedto show those bright spots and where we do needto focus are our areas. So I just want to say thank you. It is a need across the countryand it's a challenging job. I challenge anyone to get inthere, kindergarten classroom. Thank you. - [Scott] Ms. Daniels. - I'm aligned with what Chris just said, but I'd like to thank the district for working to support our staff and particularly I think ina culture that nationwide doesn't always support public educators. And I think anything we can do to support the classroom teacher and other staff that work with students and give them thesupport that they deserve and need to become their best self and to retain their talenthere in our district and just in education ingeneral is of utmost importance because we won't be ableto sustain our district or any public educationdistrict without the support of initiatives like this. So I just want to say thankyou so much for your work and I hope it continues. And I really am excited tosee the improved results and that we're going to work on the issues that are still issues thatwe need to improve on. So thank you very mucheveryone who's been involved. - [Scott] Ms. Beloyed. - You said, forgive mefor missing what you said, but you said White BearLake was an outlier on something in particular. What was that? - In terms of offeringdirect support to principals and supporting the their leadership in creating positive culturesfor staff and students alike, there's a lot of researchthat we spend a lot of money on teacherretention and school climate and we forget a key player and that is the personwho's leading the school and supporting them to dotheir jobs well is something that I think White BearLake does exceptionally. The principals in thisdistrict really believe deeply in their staff and their students and also need a thought partner every now and again to make sure theycan sustain the work too. - Thank you. - Thank you. I just want to say it's exciting because we're all workingtogether on this and pulling, all pulling or rowing in thesame direction, let's say. So we're thankful for allthe work everybody's doing. Thank you. - [Hallie] Thank you. - We're going to move onnow to discussion item B3, academic data overview. This is going to be Dr.Gillespie, is it, Ms. Fabeck? - Yep. Chair Arcand, members of the board, thank you again for having us here. I'd like to introduce Disa Fabeck. She's one of the newermembers of our team. You're maybe on a couple weeks now. - Yeah. - Who's our districtassessment coordinator and also educationaltechnology coordinator. I think I got the title right. And Disa comes to us fromColumbia Heights, so. - I do. - All right. - Good evening. It's a pleasure to meet youand a pleasure to be here. So, as Dr. Gillespie said, we're going to go throughsome academic data. I apologize, I'll talk a little louder. Got my summer cold today. Just a reminder, you'llsee this quite a few times. The data is currently embargoed by MDE, the Minnesota Department of Education. So we're just going to talk about generaltrends with statewide data and then more specific trendswith our local data today. Please note too that the Science MCA testwas changed this past year and so they are notreleasing data until October, and we can expect the same trend next year with the MCA Reading test. So we will not have datauntil a little bit further in the school year next year. So White Bear Lake areaschools, as you are aware, is really a tieredsystem of identification and looking at our data, we don't look at things in silo. And so tonight we're not going to just talk about state data, but some more data as well. So really looking tonight at MCA, annual, and a little bit teaserof this year's data, and then some FastBridge data as well. And we'll talk about the metrics for those and why we're using both and why we can look atthem in tandem together. And I also included someresearch in there as well so we could know that we'rebasing this on what's best for students and what theresearch says is best. You will see on your screen, here's our MCA Reading data trends for the past several years. The orange line is of courseWhite Bear Lake area schools. It's the average of all of our grades. And then the gray line isthe Minnesota state average of all the grades that take MCA Reading. And again, as a teaser, we can't tell you exactlywhere we are this year, where the state is. But we can give you anoverall understanding that the state has reallymaintained where it was, around where it was fromthe past two to three years. But White Bear Lake areaschools has improved. So we're going againstthat statewide trend in MCA Reading literacy proficiency. And we're even improving from last year. So moving off of our statewide data, we wanted to dive into FastBridge. So FastBridge is adifferent assessment tool. It's a local screener thatwe give three times a year. It's one of the approved screeners for dyslexia that MDE hasapproved with the Reed Act. And just note that the FastBridgeEarly Reading Composite is a very differentassessment than an MCA. But it's also very important. We don't have early education, K1 and 2 reading at the state level data. So when we look at this,what we're looking at is the students who are ontrack to meet the benchmark. That is how FastBridge words this. So we do this three times a year, fall, winter, and spring. Up here we have fall in the light orange and spring in the dark orange. And we have 2022-23, 23-24,and then last year, 24-25. So you can see that pretty big jump from fall to spring oflast year specifically. And this is all of our kindergartners. This is done one on one. It is not a computer adaptive test. And so the students getfour different sub-tests and they are different. So the benchmark changes in complexity and more challenging for the reading of thestudent from fall to spring. So we also parceledthis out by first grade. Again, it says "Early ReadingComposite FastBridge," which was the same titleon the previous slide. But it is a different assessmentfor our first graders. And again, they'rescreened three times a year with this signal of, are they on track to meet grade levelbenchmarks by the spring? So 58% of our students coming in last year for first grade were on track in the fall. And then by the spring, 63% of them were on track. So we saw that growth. Excuse me. And so for this slide, we'redoing a little bit more of a zoomed out like we did with our MCA Reading assessment results. So this is all grades two through eight. aReading is a similar informat to an MCA test. It's adaptive. The students see several grades above and several grade level questions below. The computer then thinks it can assess where that student is falling within their reading capabilities. And there's a couple of different measureswithin the aReading suite. So not the same test forsecond and eighth graders, but the same layout and format. So we're going to shiftnow to math, MCA Math. A similar teaser of a trend line here. So White Bear Lake area schools with all of our grades 3 through 8 and 11 on average increase from our previous year and continue to go againstthe statewide trend line of maintaining, slightlyimproving from the previous year. So in partnership withearlyReading for kindergarten, we have earlyMath. So again, this is done one on one. It's very grade level appropriate for a kindergarten student. We give this three times a year. The benchmark increases. Just to give you some context with this, and we have three years of data for this for our kindergartners. So not the same group of students, but always measuring ourstudents in kindergarten. And last year we saw animprovement of 72% in the fall and then 77% in the spring. Thank you. Then we go back to firstgrade with the math as well. So seeing that fall to spring difference over the past three years. And then again combining grades three through eight with our aMath, that adaptive math test from FastBridge. So looking at the students who are at low or no real calculated risk to not meeting gradelevel benchmark standards, which is kind of a funnyway to say proficient in the terms of FastBridge. So of course, we look at ourlearners as a more holistic, multi-tiered approach. So we wanted to include ourACT score trends as well. So we're thinking about pathways. I know we have a very robust career and college readiness pathwayat our high school that of course stems throughoutall of our programs and sites. So looking here at the composite score, and this is really composedof four areas for the ACT, English, math, reading and science. And this is really a universal test taken throughout the nation. We give it to all 11th graders or 12th graders if itbest suits their needs at that point in time, once for free during the school day. So we're really encapsulating and encompassing all of our 11th graders. Now, this is data forthe graduating class. So this is not necessarilyour last year's data, but the students who graduated last year, how they did on the ACT overall. So you can see that the dark orange is how White Bear Lake Area School high school students are doing, and then as compared to thestate and national averages. And then we know thatstudents who are enrolled in advanced coursework, AP has a lot of data behindthem through the College Board. It's a pretty robust data warehouse there. But the students who are morelikely to take an AP class, are more likely to feelsuccessful in that course, gain college credit, gain some confidence. And so we included our AP numbers as well. So you can see theprogram has really grown. Not only are more studentstaking AP courses, but they're taking the test, which is really encouraging as well. So the top number is howmany tests have been taken over the past couple of years. And the bottom numberis student enrollment. So you can see we have some students taking multiple AP tests. And then when we look at whatthis equates to for college, so specifically looking at the University ofMinnesota Twin Cities, students who get a 3 or higher on their AP test willtypically get college credit depending on the subject area. But we had 80% of our students last yearachieve college credit in one or more AP tests, whichis a huge accomplishment. And we can see that over time with our highschool students as well. But definitely a celebrationwe're excited about. And I always like to say, "Well, what does this mean?" I used to teach highschool science, right? So what does this mean for me? You know, tell me how Ican benefit from this. Well, our students last year alone, not combined with any other components, earned over $1.35 million tothe University of Minnesota. And so some of them are going in with over $3,000 of tuition already. And that's just even if they'vetaken it as a 10th grader. We even had some 9thgrade students take AP. So they're building uptheir free college credit through this process. - What questions might youhave for Disa or myself? - Thank you. This is really good tosee broken down like this. So I have a question about up here and a question about down here. So as we're looking atall of these numbers, what is your assessment of how we're trending at 30,000 feet? Because we're seeing some differences. And that kindergarten number is amazing. The jump, meeting the benchmark. But then in math, it'sdipping a little bit. So what does it look like holistically? - It's a good question. I think that's somethingwe're still parceling out, especially just being invitedto be part of this team. But there are some kind of similar to ourprevious presentation, some real bright spots, likeyou mentioned kindergarten. And then there's someareas that we really need to digest further. There are some new state standards, as I know many of you are aware. And so realigning ourpractices and our CT time, CIT time, and really makingsure our goals are in alignment, but from a larger context, I can't say trends inFastBridge for the state, but we can with MCAs. So that's reallyencouraging that regardless of how the state is doing, White Bear Lake is stillimproving on our practices so that students can geta better equipped score for themselves. - Well, and I appreciate having these multiple tests included because MCA is one day, you know? And it's, if a kid didn'thave breakfast that morning or if somebody is sick, then that affects their test scores. But having FastBridge andAP here is really good too. So then Dr. Gillespie,questions for you then. What does this mean on a granular level? So we, over this summer,last year, I presented, I think about three times around when the FastBridge came out. And so over the summer, wehad three full days solely with our principals to dive into, what does the data show us? Of all the data that we have, where are we seeinghotspots in each school? Meaning we're seeing grade level teams that are really achieving higher than what we're showing youwith these district averages. At the same time, are there schools or specific grade levels thatwe're seeing the opposite? We're seeing some real struggles, and then diving in and saying, okay, what are we seeing in thoseteams that have success, which we do have trends coming out, teams that align to our guaranteed and viable curriculum, which we've done a significantamount of work around ELA, our English curriculum, and we're in the process around math. And so we have elementary piloting two math curricula this year. And that is, so we knowcurriculum is part of it. Then we also look at, howare we analyzing data? How are we looking at teachers, educators, principals collecting data on how our students learningwhat they're teaching. And so what are our collaborativestructures around that? And then we collaborate a lotacross the buildings to say, "Where are we excited about this growth? Where are we still not seeing it? If it's flat, is there something that we needto do specifically to target and support the educators in class?" Is it, sometimes there's a lot of subs, you know, that year, for whatever reason. There could be some kindof Band-Aid fix, per se, or we know exactly why and we really want toget to the root cause. So it's complex. We do a lot, and then, so we did thosethree days with our principals, and then we had two full days with district leadership teams, meaning each school has a leadership team with teacher educators, staff across their buildingthat dive in and also say, "Okay, what is our data Showing us?" And then we set building wide goals. And you'll see when we come back again and present around the Comprehensive AchievementCivic Readiness Report. We've done a really significantalignment kind of overhaul around our goals. So every school willhave FastBridge goals. You'll see how those alignso that we can track those. And it's really been anongoing focus of ours and will continue to be, because we know this is why we're here, to make sure our kids not only are happy and proud when they graduate, but that they have the skillsthey need to be successful. - And I appreciate thatyou said it's complex because it's incredibly complex. So thank you both. - Okay, Ms. Beloyed. - So within the hotspots that you're seeing with the change in the math standards, so the first grade, I mean every single oneof those has gone down. Are we seeing what thoseactual hotspots are? Are they relative or are they related tothe change in standards? What are we seeing asan overall, anything? - It's a little hard to saybecause it is so complex and there's multitudes. So yes, our curriculum,there's new standards and we have to make sure our curriculum is aligned to the that. So I do think that's part of it. The other piece is it's been, and Jen, I don't know if weknow off the top of our head, Jen is unable to be here tonight. But it's been a long time. I don't want to misquote,but I think it's 10 plus years since we've hada new curriculum in math. And so that's one of the areas. The other area is diving in. And we've really focusedon instructional strategies because part of it isn'tall solely curriculum. It's what instructional strategies. And all of our educators havehad professional development around some really high-levelleverage strategies. So for example, math talks and howstudents talk themselves through thinking through math problems. And so we are able topull out individual teams and say, "This team has had growth." Like, I mean we can absolutely give you, but the range of what we're seeing in each grade levelschool, it's a wide range for us to get the averagethe district average that we're showing you. And so then we're able to build on that. But sometimes it's whetherthey're following the curriculum. Right now math is a little more complex because we have been sofocused on literacy that we're in this mid-shift of doingthat same high-level focus, deep focus with math, and we'lldo that for multiple years. So it's really, I know it sounds like, I'm not trying to have it sound wishy washy, but it's hard to pinpoint one thing. But it's surrounding aroundinstruction, curriculum, and then how are we reallyusing the data to support us and making our educatorsmake a ton of decisions and collaborating together, because the more our teamscollaborate together, the more this job notonly feels more manageable for everyone, but those are the teams that have the greatest impact in terms of achievement results. - [Deborah] Do our teachershave access to the MCA? So after they're taken, teachers can go back and seewhat the questions are, see? - Not always the questions. There's a few that are released each year so they can get a general idea, but they also are ableto see like by standard or by broader context, like how their students did overall. But they can see the preliminaryresults pretty quickly. - [Deborah] But they can'tsee the actual questions? - No. Unless they're released by MDE, no. - So that we get strand datathat's aligned to the standards because really that's the main purpose, which I know you know, around the MCAs, is to measure how our students are doing in relation to thestandards and benchmarks. And so we get benchmark reports that district wide that can show us, okay, are there some areas that, I'm trying to think of oneoff the top of my head. - Informational text. - Thank, informational text. Is there something that across the board our studentsdidn't meet standards in that one area and then were able tolook at curriculum review. Often those wide reports don't, they don't show the hotspot areas the wayyou might think sometimes as you're looking at the data. So it is diving in withmultiple areas of assessments and then continuing to work through it. - I mean, I've been divingin on the numbers for, you know what, I don't know how long now. But I'm always interestedin how the tests are set up, and there used to be the phrase, "teaching to the test," and I never truly reallyunderstood what that meant, but to me we have these standards, but we don't know what, a question can be askedin five different ways and one student understands first way, one student understands option 2 and 3, and one student doesn'tunderstand any of them or one student understands all of them. And it's all based on the actual question. We have all the numbers and I think the FastBridgeprobably tells us more than what the MCAs would do in any state. It's just an overall concern to me, because so many people are harping and hitting on this rightnow, and it's so complex. And we said that time and time again. But you can go back 20 years and you can see all of thetest scores in the 70s, and then all of a sudden they go down. And then they go back up, and then they go down. Well, it's the same teachersin some of these time frames. It's the same cohort ofstudents going through, so, there's got to be a better way to do this and to actually get kids prepared for life outside of high school,whether that be college, whether that be getting a job, whether that be doing all of those things. So I guess I don't reallyhave a question there. It's just more of a statementlooking at these things for so long that it's just frustrating to me to not be able to getto the bottom of most of it. And it's got to be frustrating. for the teachers because they all want to make sure that their students are doing as well as they possibly can. Doesn't mean every student will. Doesn't mean every student won't. - Yeah, I think that's, it can be frustrating, especially if we takedifferent tests in isolation. And so that's why, whenDisa is presenting this is we use triangulation of data. We also look at attendance, behavior. It's the whole experience. But then looking at someof the data I've presented, how many of our studentsneed remedial classes when they're entering college? What's our graduation percentage? Where are students getting entered? It's just so complex. And so how do we tell a goodstory knowing that really, the overall public, they want their kids to havethe skills to be able to thrive outside of school, andwe all share that goal. So it can be frustrating ifyou're seeing data saying, "I don't think we'reachieving that mark yet." And what we know is weare achieving the mark in places that we're really excited about, and it's not consistentenough, and it's not, I will tell you, I'mso proud of our teams, how hard they work, how hardour educators are leaning in. It's not for lack of desire. So then it is about us coming together and saying, "What couldbe the root cause." And that's when you hear mesaying, "There's a multitude," which you've also addressed. But it is knowing, having the public know we take this very seriously. We're proud of the workwhere we see positives and we're also frustratedand not okay with the areas that we're not achieving the mark yet. And there's a ton of workgoing on every single day. - [Deborah] I appreciate that. Thank you. - [Scott] I think, Ms. Streiff Oji - My question is around consistency and equity across the district for those that are not on track or those students that are not on track to meet benchmarksor scoring at grade level. Is there a plan, system-wide, for how they addressthose at every school, and how do we ensure thatevery school gets the same? What do I want to say? If a student at one school is scoring, gets a certain score, and a student at anotherschool gets the same score, are we ensuring those studentsare getting the same types of interventions and support based, and I asked that question because sometimes oneschool will have more and maybe not enoughstaffing to meet the needs. So at this school they have more kids. So I'm just wonderinghow that is addressed and is there consistency across the board on how schools are addressing those that aren't meeting benchmarks? - Yes, that's one of our focus areas. So I'm going to back up a little bit and then we'll get to that part of it. So we operate, and Disa mentioned this, in a multi-tiered systems,MTSS you might hear which is education jargon, but essentially it means wehave three different levels that we look at aroundthe support for students. And tier one, is that what you would think of universal instruction, what's going on in all of our schools. When we talk about guaranteedand viable curriculum, how are we guaranteeing ourstudents in kindergarten, whether they're at Oneka,Otter, Willow Lane, Lakeaires, they're all having the same experience. That's the work we're doing when you talk about CKLA, you'll hear from letters, all of that is that tier one. Then we have those two other layers, Tier two and tier three. Some of those interventionsare provided in the classroom and so we have interventions at the school that partner with educators. How do we make sure our educatorshave the tools they need? Depending on it might be that your third grade classthis year, you have a lot, way more than you're used toof students that are falling in that tier two. Then we have tier three, which is more specialized, individualized. And so we have been part of, we received a grant multiple years from around MTSS in Minnesota. And so really looking athow do we systematize that across our whole system, while at the same time addressing that we do have schoolswith different needs. We have four Title 1 elementary schools that also receive additional funding, and that is aligned aroundthose support structures. At the same time, how do we make sure we'reallocating the staffing based on student need, which is that that's what we do every year based on student achievement data in each one of our elementaryschools in particular. And then our middle schools and secondary, it's exciting that we'll get to focus on that more with this grant, but also with the ReedAct as we roll that out. Secondary can be a little bit more complex in how to do that. And so leaning intothat with our principals and support teams. Additionally, you'veheard us talk about BARR, Building Assets, Reducing Risks, another structure that falls in those multi-tiered systems of support, but has us look at attendancedata, student experience, building on students' strengths. And we have three ofour elementary schools are BARR schools, both of our middle schoolsand our high school. And so that also coupleswith that support. I think I answered your question. - You did answer. And thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate that. And also for committing to taking a team through the MiMTSS training voluntarily. I appreciate that. - [Scott] Okay, in a second, Ms. Daniels. - I just have a question about the same early math composite, FastBridge, grade one. So one of your comments wasthat the FastBridge increases in complexity with each of the tests. So even though it looks, I mean, I'm looking at that, I'mgoing, okay, 73 to 66. So that means that more, fewer kids are, more kids are at risk. Fewer kids are not, not at risk. But that doesn't meanthey're not making progress, because if the test isgetting more complex, those kids can still be growing, but they're maybe just on the, they're just not quite out of that. I mean, that doesn't meanthey're not making any progress or they're going down. They could be making progress, right? Am I thinking about this correctly? - Yes, that is spot on, absolutely. - [Kathleen] Okay. - Absolutely. - It's a little worrisome if you just look at the straight numbers. But if you think about those tests beingincreasingly more difficult, those four times they're taking it, they're taking a harder test in the spring than they are in the fall. - Going back to Ms. Beloyed'searlier question, you can, our educators can see thestudent-specific scores for FastBridge, and we havesoftware that makes that easier to pull and that's work that we're doing. So those, they can look and say, "Okay, Kathleen was doing well and then all of a sudden it went backwards when I really thought that, so how do I dive in andreally look at that?" So they're able to do that. Every time we take it, it's ready for us. - [Deborah] That's also reassuring. Thank you. - [Scott] Okay, Mr. Skaar. - Well, thank you forsharing that information. I have a suggestion though. I think we should weather adjustthe fall and spring numbers to see if it would make a difference. - Yep. - Okay, that was a joke. So just so overall, ifwe netted this down, reading is improving. Math, we're still having some difficult, some challenges around. Would that be a fair assessment? - [Alison] Yeah, I think that's fair. - Overall? So based on the math, based on the reading numbers, it's like continue to do what we're doing and invest more in what's working. On the math side, what's working, what's notworking on that side of it? - So one, we know as I talk about thosethree different areas, curriculum we need to look at. And so elementary has beenin a curriculum review around the new standards, and they'll be piloting two new curricula because we need to choose a new curriculum by the end of this year. And so we have teachers. Teachers are very excitedabout having new materials. And we had teachers opt in. In every single one ofour elementary schools, they're piloting two different programs. We have a curriculum review committee that has educators on it, administrators, and really they'll make adecision for us to decide that. So then elementary, it'll beleaning in just like we did. Right now we're doinginstructional strategies. So they're getting, Wednesday, all of ourelementary school schools will get math instructional strategies as part of our professionaldevelopment alongside then those who are choosing the curriculum. Middle school is doing thesame exact thing there. Still, I think they'll be piloting, if I'm rememberingcorrectly, it is this year, but I believe they'reabout a semester behind. So December we'll have some middle school with new curriculum decidedat the end of this year. And then high school, I thinkis a little bit delayed, but they also are startingcurriculum review. The other piece is to help with those instructionalstrategies along the way because those are the same regardless of what curriculum we choose. And then it's looking and saying, "What first grade teams did wesee that really had success?" What were they doing in that classroom? And then we go out as a whole team and work with the first grade team. We did this around literacy. They're great. Like, okay, how do webuild on this together? What strategies can we give you? What might you be seeing? Is there something we needto do with intervention? So it's really a multi-prongedapproach as we lean into it. I don't know that there's, we'll still decide on what type of large professionaldevelopment needs to be given around math like we didaround letters for literacy. It's a little bit more specific, but the team will help recommend that. And then next year, you'll see, we'll just keep leaning in because we're getting veryclose to deep implementation for our literacy curriculum,which is what we want to see when that becomes standard practice and then having oureducators feel really good. We're excited about theresults we're seeing. And we'll replicatethat process with math. - So what's your confidencelevel that the math is going to improve over the next two years, based on your revised approachand initiatives around math? - I'm always confident.(audience laughing) I believe in us. We wouldn't be doing this if we weren't confident around that. And so we'll just keep leaninginto it until we achieve it. - [Scott] So the adoption of the math curriculum we'dbe implementing next fall? - [Alison] Yep. - [Scott] A year from now we'd have selected,- [Alison] For K-8. - And we'd be implementing, correct? Okay. - And then high school, Ibelieve, is a year behind, but I'd have to double-check that. - So do we see any potential of, with our efforts on the math, on math, cannibalizing thesuccesses that we've had on the reading side, or are those two mutually exclusive, independent initiatives thatdon't gobble up resources from one or the other? - Resources, I don't see. Time and bandwidth, which is why we've beenso strategic around, let's make sure we'rereally leaning into this. Letters is two full years. We have the majority of overwhelming majority of our educators. Now we're moving on to secondary. And so it really is, how do we stage it? Well, at the same time, we have urgency. Our kids before us, we wantthem to do better on the math. And so no, we won't letourselves take back steps. It doesn't mean thatthere might not be a blip along the way where you'relooking at a grade level and saying, "What happened here? Let's come back to the table." But that's why those continuousimprovement structures are so important for us. But resources we've been very strategic to make sure we can maintainusing the funds that we've had. We do a lot of thinking abouthow do we build something in if we need to use outside PD, how do we build our capacity? So that's not our long-term model, train the trainer kind of thing. - Just one last comment. You know, we talk about being a world-classeducation experience for our students and parents, and when we're looking at our numbers versus state averages, it might be helpful to have, well, what is the top 10% or 90th percentile? Where are their scores at? You know, as we strive to be world class, where are they at versus where we're at? It's just a suggestion. Thank you. - Any other questions? Thank you for the time they're presenting and all the time you're putting in. We appreciate it. - [Alison] Thank you. - We're going to move onto C1 labor negotiations. This portion of the meeting may be closed to consider strategyfor labor negotiations, including negotiatingstrategies or developments or discussion in review of labor negotiation proposals, conducted pursuant to MinnesotaStatute 179A.01 to 179A.25. What will happen is I'mgoing to about to ask for a motion to go into closed session. We'll do closed session, and then we'll come out and we'll do our adjournment. So just want to let you know. So at this time, can I get a motion tomove into closed session? - So moved. - Ellison, is there a second? - [Christina] Second. - Second by Streiff Oji. Okay. All in favor say, "Aye." - [Board Members] Aye. - All opposed, same sign. All right. We are now in closed session. (gavel striking)