- [Board Member] Everybody ready? I now call this meeting of School Board of IndependentSchool District 624 to order. I'll ask the clerk toplease call the roll. - [Clerk] Thompson.- [Ms. Thompson] Here. - [Clerk] Arcand.- [Mr. Arcand] Here. - [Clerk] Ellison here. Skaar? - [Mr. Skaar] Here. - Okay. The first item wehave is discussion item B-1, update on MDE Afterschool Community Learning Grant programs. Mr. Maurer and Ms. Oswald. - Thank you, Chair Arcand,members of the board. Nicole and I are joined tonight by, or with Nicole Oswald,our assistant director of Out of School Time Programs. We are very excited to be here tonight to share an update onwhat we've been doing with our AfterschoolCommunity Learning Grant. This is a grant thatbecame available in 2023, which we applied for andwere awarded last spring, late spring 2024 in May, and began implementation rightaway in the summer months. So, we have a lot of updates and information to share with you guys, and happy to answer anyquestions at the end. There we go. There we go. So, the Afterschool CommunityLearning Grant, what is it? The purpose of this grantis to connect schools and community so that theycan offer culturally affirming and enriching after schoolsummer learning programs that meet the needs of youngpeople and their families. So, again, this grant, we were awarded in the spring last year and began implementing in the summer. There were three objectives.This is very sensitive tonight. Three objectives as part of, is it better to use the space bar? There we go. Three main grant objectives as part of the applicationprocess for this. One of them was to increaseaccess to comprehensive and culturally affirmingafterschool and summer learning and enrichment opportunitiesthat meet the academic and social and emotional needs of historically underserved young people, promote engagement in learning and connections to school and community, and encourage school attendance and improve academic performance. This was a very extensivegrant application process. A lot went into it, and the credit for the successof the grant really does go to Nicole and all the work she did to pull all of our datatogether and all the programs, making the connections with the buildings that we focused on as part of the grant. So, a lot of, well, allthe credit does go to her to making that a successfulprocess for us to be awarded, and we're very lucky to have it. As part of that grant, so we were only one of 24grantees across the state that were awarded this opportunity. And out of, we were oneof four school districts that were included in that as well. And this will apply orprovide around $1.4 million for us over that three-year span. So, roughly just under $500,000 a year for us to provide those after school and summer learning opportunities for kids as part of the grant. Moving forward here, Nicole's gonna speak tosome of the data points and items that we use as partof the grant application. We will then share what, howwe implemented some pieces with the grant last summer, and then also share thingsthat we're currently doing right now during the school year, and then some of the goals we have for the upcoming summer months as well. So, I'm gonna turn thisportion over to Nicole. - [Nicole] Great. Thank you. So, this slide kind of goes through some of our data as a school district, and it was most of the basis for what we presented in our application in order to show that there was the need for these programs and this funding. Some of the larger data points that we used were thepercentage of students who qualified for educational benefits by building academic screeners and enrollment numbers inour tuition-based programs. So, things like extended dayor vendor-led enrichment camps. So, through these threedifferent data points, we were able to make apretty solid argument that these funds would increase our access for our underservedpopulations in our community. So, as Tim had mentioned, we were officiallyawarded this in late May and our first programs were offered at the beginning of July. So, it was a pretty quick turnaround. You can go to the next if you want. - [Board Member] Can I just ask a quick- - [Nicole] Yeah. - [Board Member] Clarified question 'cause some people don't know. When we are looking at the percentage of student population qualifyingfor educational benefits, can you describe what thatis so everybody knows? - Yeah. So, educationalbenefits is the verbiage and maybe someone else knowsa little bit more than I do, but that replaced free andreduced lunch applications. So, with the legislation that went through granting access to allstudents having free and reduced lunch, wechanged the name of that to be able to stillaccommodate other methods in which people canaccess grants and funding. Yeah, no, thanks. So, then our program started in July. We have two summer learning programs that we're accessing grant funds. So, we applied for thisgrant in collaboration with our Freedom School model as well. So, the first one isour Camp Summer model, which is a four-weekprogram that runs in July. It's like early July to late July. And it's four weeks,Monday through Thursday. With this grant, they requirethat students have access to a hundred hours of programming. So, this year, what we did was we added an enrichmentsection to the afternoon. Typically, it was a half day program, so running from about 7:45 to 12:45, and we increased the numberof hours to go until 2:15. So, that end of the day portionwas an enrichment portion that we offered through thegrant and community connections. So, with that, we offered24 different courses and I'll get more into whatwe offered in a little bit. We were able to serve 63students in session one, which was the first twoweeks, and 75 in session two. Some of those are duplicatesbecause students can enroll for all four weeks if they'd like to. - [Tim] Yep, and partof the area of the grant that we attributed to,Freedom Schools, to benefit, that was to increase the number of seats, so the number of studentswere able to serve. So, with Freedom Schools, there is a cap on the number of students we're able to serve in that program. So, we originally applied,when I applied for last year, we applied for to serve a hundred kids, and we run this program atWillow Lane in the summertime. As part of the grant application, we're able to increase thatby the number of 20 seats. So, we had a hundred, a little over 120 kids servedin the program last year. And then Nicole's gonna sharesome evidence-based practices that we applied.- Yeah. So, part of what we had submitted as well in our grant applicationwas just how we would meet all of these evidence-basedpractices for student learning, specifically in ourtargeted services programs. So, programs that occur outsideof the general school day. So, the six portions that we had addressed were access to basic needs, class sizes being 12 to 15 students, setting high goals and expectations, opportunities for projectand inquiry-based learning, communication of the benefits of attendance of these programs, and then also offeringadditional enrichment options. So, both of the programsbetween Freedom School and Camp Summer addressing basic needs. We provide breakfast, lunch, and transportation freeof charge to families for these summer learning programs. Of course, in addition to welcoming staff to create those environmentsof solid relationships. Air conditioning and break spaces, really important in thesummer if you don't have it. It's, you know, especiallywith air quality things and different things, it does really help with the learning environments. So, our Camp Summer classes ended up being about 10 to 12 studentsper one licensed teacher, and we also had someadditional parasupport. The Freedom School modelis a partnered model between targeted services and then the servantleader interim positions, and that's 20 students per class. So, it's 20 students with twoadults at a one to 10 ratio. Setting high goals and expectations. Our documentation for these programs is in a continual learning plan, which is created with assessment data that is collected by teachersthroughout the school year. And then each student getsan individualized goal or several goals that are all aligned with what our districtinitiatives are in terms of those. Project and inquiry-based learning. So, opportunities to kind ofseek out things on your own or do some project-basedthings through Freedom School. There's the National Day of Social Action. - [Tim] Yep. - [Nicole] Did you wannasay more about that? - [Tim] Yeah, just that aspart of the, so all there... We're one of 14 or 15chapters in the metro that offer our Freedom Schools program, but the program across theentire US does all group together for around a nationalday of social action. And every day, every year,they pick a different theme or topic they would like to address. Last year, our focuswas on access to books. So, we actually partnered withthe local library. Had the... Can't remember her official title, but I'll just call her the director of the Ramsey County Libraryhere in White Bear Lake, came out and was oneof our morning readers. Talked about all the resources that are available tostudents in the library. And then we also providedthem with applications to get their own library card and for those that weren'table to get theirs. So, yeah, all the studentsfilled out an application for a card and they, even if they didn't. We did take a field tripto the library as well, so they could see all that was there and they were awarded their card that day when they got there. And then everybody that applied late were able to get them theircard at a different time. So, it was really nice to kind of showcase what's available to themfor free, at no cost to them right here in our local downtown area. - [Nicole] And then inour Camp Summer model, the morning program iscreated by licensed teachers and we moved it to betheme-based for summer learning. So, they have the opportunity to potentially create their own business, learn about animal adaptations, and kind of do a project-basedlearning around that. Daily wonderings. There'sa lot of different bugs. Baking, cooking, all sorts of things thatteachers have come up with that have been really great for kids to wanna keep coming backevery day in the summer. So, communication of thebenefits of attendance. So, we communicated this in several individual phone conversations. We had flyers. It wasall over those pieces. Registration, email tofamilies and newsletters, and just sharing that the moreconsistently you can attend, the better the outcomes for your student. And then adding additionalenrichment opportunities. So, in Freedom School, there'stwo hours in the afternoon, and Camp Summer, there'san hour and a half that we just added this last year. And then each of the programs has a little bit of a different schedule. So, Tim is gonna run usthrough Freedom Schools. - [Tim] Yeah, thanks. Yeah, so this is just kind of a snapshot of a day in the life of ourSummer Freedom Schools program. And really, I mean, the program itself, just like most of our summer learning, is really to get the kids engaged to think about school alittle bit differently, right? Get them in our buildings, have a great time, have a great experience outside of what a traditionalschool day might look like just to gain that positiverelationship with their building, their activities, theirstudents, their peers, and the people and the adultsworking in the building. So, we start every day withbreakfast in the morning. Our teachers and staffare encouraged to sit and have breakfast withthe kids in the morning as they get there. They get a little recess time before we bring everybody elsein for the morning Harambee, which is a morning, daily morning kickoff kind of celebration for the day if you've ever beenthere to visit with us. It's very loud. It's very high energy. But yeah, so we have songs in the morning. Daily affirmation typepieces with the kids. We bring in a morning readaloud guests every day to read a book that either wasimportant to them growing up or something that's important to them now that they wanna share with the scholars. And then give time for those scholars to ask questions about, "Oh,why'd they pick that book?" Or as an example, when the director fromthe library came in, you know, they get to ask herquestions about the library or what else can they do there. And to really kind of give them time to, we really try to focus onasking high level questions, not just yes or no questions. But why do you like this book? Like, what about this book speaks to you? Why did you want us to learn about it? Then a good chunk ofthe morning is grounded in our academic and curriculumtime with a break for snack as well as a break to for D.E.A.R. time, which is "Drop everything and read." Over the span of an hour, wehave lunch and recess time for the kids and the staff as well. And then as Nicole mentioned earlier, our afternoons two hours in the afternoon, are based in kind of moreenrichment-based programming, which could be a variety of different arts and crafts activities, physical games or physical activities, outside sports activities,different games. We have a music and arts portion. You know, we have alot of skilled teachers and individuals that work that bring a lot of special talents into the program and it's really niceto be able to see them share their gifts with the students, as well to create some coolthings in the afternoon. A lot of the music and the arts pieces where we do an end ofthe summer celebration our last day invite parents in. And so, they put togetherdifferent performances and that type of activities and different things for theparents to participate as well. And then obviously, we always want studentvoice at the table as well. So, if students have different ideas of things they would liketo do in the afternoon, our hope is that we can partner with some of our adult leadersand teachers in the program to provide that opportunity for them to explore those interests that they might havein our afternoon time. And then we end the dayevery day around 3:30. So, it is a five-day week program, basically kind of a fullschool day as far as time goes and that's kind of whata typical day looks like. And then Nicole will speak to, oh. Oh, sorry. Yeah, just some picturesof different activities. We try to do one fieldtrip a week in the program. Those pictures on the left is when we took a tripout to Big River Farms. We have a partnership withthem in nutrition services, and the kids got to gokind of walk some property out in Marina in St. Croix. And we got to speakwith one of the farmers that has property there and what vegetables she grows, who she partners with to bringher food to when it's ready. It was very, very hot thatday, if you remember that day. Kids had fun, but they would tell you thatit was also kind of miserable because it was so hot. That picture on the bottom left is our trip to the science museum. So, there is a Freedom Schools chapter at the science museum. And every summer, the sciencemuseum blocks a whole day off. So, all the Freedom Schoolschapters come together for one day at the sciencemuseum, which is, yeah. It's just very, it wasa pretty cool thing. So, we are rocking those greenshirts there in that picture. And then Ally Meyer,one of our ML teachers who also works with us in the program doing some outdoor learning with the kids. A picture of kind of ourmorning setup in Harambee there with our guest reader up on the screen. And then the bottom is some of our staff that work in our buildingwith us during the school year and then also work with us in the summer. But it's nice, there'sa lot of opportunities for them to network and be connected with the broader MinnesotaFreedom Schools chapters for different opportunities. So, they were, a couple of 'emwere awarded some recognition at an event we had. So, it's nice for them to network with other school districts and organizations that also run that, and just kind of create thoseopportunities for, you know, peer teaching and learning ofwhat other programs are doing, and get them connected to other areas outside of just here in White Bear Lake. And go ahead. - So, then our Camp Summer model is set up a little bit similarly, but with a little bit of a different vibe. The morning is that kind oflearning-based opportunity that students are signingup for based on interest. So, whether it's bugs orgardening, astronauts, space, STEM, there's a bunch of different options for them to sign up for. And then licensed teachersput together that curriculum. They present the topics for the day. Students practice their academic skills, math, literacy, social emotional learning. There's a Phy-ed rotationeach day for each class. Some project-basedlearning, our lunchtime, and then the afternoonenrichment activities. So, this summer, we tried totheme our days a little bit to get the kids excited about it 'cause it was a little bit of a longer day than they were anticipatingsigning up for. So, Mondays, the themewas the great outdoors, Tuesdays, science, tech,engineering, and math, or STEM, Wednesdays, career explorers, and Thursdays was health and fun. So, you can go each slide, next goes into these a littlebit more with the partnerships that we used on each of the days. So, on Mondays, it was outdoor recreation. The students got to go fishingat the pier right by the VFW, which was really cool. Twin Pandas took someof the kiddos kayaking at Bellaire Beach. So, they went out and just kind of triedthat out a little bit. Fishing Library, anotherlocal entrepreneur. He was able to bring kindof the fishing practice inside into the gym, so thekids would practice casting, and they would play gamesand different things before they actually went out to fish then in real life with a hook. And then there were a coupleof teacher-led activities. There was a fish life cycle and habitat sensory boxthat the kids really loved. And then we did theWildlife Protection Agency that helped them kinda explore some of the environmental stewardship and being able to do a scavenger hunt and kind of taking care of their community and picking up trash. So, then Tuesdays wasscience, tech and engineering. This was mostly led by our teachers through our Mindworks curriculum, which, the two curriculums that we really love are Grossology and All Stars. Grossology is a lot of fun. It's... They can teach you how tomake scabs like fake scabs. It's a lot of health-relatedthings that, you know, kids just absolutely eat up. So, that was really fun. And then All Stars was justfocused on kind of team building and the math components. Wednesdays was career exploration. So, there was a fun bingo where they won career related prizes, so they could kind of exploresome different options. We had a local author come in. She was a retired teacher. And so, after she retiredshe became an author. So, she kind of talkedabout her journey that way. One of our, a couple of our teachers did some greeting card illustrators and graphic designers toexplore some of those pieces. Entrepreneurship, smallbusiness, and then a muralist, a community muralist came inand did some activism pieces and helped them kind of taketheir own way of social action. So, that was very fun. - [Tim] Do you guys, do you remember the WhiteBear Center for the Arts? Did they... I can't remember the name. If you saw the muralson the side of there, the big murals they did, I can't think of the name of the exhibit. Sorry, I forgot the name of it. But yeah, Center of the Arts. We connected with Cadex Herrera. He also did a mural downin the George Floyd. He did the George Floyd mural. Did a couple other ones in St. Paul. So, he did, worked with usfor an exhibit over there. And then we were able to reach out to him, and he was gracious enough to come out and work with us last summer. Yeah, it was a really niceexperience with the kids. - [Nicole] And thenThursdays was health and fun. So, this is where we started kind of some of our collaboration withour school-aged care program, which is also something that I oversee. So, on Thursdays, they explored some ofthe extended day spaces and did some different things with just kind of the play-based learning. So, dramatic play, arts andcrafts, creative building. Gym games, very popular after being kind of in the classroom all day. They like to be active in the afternoon. So, some different lead gymgames that they could play. Our nutrition services department did a local producetasting and health lesson, which was really popular. Whenever food's involved,the kids get real excited. And then a safetydemonstration with a canine dog and with the police department. So, that was just kind of some fun things. But where everything wasrandom and didn't fit in, it happened on Thursdays. And so, this work has nowcontinued into this school year where we've been offeringthese community connections and programs in our after school model. So, this is the afternoon schedule that we proposed in thegrant program model. And basically, what it does is it increases access to after school, but also alleviating some of the barriers that we were experiencing. So, staffing, and then someof them for families as well, transportation and tuition costs. So, over the last few years, we've had a challenge recruitingstaff from 2:15 to 3:30 to provide access to everyonein our community who needs it. This partnership with some of our vendors who run classes from 2:15 to 3:30. And then the kids kind of come in to our school-aged care program where we have high school staff who are able to start at 3:30, and then families are able to opt in to transportation home at five o'clock if that's a barrier for them, and it's in partnership with NewTrax, which is a communitytransportation vendor. And then the program closes at 5:30. So, if parents didn't wannaopt into transportation, they could pick up theirkiddo anytime before 5:30. So, through this model. Through this model, overthe course of the time, so we started it rightafter MEA October 21st and it'll run all the way tothe end of the school year. It's at Birch, Lakeaires,Vadnais, and Willow. We are and have offered 151different types of courses. And I'll get into someexamples in a little bit of 871 individual sessions. So, each day, there areseveral sessions that happen that kids can choose from. So, it gives them about twoto four options each afternoon to explore something whichthey might be interested. We've been able to offer 50scholarships for students. We're currently transporting23 students home and we have are serving319 total students, which is just shy ofour 400 student goals. So, we're feeling really goodabout that in the first year. But that's kind of some ofwhat we're gonna focus on next year is more access to transportation and then serving some more students. All right. So, these aresome of the partnerships that we've been able to work with in the afterschool programs. So, there you can kind of see up there, there's a wide variety of different things that students can access. Foreign language and culture,engineering and STEM, sports and games, cooking and gardening, architecture, arts and theater. And the theater, oneof the theater programs also includes a partnership with the Children's PerformingArts Center at Vadnais where we started our first blended model of targeted services, academic, and then also the community partner. So, there's a licensed teacher partnering with that community vendor tobe able to create what we hope to kind of move forward in the future just because there's... This has been a model that's been able to help students exploredifferent academic skills in different ways. So, like for example, the 101Dalmatians play at Vadnais, there's 30 studentscurrently participating. 15 of those have continual learning plans that have individual literacy goals aligned to that play. So, they're working ontheir comprehension, their questioning, those kinds of things in sort of a different format. And then that leads usto our program goals for the upcoming summer and next year. So, we hope to increase more of those opportunitieslike we were talking about, where we're partnering a licensed teacher and a community vendor together to provide classes for students. Reaching our goal of serving 400 students across the four buildings, increasing our number of studentsaccessing transportation. And then for summer,for the upcoming summer, Tim and I hope to workmore in collaboration with our enrichment pieces tobe able to potentially blend or work more efficientlywith the afternoon enrichment between Freedom Schools and Camp Summer. - [Tim] I mean, we're blessedto have a lot of great staff and teachers and peoplethat work in our programs to provide these opportunities, but that afternoon enrichmentpiece is really nice to be able to bringoutside people in as well just to provide thoseadditional experiences from different community experts. And again, being able to bring that in to provide just a broadervariety for our students to participate is gonnabe really exciting. So, we're looking to embed more of that in for this upcoming summer. But we know that was a lot of information. But thank you guys for your time. And if there's any other questions, we are happy to answer them.- [Board Member] Thank you. Do we have any questions? Ms. Ellison? - Thank you so much. This isan incredible amount of work. So, my question is, are there ways for thecommunity to get involved? I mean, I know people might notknow that this is happening, so are there places for peopleto come in and be readers? Or, you know, how do people know about how they can participate? - Yeah, I think as far as like, I'll just reference like Freedom Schools for like our read aloud guests, like I'll usually putan all call out to staff and send messages out to the board, and my advisory council,if they have an interest or they know anybody else in the community that might have an interest or a connection that wants to do that, we are more, we try toget as big of a variety as we can of people that come in. So, we've had everybody from, I think we had a few citycouncil members come from here, from the city. I can't remember all of 'em at this time, but a lot of variety ofdifferent staff will come in from across our, you know. Our entire school districtcome in and help out too. But we have people fromthe county come in. A lot of different representation. And other team member had a relationship with a different author thatcame in and shared their book and answered questionsabout that stuff too. - Yeah, and after Camp Summer, we would love any opportunity as possible. I'm kind of the one who's coordinating and planning those pieces. So, anyone knows anyone thatwould like to be involved, absolutely send them my way. - Yeah, and we did our summer school tour to all the buildings andspoke with all the teachers and reminded 'em too, like there's opportunities for them to be involved in our programs this summer in either capacity as a teacherin one of these programs or if interested to... We have had teachersreach out to that say, "Yeah, I would love to doa summer camp opportunity," which is always availableto any of our staff. - [Ms. Ellison] That's tremendous. I mean, it's hard in the summer, especially if parents are working. It's really is such agreat space for students. So, thank you. - Okay. Mr. Skaar.- Thank you. The Freedom School, how is that funded? Is that funded through MDE or through the FederalDepartment of Education? How is that funded? - Oh, currently, that'sfunded through A&I dollars achievement integration dollars, as well as blended with target services. - [Mr. Skaar] Okay.- Yep. - [Mr. Skaar] And then- - [Board Member] And now the grant. Sorry. - So, when you got, I'm just curious, when you're applyingfor a grant like this, is there any out-of-pocketcosts associated with the application or do we do it internallywith our own staff to apply for the grant? - [Tim] Yep. Well, mostlyit's just our time. - Okay, great.- [Tim] Yup. - When you look at the 1.4 million over the next three years, what percentage would you say is, do we have to hire new staffor do we use existing staff? What's the lay of the land for how that $1.4 million is spent? - Yeah, so I mean, it's laid out. We hire staff to fillour needs in the program. We could be staffed thatwe already have part of our program or staffthat are currently, they could be a teacherduring the year and then work, applying for a summerposition with us internally. And then for FreedomSchools specifically too, we have a lot of internalstaff that are looking for summer work options and we have a small handful of new hires and staff that are coming in from outside the districtas well for those programs. I forget the other part ofyour question for those. Is it where the money goes? - [Mr. Skaar] Yeah. So, it's mostly staff is what you're saying? - Well, staff and then a lot of our, and Nicole can speak to alittle more detail with this, but we have a budget sheetthat we have to present to them of, you know, where ourexpenses are gonna go and that'll fall anywherefrom staff expenses, vendor experiences, other costs that areassociated with the program in terms of any, sometimes there's traininginvolved for certain things or just different costs for supplies, transportation like wementioned before earlier. But all those things are spelled out as part of that applicationapproved by them before they awarded us the grant. - [Mr. Skaar] Just one,couple other questions. One is on the grant objectives, you guys didn't come up with those 'cause they have number three. - [Tim] Yep. That's all from the state- - I imagine their priority order, but number three is toencourage school attendance and improve academic performance. You know, that, to me,should be number one, right? I mean, I think they gottheir priorities screwed up a little bit. And then the other thing is on your goals, if you could put that back up. The fact... I thought that was, I was delighted to see thatyou had a measurable goal there in terms of reaching the goal of serving 400 studentsacross four buildings. I think that's great. If you, on the other three goals, if you could think aboutputting some numbers on that, that would be helpful. But I mean, it soundslike it's a lot of work. It's a great, it soundslike it's a great program. So, thank you for providing this update. - [Nicole] Thank you. - Other questions? Ms. Thompson? - No question. Just a comment on, I knowhow much work that was. I looked through therequirements of the grant while doing my little bit of research on. That was a lot of work. So, thank you. Theyalways are a lot of work. But I just wanted to kindof see what you had to do and provide to them inorder to get the funding. So, thank you for that. And being one of thefew that were selected, that's, you know, hats off to you. I have been a reader. I think the first year, Igot to come in and read. A lot of fun. So, if he sends out the email and asks you if youwant to go in and read, I highly recommend it. It is a great time and justto be able to be there. And it's high energy, the kids. - [Tim] Yeah, we always warneverybody it's gonna be loud, it's gonna be energetic, and don't be surprisedif you're asked to dance a little bit at the end. - [Ms. Thompson] Right. Yeah.We did a little bit of that. And bringing in the communitypartnerships is great 'cause it aligns with our strategic plan and the mission of the district to kind of bring thecommunity into the schools and find ways to partner with 'em, so that they can be involved,which is always a great thing. So, thank you so much. It's great. - Thank you.- And the air conditioning. - Yeah.- Yeah, it is nice. - It is nice.- Very nice. - [Mr. Arcand] Well, thank you. And I just wanna say that thethings that caught my eye, the career exploration is huge. We know that we've gotta startdoing it earlier and earlier because of having studentsopportunity to kind of look and think about the different careers that they're gonna have out there. That was wonderful. Andthen contextual learning. We know when kids get tochoose what they want to do, it has meaning and theylearn it quicker and better 'cause they're learning it for a reason and they know why they'relearning it and that just helps. So, those two things that makesthat program all worth it. So, thank you for everything you do. - Thank you.- Thank you. - Okay. We're gonna move on thento discussion item B-2 Mariner Middle School. Dr. Gillespie and Dr. Pierre. - [Staff] Coming up. I'll introduce Dr. Christina Pierre, the principal at Mariner Middle School. And I'll let Christinaintroduce her rockstar team. - [Dr. Pierre] Yes. Hello, Chair Arcand and members of the board. Very happy to be here withour associate principal, Ryan Clark, as well as our instructionalcoach, Rachel Schmidt. We're just going to give you an update on what's been happeningat Mariner this year. So, this is our mission statement. We love our diversity. We want our communityto feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths and we commit to thesuccess of every learner. This statement was created bya group of staff, students, and families that cametogether a couple years ago to talk about who will webe at Mariner Middle School. And just so everyone remembers, this is our inaugural year. This is our first year ofexisting as Mariner Middle School. And we build on the legacies of three outstandingwhite Bear Lake schools. So, certainly, there's Mariner High School because we moved into the building that was originally Mariner High School. And we bring with us the legacies of Sunrise Park Junior Highand Sunrise Park Middle School. So, the staff and students moved out of Sunrise Park intoMariner Middle School, and so we carry all of thoselegacies forward with us. And a really special numerical fact to share with you all. The first graduating class of Mariner High School happened in 1974. And then 50 years later, we opened Mariner Middle School in 2024. And now, I'm going to hand it over. Ryan's going to start talking about what we've been doing this fall, well, this fall and winter at Mariner. - So, I wanna tell you, life at Mariner MiddleSchool has been busy. We've jampacked a lot ofactivities into our first year. One of the things we did iswe moved in and we set sail. And so, existing staff members said goodbye to old classrooms and moved into new classroomswith new furniture. Our students traversed unfamiliar pathways from classroom to classroomwithout much disruption. And we really did get back downto the business of learning. - Facebook. - [Ryan] Hmm. Oh, we can. Oh, that's fast. All right, here we go. Well, I'll tell you a little bit about an event we held in October. It was the set sail eventwhere we held a community event to show off our new newlyopened school building. In this event, we collectedmemorabilia to showcase and we posted enlarged imagesfrom old Mariner yearbooks that Mariner graduates and employees and curious communitymembers got to sort through and find themselves in. We spent some time bothshowing off the new building and honoring our past. This year, we've alsohosted a few legislators in our building, State Representative Brion Curran, and US, United StatesCongressman Betty McCollum stopped by Mariner Middle School. Their visits were jampacked. They got to experience things like a riveting civics lesson in Mr. Wind's US History class. They got to meet studentsin our allies program and they got to see some of thewonderful learning happening in our ASD cluster program. Here we go. We've really been enjoying our new spaces at Mariner Middle School. And so, one of thosespaces is our auditorium, which is a new opportunity for us. We've hosted ensemble music, concerts, and grade level assemblies. Our science teachers havereally enjoyed teaching in college laboratory sized classrooms. Our gymnast, or sorry, ourphysical education staff has enjoyed the challenge of getting kids to move throughout every square inch of our expanded gymnasium space. And our teachers have really enjoyed pushing into our flexspaces and new maker space to foster collaborative learning. Hey. If you come to Mariner Middle School, you might hear me saying,"Middle school is fun." We do fun there and it is fun. They've, our studentshave enjoyed a variety of, engaging in a varietyof middle school clubs and enrichment activities. We have held school dances. We've gone on field trips. And middle school kids have just enjoyed being middle school kids. - [Dr. Pierre] All right,so now we're going to shift to talking about ourbuilding goals for the year. And Rachel will talk about that. - [Rachel So, I'm going totalk about the way we have sort of streamlined ourgoal setting process to empower teachers to, and also help make thesegoals more tangible across the building andmore that we meet our goals. So, in August, we meant to, we, being teacher leaders, admin, we met to set goals for the year. That's pretty standard stuff.Make (indistinct) later. But we had four goals. First round, goal-directed behavior. So, that's measured onour SEL screener for, and basically a combination of two things. Students reporting whether they can make responsible decisions and also whether theycan manage themselves in those decisions. Also, a student engagementgoal that was measured by our 5D framework and rubrics and such. Student agency andrecognition also on DESSA, we use those measurements for them, really focused on students' reporting whether they feel seenand heard in school. And literacy achievementwas our fourth goal, specifically through an equity lens. And this is where it gets exciting. So, we really tried tochange the architecture of how these goals are working to help make there be a little bit more of an authentic learningprocess through the goals. So, we leverage ourprofessional learning leads by asking them which ofthose four goals are, is where their sort ofprofessional interests and skills lie. And then PLLs and me, myself, and admin were then assigned a goal to sort of own as that is the building goalthat we are gonna take on. And then that goal thenbecomes a committee. So, teachers picked acommittee and beyond. And that committee led by theprofessional learning lead, it's their job to help thebuilding meet that goal. And also, the teacher'sstudent learning goal was based on that. So, you would have yourown measurable SMART goal around, say, literacy orgoal-directed behavior. And the cool thing that happens then is that the professional learning leads are then sort of empoweredto lead kind of this PLC, doing action research,learning about best practices, giving individualized coaching to their like committee members to actually help 'em meet their goals. And meanwhile, we are sortof empowering those PLLs with those skills as well,which is very exciting. - And just to clarify, PLLsprofessional learning leads, they are teacher leaders in our building. So, what we're really doingis empowering our teachers to lead other teachersand achieve our goals. - So, I'll talk about two of the goals. The first is our biggestcommittee, which is very exciting, which is the student engagement goal. They have been doingaction research cycles where they will bring sortof engagement concerns or engagement thoughts to the table. They will then develop astrategy to work on together. They'll enact that strategy,then come back to the table, discuss it, refine it, et cetera. And the cool thing isthat as they do that, the cream rises to the top, right? The engagement strategies that work best start coming up again and again. So, they are developing astudent engagement toolbox to sort of codify theirwork and help it, you know, keep running for years to come, and it had these four components. This is what they're discussing. Instructional strategies,classroom systems, classroom management,and relational capacity, all of which have to dowith student engagement. And then the next one,my committee. So fun. So, like I said, goal-directedbehavior is two measurements, which is responsibledecision-making and self-management. And I don't know if you'vemet middle schoolers, but that does tend to bea growth area for them. And so, the first thing wedid was we reviewed research on sort of why that is such asticky thing in middle school. So, that we could infuse our goal setting with students with best practices, so that teachers are workingon better goal setting with students in their classroom. We also did a building-wide, we're gonna do twobuilding-wide interventions in goal setting to help them continue. - [Ryan] Now, I'm gonna tell you about two of our other committees. The first is our student agencyand recognition committee. And what I wanna tellyou about this committee is that we know the sense of belonging is really important in middle school. It's just a kind of a truth. And so, this group has reallybeen rolling up their sleeves and learning more, getting kind of curious and learning more about what makes a middle school student feel a sense of belonging. We've jumped into our DESSA data. If you're unfamiliar withDESSA, it's a questionnaire that measures the student'ssocial emotional skills. After analyzing our data,our committee has engaged in what we call interviewsto learn more about the data. Right? And what our students have told us is they feel a really strong senseof connection with the staff and the adults in our building. But some of their peers canbe a little less predictable. And so, there's an opportunity for development and growth there. And so, our committee members have piloted small belonging interventionsin their classroom spaces, in their content area. And the work is ongoing. Our next committee is literacyachievement committee. Teachers on this committeeidentified students that were behind and developed interventionsto increase literacy. Looking forward, theirplans are to gather data, reflect, adjust, and redesign and implement the nextround of interventions. - [Dr. Pierre] So, that's what'sbeen happening at Mariner. Do you have some questions for us? - [Mr. Arcand] Any questions? Mr. Skaar?- [Mr. Skaar] Thank you. Okay. Thanks for presentingthis. It's nice meeting you all. A couple of things. One of the things is whenyou go to the first slide. At Mariner Middle School,we have all of these things, but I don't see anything aboutlike academic achievement, which is an academics and education, which is our primary goalunder the state mandate. So, I would just take that back to say we need to huddle aroundacademic excellence, focus on that kind of inour mission statement. 'cause it's important. And I have a keen sense of the obvious. So, I saw that. I thought,"Oh, well that's not there." Maybe we should kindof take a look at that. The other thing is how doyou, guys, since you're new, how are you establishing like a baseline to measure yourself in,you know, down the road? Do we already have a baseline?We already have that. - So, our entire staffand student body moved from one building to another. So, like we're a new school in some ways. But in other ways, we do have some longevity to look back on. - So, when we look at data,we're comparing to Sunrise 2020. But that's the same list. So, we would look atlike our old Sunrise data with our last year data. We don't think we don't have that. - [Mr. Skaar] I see. So, theother thing is on your goals, you know, can we get somekind of meat around them in terms of where weare and where we think, and just the numbers? You know, we project A. We're at A. We plan to be at B. And this is kind of, youkind of have the how part, but not the, you know, the number part of what we're trying to do. - [Dr. Pierre] Yeah,you're absolutely right. We have the numbers. We just didn't put themin the presentation. - [Board Member] They get tochoose from a menu of things to talk about these specific ones. We absolutely can get you the data. But each one of our buildingshas measurable goals with those around different topics. Student engagement,academic, and then also... - Thank you. And thenjust one other question. Like, for sense of belonging, I know that's reallyimportant in middle schools. I switched middle schools when I was young and I think it probablyhad an impact on me. An adverse impact. No, Idon't. I'm just kidding. That manifests itself today anyway. But you know, one of the things is, like, sense of belongings and important, but the broader spirit, spirit things, it's like happiness. I mean, kids that are happy, you know, are gonna havea sense of belonging. They're also gonna do this, that, so, you know, it's just,it's the whole picture. - Yeah.- Yeah. - Just a comment. - Thank you.- Thank you. - [Mr. Arcand] Chair Ellison. I mean, sorry. Ms. Ellison - [Ms. Ellison] Passed the gavel by- - [Mr. Arcand] Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got used to that last time. - [Ms. Ellison] Well,I have two Mariner kids living in my house. And so, one is an eighth grader who had to transition from Sunrise and the other one is a sixth grader, so coming to middleschool for the first time. And the first couple of weeks,I'm sure that you felt it. It was just like a beehive as everybody was kindof learning everything. But what I found that asthey both have settled in, Mariner feels really good to both of them. You know, the older one hadto learn this new school, but he talks about Marinerand not Sunrise, right? And then the little one,I mean, the fact that... that you can host bandconcerts at the building is so important because it's not like studentshaving to go elsewhere. So, I think that sense ofcommunity is really strong. I mean, just from the twothat that live in my house. I also have a questionabout student belonging 'cause I feel like that is so important for the middle schoolers. Because if they don'tfeel like they belong, it's gonna be hard for themto do all of the other things. So, my question is, as you continue withthese four committees, how are you going to involvestudents in those outcomes? I mean, I love that you're having these empathy conversations because it's hard to be in middle school. - Yes. - So, how are students gonnabe part of the solution? - [Ryan] Oh, I think that'sthe opportunity, right? We've explored with a lotof interventions in class to know and be knownour classmates, right? To share a little bit about each other. But I do think that theopportunity there is leveraging students for each other, right? Leveraging their relationships, and leveraging ways for them to be more predictable for each other and foster more of a senseof community with them. How that looks like, you know, that's really what thecommittee is for, right? It's ongoing work with that group, but we are putting someof our best people on it. - [Ms. Ellison] Wonderful. Thank you. - Thank you, Ms. Ellison. Anyother questions? Ms. Thompson? - Just a few comments. This is great. Thank you so much for this. And I'm sure it's been interesting this first year of the building. I did go to the openhouse with my daughter who is a 10th grader. So, she's never had the pleasureof being in that building other than for somefunctions here and there. And it's interestingbecause you often hear kids would complain about the circles, right? But she's like, "Oh my gosh, how do you even know whereyou're going in the building?" So, it's just fun to see thedifferent perspective from kids who haven't been in that building or, you know, she won'tbe in that building. I think you guys had mentionedthe student engagement piece and the students had actually recognized that they need to build aconnection amongst themselves, which I think is, middleschool kids recognizing that, that's fantastic. So, that's a great place to start to kind of work on thatpiece of belonging. And just to add into, it is important for all of our kids to feel like they belongin all of our buildings throughout their entireexperience in our district. Ensuring, I would just add that it's hard to ensure they're happy. We can do our best toensure that they're happy, but we can't fix all the things that are outside of our control, right? So, ensuring that whenthey come to our buildings, they do feel like they belong there and they can have that littlereprise in our buildings to make it so that theywant to come to school, which I see is really what you guys areworking at building here, is having them beexcited to come to school and to have that time there, and that, I mean, if they'realready working on it and recognizing theythemselves need to figure out how to build relationshipsamong themselves. And that's a big win.So, thank you so much. - Thank you.- Thank you. - [Mr. Arcand] And we all knowthat I have a special spot for Mariner. I wanna say thank you because a lot of thethings that we talk about, we love our diversity. We want our communityto feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths and we commit to success of every learner. I felt like that's a continuation from when we were in high school there. And that was important because you felt like youcould conquer anything. You could move on. When you're a family,you want to go to school. You could be happy and confident even when things don't go the way we want. Being part of the family was important. So, thank you for thatand let's keep it up. And I think that's just gonna help us continue to be successful. Thank you. All right, well, thank you. All right. B three. Our nextitem is Willow Lane Elementary, Dr. Gillespie and Mr. Menier. - [Dr. Gillespie] I'llintroduce Matt Menier. - Menier. Sorry. - [Dr. Gillespie] Principalat Willow Lane Elementary. - [Mr. Menier] Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair Arcand and board members. It's good to see you again. Nice to meet you for thefirst time, Mr. Skaar. I'm Matt Menier. I'm theprincipal of Willow Lane. Happy to be presenting to you. I don't know if, do I justclick on the next thing? Beautiful. So, I'm going to give a little update on what's been going on in our building, speak specifically to oneof our building goals. Talk a little bit aboutsome of the both academic and behavioral successes thatwe have seen over the year. But first and foremost, put our beautiful childrenat the forefront here. When you come to Willow, you'll find a very caringand committed community that celebrates and welcomesdiverse perspectives and certainly has a population that I'm proud to beone of the leaders of. Some of the things that wehave done so far this year include allowing students tobe recognized with Bear books. And so, every day, on the announcements, I announce a birthday. And as a result of someof our title funds, we're able to buildpartnerships with our families. We allow the kids to pick out a book that we purchase with our title funds. We send home activities to make sure that the parents areworking with their students on improving their literacy scores, but we always find thatit's a nice opportunity to honor them. Next, I'm really proud of the ways that we have built in outdoor experiences and this opportunity for students to play and explore different spaces. So, each one of our gradelevels will do some aspect of camping throughout the year. Most notably, our fifthgraders at the end of the year will go to Camp Icaghowan in Wisconsin to spend a couple of nights there to learn more about theenvironment around them. And each one of our othergrade levels will go to a nature park for a day. Most recently, ourfourth graders were over at Dodge Nature Center and we were doing some science projects. So, we were looking atthe thickness of the ice and using an ice auger to determine how cold the water was, right. So, we dropped a thermometer in the water, made some predictions about how cold we thought the water was. We also learned how to build a shelter. As you can see, the girlsput together a nice shelter to protect themselves from the wind. We learned how to build a fire. And so, that's a part of us making sure that we understandthe world around us, and that's connected to us. One of the other areasthat I'm very proud of is our ability to understand that our world is biggerthan just ourselves. So, service learning is a big component of what we try to bring andbring into our environment. Because we are a student, we are a school thatreceives a lot of money from compensatory funding, one of the ways that we'vebeen able to allow students to give back is to build connections with our community members. The Rotary Subaru, someother community partners, what happens is thosecommunity partners donate money to our school district,Willow specifically. Our students then participate in something called Minnow Tank, which is a play of shark tank. And they are able to then research a topic that they're interestedin learning more about and to give money back to. They present to the sharks. I know that I see a Minnow. I see a couple ofMinnows in the room today who have had an opportunityto listen to our third and fourth graderspresent on various causes, cancer, dogs, homelessness, what have you. And then the sharks, minnows then decide which group will win. So, this is a very project-based learning. It talks about service, and allows our studentsto charitably donate to an organization thatreally resonates with them. And so, one of the picturesthere at the bottom is one of the organizations, and that was an organizationwhere students were able to purchase beds for studentsthat do not have beds. And so, they were able topresent that check to them. And you can even see some other district staff membersthere like Carol Bacon that helps to lead one of the groups. And so, while those are very fun, I want to make sure that we're intentional about what our studentoutcomes are both academically and through our social andemotional and learning. And as a result of my leadership at Willow and the opportunity to learnmore about what we need to do from a school perspective, when you really boildown what we try to do in terms of initiativeswith our staff members, you really need, youcan focus on two things. Well, so a few years ago I said, when we really stripped this all down, what do we ultimately wantour students to be able to do? So, we got down to we need students to beable to read, period. And then when they come toWillow, they need a feel of love. And you've mentioned multiple times when you were talking tomy colleagues from Mariner how it matters to feel likeyou belong in middle school. I will say the same thingsapply in elementary. They've applied everyaspect of our building. So, we're gonna do two things. We're gonna teach 'em how to read and we're gonna make surethat they feel the love. How are we going to do that? We do that, not only through our staffbecoming more knowledgeable about how to teach readingthrough the science of reading. So, most of my staff membershave participated in that. The only people thathaven't yet are people that are new to our system, and they're startingto start that journey. And then by implementingour tier one instruction and our curriculum through CKLA, which is our board-approvedliteracy curriculum. How will they feel the love? There's really two areas thatwe focus on at Willow Lane, our board approvedcurriculum of Second Step, which allows us to explicitly teach kids how to problem solve andhow to navigate situations. My colleagues over atMariner talked about the fact that they're using DESSA toquantify some of those results. And so, how are kids reporting that out? And then secondly, weare in our third year of being a BARR school. BARR, as some of you know, oh, actually, I'll goback just one second. BARR stands for BuildingAssets, Reducing Risk. I'll talk about that in just a second. So, to speak specifically,well, not really specifically, but more so about some of the ways that we've been highlightedor featured at Willow. Most recently we were featured as a school that was really beingintentional about the ways that we're helping ourkindergartners to learn. I was presenting in front of this board a little less than a yearago about some of our results that we have seen with kindergartners and the way that we'reable to decode the way that we are able tounderstand letter sounds and then obviously howthat leads to reading. Minnesota Educator highlighted us and our kindergarten team on that. And most recently, we werealso highlighted on MPR where I was able to talkto Elizabeth Shockman and tell her a little bitabout our success as a school and the ways that we are movingforward in terms of literacy that are very exciting. We, myself, and along witha couple other colleagues, also presented most recently in the summer at a LEAD conference, whichwould be one of the... It's a pretty prestigious conference that takes place at the U. And so, we were lucky enoughto be able to present at that and present some of our academic success. Talking a little bit aboutthe ways that we help the kid, the whole student from a perspective, we really implement two strategies. One being Second Step, which is again our boardapproved SEL curriculum about how we help studentsnavigate issues when they arise. And then secondly, using BARR. BARR is really a frameworkfor how we talk about students and how we build on their assets, and then begin to create solutions and strategies to help them. I will say that BARR does an excellent job of building those relationships. So, when we started to talk about, "Well, what is that sense of belonging? I will say that relationshipsat time precede the learning. And so, how do our staffbe able to understand what the students' needs are? And then consequently,how can students learn a little bit more aboutthemselves and others as we explore this in our morning meetings and what have not. So, we have three goals. One is our academic goal and one is our family engagement goal. The one I'm talking abouttonight is our student, the student experience goal. And so, we said by spring of2025 as measured by DESSA, and I can talk a littlebit more about that. Mariner talked a little bitabout what the DESSA is, but it's a screener thatallows us to determine how students are thriving, and what are some areasthat they might need a little bit more instruction. We'll decrease the number ofstudents who need instruction. So, whatever those area, there are eight different competencies that we're looking at. And Mariner talked about a couple of them. But how are we taking thatDESSA screener that we do, a little bit differentin the middle school that students' self-report where they are. In elementary school, theteacher does the analysis of where they think thestudents are thriving and where are some areas where they need a little bit more instruction. So, DESSA is what we use to screen that. So, we have both quantitative data that we can see fromDESSA and then those BARR or Second Step activities allow us to have some qualitative data. How is the student participating in this? Why are they more reserved? How are they navigating some of those conversations that we have? I also wanna talk just very briefly, the state of Minnesota has MTSS as a way for us to advise schools on how to utilize thesefive different components. Our three building goals that I mentioned tie to every one of these. And BARR allows us to do that in a way that is very streamlined, so that we can talk aboutevery single student regardless if they are thriving or whether they are needing a little bit more of instruction. By the end of the year, in fact, typically byabout MEA, so mid-October, we will have talked aboutevery single student in our building, whetherthey are thriving, doing exactly what they need, or they need a little bit of help. And we do that through ourbig and small block meetings. And that can focus on either some of their academic successes or some of the ways thatthey need some extra help when it comes to doingsome of those things that make them a well-functioning student. So, while we don't go intothose five different components with our students, we tie everything aroundthese three qualities with our staff and students. Whenever you're at Willow, you will hear us talking to students in one of these three components. Self-control, empathy, and cooperation. If you come to Willow and you ask a kindergartnerwhat it means to be empathetic, they will be able to tell you. If you ask a fifth graderwhat it looks like, what it means to cooperatewith one another, they will tell you what that looks like. Everything that we do isvery specific. Very concrete. I do not say to a kindergartner, "It seems like you have a wiggly body." I will not say that. Ourstaff will not say that. They'll say, "It seems likeyou're having some trouble with self-control. How can we help with that?" Or we'll go to a first grader. Like, when you picked up thatstudent off the playground, you were showing empathy. Do you understand what that means? It's really cool to see a kindergartner or a first grader be ableto use some pretty big terms to describe what they are doingor what they are not doing. These connect, these three, this promise connects to the things that we're doing in the classroom. You times are opportunities for us in BARR to build relationships. The Second Step is ourability to work with kids to help problem solve. So, can I click on this? - [Board Member] Yeah. Click it. - Okay. So, every day Ido a morning announcement, and we highlight students that are demonstratingthe Willow Lane promise. Every month, we have a theme. This month happened to be themonth of showing perseverance. The Willow Lane promiseties into that, right? Being empathetic. There'saspects of perseverance. Being in cooperation.Being in self-control. This is Noah. He was a kindergarten. This was an announcement from last year. But I think it does a really good job of showing how Noah has persevered from not knowing how toread when he came to school to now knowing how to read. And if we don't have timefor the video, that's okay. It is very cute. - [Board Member] Agreed.- Holy cow. All right, so let me tellyou why Noah is here. Noah is here because he's astudent that shows perseverance. That's a big word, isn't it, Noah? - Yeah.- Yeah. It's a big word. And we have to continue to kind of define what that word means. What is perseverance?- It means- - What? Oh, yeah. Go ahead. Never giving up. That's right. And now, listen to what Ms.Moorehead said about Noah. Noah regularly shows perseverance throughout our learning times each day. During our morning literacy time, Noah demonstrates perseveranceby using self-control, and, this one's really important, he's using his listeningskills to stay on track. If he feels that she, that Ms. Moorehead is goingtoo fast on the activity, he uses his words, he takes a deep breath, and he perseveres through the activity. That's really tough. 'Cause sometimes, whenour teachers are teaching, sometimes, like, oh my gosh,I'm starting to get tired. And I'm starting to like, ooh. I didn't sleep well last night. But Noah perseveres through that. Noah has been workingvery hard on the skill and I'm so proud of him. And so, Noah, why do you do that? Why is it important to persevere? - Well, if you give up,you don't get to do it. - Mm-hm.- But if you, like, keep doing it, you mightget to get it finished. - Now, one of the thingsthat I saw Noah persevering with just, you know, yesterday was he was reading three-letter words. Do you remember thatwhen you were doing that? And I saw him, like some of the wordswere kind of tough, right? But he didn't give up and he was able to sound out the words. Now, Noah, before youbecame in kindergarten, were you able to like readthe way that you're reading? - No.- No. Is it easy to just learnhow to read or is it hard? - It's hard.- It's hard. Does that mean that we should give up and not be able to read? - No.- No. Because now are you starting to read books and words on your own? And doesn't I feel good thatyou can actually do that? So, I asked Noah. DoesMs. Moorehead persevere? And what did you tell me? Do you remember? - Ms. Moorehead, when shedoesn't get what we're saying, she doesn't give up listening. - She doesn't give up listening. So, sometimes, maybesomebody says something and she doesn't quite like hear it or she doesn't quite understand it. Am I right about that? But she's just like... Doesn't matter. Noah, what does she do? How does she persevere? What does she do? - Well, we try to do it in adifferent way so she can know. - Ah, we do things in a different way. Sometimes, we had to dothings in a different way. My goodness, look how smart he is. He's just so smart. From his mouth to our ears, we've got to be able topersevere when things get hard. Okay, so what else isgoing on today? Oh, my. So, that's Noah. The kid clearly understandswhat perseverance is. He's demonstrating what perseverance is. And Noah is a successful readeras a result of the hard work that we are doing a daily basis to ensure that these letter sounds turn into words, which then turn intoparagraphs and sentences. So, what do we do in termsof our family outreach then with that? The teachers nominate thestudent for whatever it is. I take that nomination. I findthe student. I bring them in. We do the morning announcements. I send this email out to our families. I talk about, in this case, this was an email about growth mindset. I talk about what the teacher said about the student to the parent. And sometimes, I don't get aresponse back from the parent. Okay. Sometimes, I get a responseback from the parent that says, "When we transferred a few years ago, we didn't know what to expect. A parent always hopes thattheir child's school is a safe and supportive place for their student to not only learn academically,but also emotionally. I haven't interacted with a single soul who doesn't have a spirit of goodwill for the students and their families. Your staff have made a considerable impact on my child's overall wellbeing, from navigating the changingeducational landscape during the pandemic toreincorporating community building to parent engagement nights,Willow Lane has hit the mark." There are times again when Ithink it's really important for our staff to see this,that this collective effort or this collectiveefficacy really matters, and the smallest littlething can be promoted to our families. And once they see that,it makes it much easier the next time I have to make a phone call that maybe isn't as smoothas an email like this. So, how do we monitor success? I'm just going to brieflytalk about how we do, what we're doing when we'retalking about having our times to be able to talk abouta student's progress. At block meetings, we met regularly. So, on a weekly basis, wetalk about students again all across the board tomonitor their academic and social, social and emotional progress. And then allows us to highlightsome of those strengths. We get to learn a littlebit more about our students. Our fifth grader, fifth grade girls just won a basketball tournament. And so, we talk about that as much as we talk abouthow they are progressing. And then how do we help those students that need a little bit moresupport and instruction. I'm not going to go intoo much with DESSA. Mariner already talkeda little bit about this. But we do a DESSA screening inthe fall, winter, and spring. Fall, winter and spring. And so, what we are able to determine from the fall, winter, and spring, and it's a little bit tough to see, but the areas in red are areas that, in the fall as compared to the winter, would be students that havesome need for instruction, some additional instruction on one of those eight competencies. In the blue is wheretypical students should be. And then the green highlightingstudents' strengths where they're really shiningin a particular area. I will say that, nationally,at the end of the school year, you should typicallyhave 16% of your students that have a need for instruction. You should typicallyhave students about 16% that have a strength of somesort as measured by the DESSA. And then the rest kind offall into that typical range. We had a goal, if you go back to ourstudent experience goal, that we wanted to have 5% of our students with the need for instructionat the end of this year. We've gone from 15% to 12%, still below what thenational norm would be. And we have grown our students with strengths from 20% to 30%. And so, that allows us to understand that the work that we're doing has value, that it means that studentsfeel valued for who they are, and that we continue to findways to help those students that need some areas for growth when it comes to needs instruction. And that is mypresentation. Any questions? Mr. Skaar? - [Mr. Skaar] Thanks.- [Mr. Menier] You're welcome. - I think one of your keysto success is your focus. I mean, you're very focused.You have the numbers. I mean, I think it's, you know, it's great and I think one of the insights that you kind of glossed over was, and I wrote it down becauseI said it many times, people and kids want to be part of something biggerthan themselves, right? So, that leads to, you know,this sense of belonging. I think that was an, I think that's really important that you, and I'm rewording it a little bit, but it also goes back tothe sense of belonging and also happiness. And I've done a lot ofresearch on happiness. Because as a parent, you're only as happy asyou're least happy kid, right? So, gratitude is a directcorrelation to happiness. So, I think if you, you know,you had perseverance there. So, just as a suggestion, another virtue is demonstrating gratitude 'cause it's tied to happiness. But other than that, thank you. And I really appreciate yourfocus on two initiatives and really driving those initiatives because you're getting the results. - Yeah. I appreciate it. And you'll be happy to know that November is our month to celebrate gratitude. That is one of the themes. - [Mr. Skaar] I love you. - Okay. Other questions? Ms. Ellison? - Just wanna say thank you for this work. More kindergarten videos please. - Yeah, they're pretty great.- Well, I mean, it was really good thoughbecause I love having the numbers and I love having the data. But to see it articulated clearlyby a five or six-year-old, I mean, that's the workright there. So, thank you. - Yeah. And it's interesting. When we first developedthe Willow Lane promise, which was the beginning of last year, you know, there was somebodythat kind of mentioned like, "What does a kid know? What does a first graderknow about empathy?" And we had already beenteaching them, right? And so, "Oh, Carl, come on over here. So and so wants to know about empathy. Well, empathy is like when you know how somebody else is feeling and then you can kind ofread their body language and understand if you should help or if you should not help." I was like, "All right,Carl. See you later. Any other questions? Great.So, there's empathy." And we see our kids workingon that on a daily basis and so... So, it really is something where, when you teach them, they'll do it. They know how to do it. And then when they miss the mark, then we remind themthat's not showing empathy or perseverance or whatever. - Well, and you're giving them credit for the fact that kidscan learn this stuff. - Oh, yeah.- They're more than capable. So, I appreciate that.- Yeah. Thank you. - Okay, Ms. Thompson. - Yeah, great stuff. In the kindergarten, I sayanytime we can see the kids- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - That was wonderful. When yousend out the parent letters- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - We have a very diverse population of families in our district and some of 'em might not be able to read, which I know we don't know. Wouldn't be able to like discern that. But if they speak a differentlanguage in their home, I'm sure, are you guyssending the letter home in a format that the familywould be able to read what- - [Mr. Menier] Yeah.- The great things their kid is doing in the school? - [Mr. Menier] Yeah, wehave the technological tools to be able to do that. Like, through ParentSquare. You know, what's nice for me is when I go into ourstudent information system, I can read what their home language is. And so then, then I'mable to take that message, translate it into their home language, so. - [Ms. Thompson] That's great - While I can't do thatnecessarily with the video, I can do it with anability for them to see what the teacher said about them. - [Ms. Thompson] Yeah. That'swonderful. Thank you so much. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay, well thank you. And I'm gonna try to persevere here. - Yeah. - [Mr. Arcand] And saythank you, Mr. Menier. Get it correct. And so, and thank you foryour empathy and, you know. Let me learn it and remember it. So, thank you for everything you're doing. And I just wanna say, anytime I've had anopportunity to go to Willow, it is a community of love.- [Mr. Menier] Yeah. - And I love everything in there, and just the studentleadership and all just the joy and the fun that's going on. So, please keep it up.- Yeah, I appreciate that. And I've been called a lot worse so you... - I'll work on it. - Have a good night. Thank you. - All right, so now we're gonnago to discussion item B-4, student primary vendor proposal. Mr. Wald, Mr. Johnson, and Mr. Watson. - Thank you, Chair Arcand,members of the board, Dr. Kazmierczak. I have with me two very wise men in the world of transportation. First, a real legend whenit comes to perseverance, Dave Johnson, ourdirector of transportation 'cause you could never do the job if you didn't have perseverance. And Dave, how long haveyou been with our district? - 22. Almost 23 years. - 23 years. He knows where all theskeletons are hidden in the transportation department for sure. And Tom Watson with Watson Consulting. Tom is a 37-year finance professor at the University of Minnesota, retired from that position, several decades as mayor of North Oaks. - Represent part of WhiteBear Lakes School District. - That's right. That's right. And owner of Watson Consulting. He provides expertise inhelping school districts negotiate transportation contracts. So, today, we're gonna walk you through, it's where we're at withour primary vendor proposal. School districts have multiple ways that they can provide transportation to their, to their students. One is district can provideall the services themselves. And so, some school districts can do this. Most school districts choose not to do it because of the cost of runninga transportation program can be expensive andthe expertise required, The overhead costs, maintaining a fleet, management expertise that's required. Repairs, maintenance, labor,all of those things required to run a transportation department. But some school districts run their own. Some contract out, the second option, contract service provider. And in this case, statestatute allows districts to negotiate with contractors and agree to terms or up to 10 years. Those contractors mustfollow all state laws and school district policies related to student transportation. And oftentimes, a contractorbrings a level of expertise to a school districtthat they may not have within the world of transportation. And then finally, thecombination of district and contractor provided services, and this is what we havedone in White Bear Lake for as long as I recall. And that is a good balanceof getting the management, expertise of a contractor, as well as the in-houseknowledge of the community so that the families are well served. Regarding having districtprovided services and a benefit, I think, for our school district is by having our owntransportation department that provides some of our services. Our employees, our local employees who have a significant loyaltyto the school district, to the families of White Bear Lake. They know many of the families. Many of our drivers have beenwith us for a good long time. And so, we benefit from that loyalty and that internal knowledgeof our district and community. We're able to attract local, employees locally as well as retain them. Having the knowledge of a regional and national company can be very helpful. But in terms of them being loyal and committed to the school district, as your only service provider, you tend to lose that a little bit. So, we think we have thatbetter personalized service within our transportation department. Reason we ask Mr. Watsonto share with us tonight is that he has guided usthrough the RRFQ process and he's gonna just describe the process over the next few slides. I'll turn it over. - [Mr. Watson] Thank you, sir. One of the pieces that I wantto touch on on the slide here and the item at thebottom has got a red item with a line through it called bids. Any of you have been aroundeducation long enough know that virtuallyeverything you do is a bid. There's three exceptions. And those three exceptions are buying fuel to heat your buildings, buying fuel to operate your equipment, and contracting out studenttransportation services. That's it. Everything else is a bid process. So, every now and then,I have to remind schools when they put their legal notice together and they'll call it,we've got the bid out. I'll say, "No, no, no,no, no, don't do that." There's a provision in the law also says if you do this incorrectly,the contract is void. So, you know, we don't wantto go through this twice. So, the first step is obviously getting that legal notice out there and then putting this RFQ together. Part of what we do orwhat I do with districts in Minnesota and Iowa and Wisconsin in looking at this first stepand putting the RFQ together is to go back and kind of revisit the past couple, three, four years. In other words, if we'vehad a four-year term in that current experience isto go back and look at that and find out, did that system work? Did the process, did the contractor we hiredfor particular reasons work? Are there things that havechanged in the school district? So, we go into the '25-'26 year. I get an opportunity to describe what you've been through this past year in terms of buildings and redesign and the fact that we won't berunning ninth and 10th graders up to North school so forth and so on. And it doesn't make any difference if these contractors havebeen around a long time. So, that gets that piece together. We have to publish your legal notice. It has to be out in thenewspapers as you know, like anything else for two weeks. And we do that. What I maintain, havingbeen at this a long time, I maintain a directoryof virtually everybody that's ever operated aschool bus in Minnesota. And so, rather than waitfor them to call me, I will send out your legalnotice to those contractors, begging them to let me knowif they're interested or not. A lot of 'em are out there.I call 'em harvesters. They're out there getting the information 'cause they actually don'twant to bid on White Bear. They just want to have sometool to be able to go back to their other districtsand leverage that. See what they're doing in White Bear? Well, in this case, becauseyour prices are pretty good, they're probably not doing a lot of that. So, then we gave them basically six weeks to submit proposals andthose kinds of things. And on February 11th,we opened all of those. We had 21 what we calltype three providers. So, those are folksdriving primarily minivans and 10-passenger vansand that sort of thing. And we had five full-timeproposals on yellow buses, conventional class C busesthat you see every day and it was a pretty good response. Getting that many yellows here this year is actually improvement. I did Mounds View viewlast year and we had three. So, at least we're getting here. A lot of the national firms are not coming into Minnesota right nowand I'm not sure why, but I will find that out after. Part of my job in thesummertime is to go back and connect with studenttransportation of America or somebody else to say, "Whydidn't you bid on White Bear?" So, we open those. I put together a spreadsheetthat summarizes all the data that both comes into the pricing, as well as a lot of the qualifications, and we'll start goingthrough that fairly soon. I gotta find Mr. Walt's calendar and figure out how we getthrough that and we'll do that. Then the next two items really are putting together the proposalsand presenting 'em to you. And our target is right now. to have you act on this March 24th, Which means we've gotta bedone on what? March 17th. So, you got a week ahead of that. And the law requires us to disclose that we have offered the contracts to a responsible serviceprovider and the lowest cost. That's not the way the law reads. The statute says we're to provide it to the lowest responsibleservice provider. I always thought lowestresponsible service provider probably is a contradiction in terms. Would that be somebodywho's not very qualified? You know, somehow finesse us in some way. And then run over to the last. And then we've got managing the contracts. That's why these two gentlemenget to hang around all year and do those kinds of things. And about a month and a half, I'll leave and go on to the next. But we'll sit down and take a look. Mostly, the terms on alot of these contracts, we advertised for a four-year term, which was basically two years committed and a two-year option to extend. But as Tim pointed out,the legislature modified this particular section of law in 2020 that now allows us to actuallyoffer terms up to 10 years. However, don't think thatwe're gonna get a good deal because they don't wantto commit to 10 years anymore than you might think because these are price agreements. And the only way they can lock us into... is to be able to negotiateprices and stick to it. And they don't want to do that. They don't have any ideawhere the economy's going. They have no idea wherethe government's going in Washington or anything else. And so, we're luckyusually to get two years, and then we'll have prep. We'll structure options, which we may do, but we won't have prices and that sort out yearslike years four, five, six. Any questions? Well,finish up and then we'll- - [Mr. Walt] Yeah, then we'll finish. Yeah, we'll come back to questions. So, this indicates our twofull service providers. Those are the contractorsprovide all types of buses. So, the big yellow C and D buses, as well as the special ed route or buses and the types three providers, those vans and smaller vehicles. And if you look at the bottom line, you can see the kind ofthe trend of transportation from fiscal year '22 topast year, fiscal year '24. And our transportation expenses continue to rise at a pretty aggressive clip. And so, we've been ableto keep mileage down over last few years. But you know, ratescontinue to be a challenge for school districts. When we look at line 723,that's our special ed. Special needs transportationincludes McKinney-Vento or does not include McKinney-Vento. Okay. That indicates 728? 728. Yeah. So, that's where we've seenthe significant increase. The good thing about thespecial ed transportation is we do get reimbursement on it. That's not that we wantto see those rates go up. But when we look at our net transportation over those three years, we'veactually seen a decrease in what our transportationexpenses are after reimbursement. Come on. Okay. So, we're currentlyevaluating the quotes. You'll see what those type C and D buses, what those quotes looklike here in just a moment. The 21 type three van providers, those are those vehiclesthat can transport up to 10 students at a time. They're generally vans,SUVs, smaller vehicles. Those are very complicated contracts because there's so manyvariables that go into it. So, we haven't tackled that one yet. We've been mostlylooking at the big buses, but there'll be a lot of thought that goes into looking at those quotations because one might lookgood and one category and be a disaster and another. So, spend some time on that one. We have, as Mr. Watson said, we have five full service providers. I hope your eyes are better than mine. When you look on the left hand side, you can see the larger box there. We have four providerswho presented quotations and so that's where the contractorprovides a bus, a driver, and fuel all the things youneed to transport students. United Transport is not a company we've worked with in the past. They have a pretty low foot there, but they also will onlyprovide a maximum of 10 routes. And so, they can't bite it all off. But they could be a secondaryprovider potentially. We don't know much aboutthem. We've got more to learn. Metro Transportation Network, you may have seen those buses around town. They say MTN on them. That's been a little bit more expensive backup transport provider for us. Their quotation movingforward is pretty flat. And so, we know what we're getting there. They've been a pretty qualityprovider for us. They've- - [Mr. Watson] Yeah, they'vegrown over the past few years. - [Mr. Walt] Yep. First Student has been ourprimary vendor for many years. Right now, with fuel, they're 451 a route. Their proposal at 532.72, an 18% increase. And so, that's a increasewe're a little concerned about and we will work with them more to see if that can be negotiated. Looking in the upperright hand where it says "Contractor provided bus anddriver district provides fuel." That's the agreement we havewith First Student right now. And so, we're at 416.18with an increase to 487. That's if we provide the fuel. So, a 17% increase. The final submission wasfrom Dynamic Transportation and they said, "Well,we can't provide a bus, but we'll give you a driver and fuel." And so, there, I thinksix was their maximum that they could do, and they have a rate for that too. And that's probably not a solution that works very well for us. So, that's initially where we're at with our big bus providers,those type C and D buses. And we'll continue to negotiate or we'll begin to negotiatewith those providers to see if we can get alittle better rate on those. - For your benefit, oneof the things you may want to consider as you'relooking at these numbers, because as Tim wastalking about some fuel. Current diesel prices andyour conventional buses, these are the C buses with70 kids on potentially. We think the cost per day is about $30. So, when you want to compare those, if you look at that table,you know, with fuel. Presume without fuel, it's $30. If it's a price with without fuel, that's a $30 cost to the district. - Yep. Yep. So... Then finally, so we... Presenting the preliminaryquotation in the process tonight. So, you know the work that we're doing, we'll be coming back to youafter we flesh this out. We'll have that work done by March 14th and then present to theschool board on March 24th with a recommendationwe'll ask for the board to approve on March 24th. That's what we have foryou tonight. Any questions? - [Board Member] Any questions? Mr. Skaar?- Thank you. Oh, one thing you were talkingabout what requires a bid? What doesn't require a bid, professional services don't require a bid? - Professional servicesdon't require (mumbles) - Some professional servicesdon't require a bid. - [Mr. Watson] Most cases, that's true, but there's anotherlittle stickler in the law that talks about contractsthat exceed $175,000 a year. - [Mr. Skaar] Yep. I'm familiar with that. There's one that make that point. Are we looking at like best practices? Is that part of ourrequirement that they have to demonstrate some type of best practices or do we have any efficiency benchmarks that we're asking 'em to provide? Anything like that? - The answer to thatquestion is two parts. One, yes, we do that. But number two, there's alsoa section of subdivision law. Notice that when Tim wastalking about subdivision one, subdivision three,there's a subdivision two that's a best practicesprovision for construction. We can't use that in busing. So, we have to take a look at, you know, their best practices relative to interviewing other bus company. I mean, other school districtsthey worked with, et cetera. So, we will be doing that. That's what we're gonnado over the next 10 days. - All fleets are, you know,are looked at by the state. - State patrol.- Yeah, think state patrol. And so, we can look atthe records too to see, do they have buses thatare frequently down that would be a concern to us? So, those that's one, youknow, a metric we can look at. - And so, do we view transportation as a core service of a district? Is that a core? Because obviously,education is a core service. Is transportation a coreservice of our district? - I don't know that I'dsay it's a core service. I think it's an importantservice that we provide. - So, that would be, havewe ever looked at, you know, just kind of turnkey, outsource all of allof the transportation? How much do we spend in transportation, this contract plus our internalcosts to have that handy? - [Mr. Walt] Yeah, ourtotal expense for FY '24 was $9,324,000 in transportation costs. Our reimbursement fromthe state was $6,500,000. So, we're at about twopoint, just over 2.8 million in general fund transportation expense. - So, about 1/3 of it we isinternal. 2/3 is outsourced. - [Mr. Walt] Yeah.- Okay. Gotcha. And then how, how do wemeasure, like, how much... How is transportation... What's our utilization? I mean, from time to time, I see buses that have a lot of kids. Other times, I see theydon't have a lot of kids. I mean, how, as a percentageof students in the district, how many are using our transportation? Do you know that? - Yeah. How many kids are we transporting? - We transfer about 6,000 a day out. You know, providing 6,000 trips a day for students back and forth, and... - [Mr. Skaar] About 3/4. - Yeah. The issue being asfar as utilization goes, you know, we try to fulfillthe needs generally, you know, the to and from. That's the basic need. But then in addition to that, we go throughout the dayproviding additional services that might include shuttleservices for teams or activities. So, sometimes, you'll see vehicles that have less than fully loaded vehicles. We do incorporate the type three vehicles quite a bit in that, well, we have a lot ofMcKinney-Vento students, - Homeless.- And homeless students. And we also have a group ofcare and treatment students that, you know, we'rerequired to transport just to get them through their challenges. And so, you know, we're kindof the outsource over there that tries to helpeverybody as much as we can. And so far, the transportation hasdone a good job doing that for the most part. One thing I don't know... You know, Wayne obviouslyknows me and and board members. I'm sorry. I don't knowhow many of you know me. My point being, andI've told Wayne and Tim, if you don't know me,I'm doing a good job. - [Board Member] Right. That is true. - Most people on the districtknow him as Safety Dave. - One of the question, another, maybe the final questionand maybe a comment, but why did we feel weneeded an outside consultant to help us with this? Is that typical? It seems like you guys have the expertise that you could do this yourselfwithout adding a third party to, you know, go throughthe bidding process? What was the thought process with that? - Yeah, I appreciate the question. So, transportation bid or RFQ process processesis pretty complicated. And to have someone likeTom Watson who is familiar with what's going on across the state and very specifically aroundthe metro, knows the providers, knows the trajectory there on. And so, he's pretty goodat being able to warn us, we might wanna stay away from this one. This one, I've seen inthese different districts. Here's what we're getting.Here's what I'm seeing from them. So, that level ofexpertise is not uncommon for school districts, and most metro school districts work with consultants on transportation. - [Mr. Skaar] That's helpful.- Yeah. - [Mr. Skaar] And then onelast, just a comment, you know, you can be low cost andresponsible at the same time are not mutually exclusive. I just caught that one comment. Having been a low cost,responsible, better and fast, I understand that. - [Mr. Watson] That'swhat's in our statute. Just those very words. - [Mr. Skaar] Yes. Thank you. - [Mr. Arcand] Other questions? I just have one question.I'm sorry. I'm gonna ask it. So, do our White Bear buses, they operate within the White Bear area. And then outside White Bear,that's what we contract. Is that correct? How does it work? - [Mr. Walt] So, do you wanna answer that? - Okay, so your question being, we operate primarilywithin district boundary. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay.- Okay. We do operate outside the boundary for homeless McKinney-Ventostudents and things like that. For the most part, the big buses, those are within boundaryand you'll see more. - [Mr. Arcand] I'masking you the question. We have a district bus orwe have a contracted bus. How do we know where they go? How do we know what their routes are? - Oh, okay. Basically,we look at the routes and look at our services that, you know, the primaryroutes that maybe we want district drivers to be doing in particular versus different areas wherelike MTN, I'll just say that, there are... They provide nine of our buses and basically they coverthe south side area. Okay, we split between district buses and First Student to covercentral White Bear, Hugo, Vadnais Heights area for the most part. So, we try to keep the buseskind of organized in groups so they do get to know the area and that makes it more efficient. Because if we keep surprisingeveryone when they go through, you know, it's not efficient. I get phone calls. You get phone calls, You know, it goes in that level. So, we try to keep it for efficiency. - The other thing, I think you're doing all the routing too. - Yeah, we do the routing. - Contractors are not doing that. They're handed a script so to speak. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay. That was my question. Thank you. Any other question? - Other comment that I would make just to bring you upto date on this thing. When Tim was talking aboutthe expenditure table that we had in the document, one of those line items is the target in the governor's budgetjust so you had an idea. He's talking about reducing by 5% that reimbursement levelon special ed busing. So, Tim and I are talkingabout how we're gonna, see if we can skin someof these contractors and get that 5% out of them. - Well, we're also evaluating where's the best investment for us to bring more transportation- - In-house.- In-house. So, that we reduce ourexpenses where we can. So, that's part of this evaluation is, how can we reduce ourexpenses and stop the growth. - [Mr. Arcand] Okay. And Ms. Thompson, you had one quick question? - [Ms. Thompson] No, Ihave an additional one just on that last commentabout the governor wanting to reduce it. So, we have a day ofadvocacy at the capitol as school board members. It's coming up. It's likeMarch 10th or the 14th. I'm sorry, I don't remember. So, that's a great day for us to all go and advocatefor that not to happen. Special education is already underfunded and taking that away is just, I mean, we can't do that. That doesn't help districts that are already sufferingwith cost of things. And just a comment on like whatyou guys do in the district and your transportation. We had a meeting a couple years ago when we kind of redid the districts- - The boundaries.- Yes. The boundaries. And just seeing how manyroutes it is. It's amazing. So, thank you for all thethings that you guys do to make our kids get to school every day. It is quite something to see and= - We have a really good team. - That's great. - All right.- Thank you. We look forward toseeing you on March 24th. Okay. We're now at thepoint of our meeting at the adjournment. Can I get a motion for adjournment? - Chair Arcand, I move to adjourn. - Okay, Ms. Ellison. Do I have a second? Second by Mr. Skaar. This will be a voice vote. All in favor say aye. - Aye. - Opposed? Same time. Okay. We are now adjourned.