(gavel bangs) - I now call this meetingof the School Board of Independent SchoolDistrict 624 to order. Will the Clerk please call the roll? - Skaar?- Here. - Thompson.- Here. - Arcand.- Here. - Beloyed.- Here. - Daniels here. Ellison.- Here. - All right, we're gonna start with our discussion item B1,Otter Lake Elementary Update, Dr. Gillespie and Ms. Nelson. - [Dr. Gillespie] Goodevening, Chair Arcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce AngNelson, Principal of Otter Lake, who will give us an updateon her school this year. - All right. Good evening, everyone. I promised the few peoplethat came ahead of time that I would-- You should get out of pause. - Hello? Oh, run it back. Good evening, everyone. I promised the few people who came early that I would pick up the pace so we didn't have touse the storm shelter. So we'll clip right along here, but- - [Arcand] Which by theway is just the hallway. - Oh, good, noted, noted. - It's very close.- Noted. - [Board Member] But we'dlike to avoid using it. - Right. Well, I'm super excited to talk about OtterLake Elementary tonight. So a few things I'm gonnatalk about is our priorities, just a little bit ofbackground about Otter Lake, our academic goals, studentexperience, briefly, lots about our family engagement and then kind of what's next for the rest of this school year. All the pictures you'll see are pictures of Otter Lake students. I won't go into detail about who they are and how much I love them, but they are all Otter Lake students if you were to come to the school. All right, so just a littlebit about Otter Lake. So this is my second yearat Otter Lake Elementary. It's a neighborhood school across the street fromTamarack Nature Center. We have around 490 students, I would say, we have five cluster programs, so a center-based school. So students from across the district gets buses to Otter forhighest-level programming for several special education programs. We have an amazing staff who've been at Otter for a very long time and it creates an amazingfeeling of family, I would say, for both family,students, and staff there. You might see in thebottom right-hand corner, there's a little specialpicture I put in there, Officer Betty who cameduring our read-a-thon to read to some of our students. There is another specialguest that's photoed in here that you'll see lateron in the presentation. But the main event is downthere in the bottom left, and that is the staff ofOtter Lake Elementary. So here are the Otter Lake priorities for this current school year. You can see that the missionis over there on the left. I'm not gonna read it all to you, and then on here wealso have our objectives of Otter Lake Elementary. And then our main focus area is we will ensure the academicsuccess of each student. And the way that we do that is really by focusing onthose four main areas. So student achievement, which we're gonna talk abouttonight, student experience, which we'll highlight, family engagement, and then equity is reallyembedded into all of those. We do have a specific equity goal. I'll talk a little bit about that when we talk about student achievement. And then wrapped in all of that is really our staff wellbeing to make sure that they love coming to Otter Lake Elementary every day, that they feel connected andthat they have fun together. All right, so our academic goal this year, and first I actually just wanna highlight, I'm sure you've hadother elementary schools have a FastBridge as part of their goal. But I wanted to make sure thatwe knew what FastBridge was before we kind of dive into it. So FastBridge is aresearch-based universal screener and progress monitoring tool. So it really looks at specific skills, which is different than an MCA exam, which looks at puttingall those skills together into one test score. So I just kind of wantedto highlight that piece. And when we talk about low risk, we're considering the studentis considered on track and not needing intervention and meeting grade levelstandards if they're low risk. So our goal this yearis that 80% of students will demonstrate being lowrisk measured by FastBridge, and that 95% of studentswith IEP literacy objectives will have met their goal. There's around 150 students at Otter Lake that are on an IEP. And so that is, if you do the math, I think it's about 30%of our school population. With that said, they don'tall have literacy goals. So if they don't have a literacy goal, they'll be included in this data. If they do have a literacygoal, they're separated out. So for the purpose of this presentation, I don't have the specific special ed data because really we're in thethick of IEP season right now. So I pretty much have ameeting every single day after school where we'rereviewing IEP goals, setting new goals for next year. We really are not gonna beable to say with certainty that we've met that goaluntil the end of the year. With that said, if a studentis not meeting their IEP goal, that's gonna already be looked at. So I feel really confident saying we're gonna meet that goal. But I just wanted to let you know that there's not a special slide for that student population. So for kindergarten here you can see that it compares from fallto winter and they're at 84%. Now we're coming upon ourspring assessment season, we're not there yet. We are hopeful, confident, excited that we'll maintain the same data and that these studentswill remain low risk. Obviously as the testing season goes on, students are expectedto learn and do more. And so, for example, you know, students in each grade level may be expected to knowor do 20, 40 more words than they would in the winter. I don't have those exact metrics, but it's not the same exact test. So even the students whoare low-risk currently will be expected to domore as they go along, which obviously we wantthem all to learn and grow. First grade is sitting at 72% at low risk. I'll kind of clip through this and then talk about how we got here. Second grade is at 71% in low risk. We're very excited aboutthese results by the way. Teachers have workedvery, very hard this year, both in literacy and math. Third grade students are at 70%, fourth grade is at 82%. I just wanna highlight really fast, if you remember our MCAscores from last year, they were heartbreaking,specifically for this cohort. Very, very low. There was probably a 50point growth between, and given you don't really want to compare MCA and FastBridge. It's not the same test, but the growth betweenthird to fourth grade has been astronomical for these students. So I really just wanna highlight that, that is a huge jump. And so, we're excited to see, you know, we're in the midst ofMCA season right now, what the results will be in August, and then fifth grade is at 69%. So some of the things that we'vereally focused on this year is making sure that we have really tiered support for academic, knowing that tier one is 100% which means every single student, whether they're receivingspecial ed services or not, are receiving all of thetier one instruction. No one's getting pulled away from that. And then from there, really making sure that we're strategic aroundour intervention model. So I know I was here whenLori presented on Onica, so she kind of went throughthe WIN structure in detail. So we have the same WIN structureas as do all elementaries where we have the 30 minutes for literacy, 30 minutes for math. We do progress monitoring for students. That's how students are grouped. Students do switch teachers for their group based on theskill that they're working on. And then every six weeks it looks to see, do they switch groups again? Students call it like graduating. Like, "Do I need to be in a group still?" Like, they're very motivatedto not be in a WIN group or do they need to seean intervention teacher or do they enter intoour child study process where it's not working, they've done rounds and roundsand rounds of intervention, could something else behappening for the student? And so, we've been reallyintentional with that as well as paying attention to what the other studentsare doing during that time. So when teachers have their small groups and some students are leavingfor specialized services, all the other studentsare intentionally working on things that are meaningful to them. Part of that is with ourfamily volunteer program. So I'll talk about that in a little bit. But they are in reading groups, they are in readinggroups with each other, with family volunteers,through enrichment, or sometimes just likeneeding to stay steady where they're very close to maybe needing to join a WIN group, so they might need to doa little more practice and then they can join. So just really beingintentional around that time. We've had a lot ofprofessional development focused on differentiation and just scaffolding, bestpractice, high-impact strategies, modeling it for staff, and then having them brainstorm how it's gonna be integrated into their instructional practices and seeing really highresults from that already. Our teams are highlycollaborative with one another. They really want to work together. They're not competitive with one another. Like, "Oh, they havehigher scores than me." They're like, "What are you doing toget those higher scores? 'Cause I wanna get my kids there too." So they're highly collaborative. And then, like I said, ourparent volunteers this year, I really, I know that theyhave made a huge difference with our literacy and math scores and I'm excited to talkabout that as well. All right, so for student experience, we do have a studentexperience goal where, and it was that 100% ofstudents felt valued, cared for, and supported at school. When we did our initial surveyat the beginning of the year, and we did it K-5 for the littles, they did it one-on-onewith a teacher with emojis and the older kids didit on a Google Form. Each student then had to identify a trusted grownup in the building. And then we comparedthat with our DESSA data, our social emotional screener, anyone who didn't have agrownup that they identified, you know, we would talk to themabout that, what's going on? But we already, in the fall,was at 99.6% of students identified feeling that way. And so I don't wanna spend, I'm not gonna go into detailother than highlighting, here are some very cool things that we're doing at Otter Lake to help students feel that way. And there is a specialguest on the bottom middle that you can see, Dr. Gillespie has come to read to studentsat Otter Lake as well. And then we'll give that survey again to students again in the spring just to make sure thatwe've maintained that. So then more in our family experience. So when we met in Augustwith our leadership team at our Data Instructional Leadership Day, they really wanted to extend themselves because we knew our studentexperience goal from last year, we sat at right around98%, and they were like, well, just because we're almost there doesn't mean we're notgoing to keep trying to make our students feel loved and cared for and supported. But what about our families? And so they wanted to adda family experience goal, which is 60% of OtterLake families identifying, feeling meaningfully connected to the Otter LakeElementary School community. This cute little photo is from one of our community dinner nights where we have a StudentAmbassadors program, which most fourth and fifthgrade students are a part of. This is one volunteer experience where they can host welcomingfamilies as they come in. They love doing it, theyfeel very responsible and they are very responsible. So we we're able to survey 119 families during conferences in the fall and 81%-ish looking at foursand fives ranking fairly high stating that they felt connected to the Otter Lake School community. So some of the things that we'vedone to kind of kick it off and then that we've donethroughout the year, and then we're looking toresurvey at our carnival, which 100% of families attend, I can say that with confidence, is last year I pulled togethera Family Advisory Council that is separate from thePTA, as the PTA is amazing, and they raise just aboatload of money for Otter and we're able to do alot of amazing things. But that is their primary goal is support teachers through funding. And it is a separate nonprofit group. I was looking to have families be more involved in decision making and just what do you think about the differentcurriculums we're using? Do you feel like you'rerepresented in this school? And a way that I wanted to try to have them give thatfeedback was by using, it's in the upper left-hand corner is our family engagementtool that was created. And so families volunteer to be part of thisFamily Advisory Committee and they identified whatthey would like to see the staff work on forfamily experience goals. These are just four of them, there's actually more. A lot of it had to dowith communication styles with families, with just recognizing bias and having staff gothrough ongoing training. Having some personalizedplans with their kiddos and having it feel community based and that everyone was welcomed. So that's really helped guideour work throughout the year in addition to having it be academic focus for our professional development is also having pieces of this towards our professional development so we can also help reach these goals. So when we go back to theFamily Advisory Council here in the spring and we can say, "Does this look/feel different to you?" Here's what we've doneto see what they say and what they'd like to seeus work on for next year. Another thing that we didwas in the bottom left is we were really meaningfularound our conferences. And when we kicked off in the fall with our welcome back conferences was including this littledefinition box, if you will. A lot of times, youknow, we said, "Oh yeah," we always ask like, "What do you want us toknow about your students?" And people don't always know what to say. So being really specific, like, what academicallyare you excited about? Are you nervous about? What social emotionallyare you excited about or nervous about? But then defining, whatdo we mean by that? Because we in schoolworld might say emotions and they might say, "Theyhave huge reactions, they don't wanna go to school. It's hard to get their shoes on." We can help parents with that. We can give them ideas for that. And families don't always know that that's something wecan partner with them on. So really being proactiveduring conferences to engaging in thosekinds of conversations. A few other things thatwe've done this year is we've hosted several communitydinner and conversations that were wildly successful, like 600 people wildly successful, providing free dinner. And then we have conversationcards on the tables where families talk about what's important about their student at Otter Lake, what's their vision fortheir student at Otter Lake, and having them like,"Okay, everybody stand, go find a new partner thatyou haven't talked to," with the goal really beingto connect with people that you have not talked to before. The first time we did this, that was scary even for grownups to do. And we highlighted that we asked students to do this on a daily basis and they were more encouraged to do so. Depending upon how many people are left at the end of the night, we like to close outwith some type of circle to kind of share reflectionsfrom the evening, what are your hopes anddreams for the future? That's where we got a lot of our ideas for what we did this year. For example, having a student group that's focused on culturethat anyone can be a part of, it is a lot of our BIPOC students, but anyone is allowed to be part of it. That really came from our family saying, "I think we need to do something like this at the elementary level." And we said, "Oh, okay." So it's meeting the needs of our families. They're asking for it, and so really going back to them saying, "Is this what you had wanted?" And then, "Yeah, that isexactly what we wanted." So just that ongoing consistentcommunication two-way. And then our volunteer program is probably the biggest highlight, which is as part of theWelcome Back conference, really asking everyoneif they would be willing to give anything to OtterLake throughout the year, whether that bevolunteering, or knowledge, or I mean anything, there was a whole list of things. In the end, we had over 200 people that have volunteered throughout the year. It's about five to 15that come in per day, it's really a great systemthat's worked out in the office. We have a few that evenhave now a permanent badge because they come in so frequently and the kids so look forwardto the time with 'em. So they help with literature groups, math games, student ambassadors. When we had our huge read-a-thon event, it was ran and facilitatedthroughout the day by parent volunteers. We really wouldn't have beenable to do it without them. One of the goals was wecan ask families to come in and do some tasks, like, rippingworksheets out of workbooks but, or we could ask them to come in and help us work towardsour goals of getting kids to read at grade level, and families 100% stepped up to the plate. Grandmas and grandpas, neighbors, like, people that don't evenhave people in the building, of course, they all gothrough a background check and we have them signoff in like a ethics, here's what we abide to. If someone wasn't abiding by those things, I would have to talk to them. I've never had to talk to anybody. It's amazing. And then those are some quotesfrom some of our volunteers and we have our bigvolunteer thank you breakfast this week actually. So, really excited. We've had 75 people volunteer yes, and we have some funthings in store for them. So what's next is on June 3rd, our fourth and fifth graders all participate in a day of service where there is severaldifferent service opportunities through the food shelf, Ramsey County Sheriff, there's so many, I honestly don't even know all of them. They make sandwiches, they make blankets, they spray painted the parking lot, Tim, we got approval on this,so don't, like, freak out. (laughs) But it's all aboutto help control traffic. They clean up the gardensaround Otter Lake Elementary. It's a really meaningful day. And for partners to come in and do that with us and the kids love it. We're getting a new playground, which was a huge thing that we worked on at the beginning of the year. So between the FamilyAdvisory Council, the PTA, every student got a sayand every staff got a say in something to do with the playground, whether it's the pieces thatare involved in it, the colors, the students got to pick thecolors and it was a deal. And they're so excited. It's getting installed in June. And just to highlight that this is a fully-inclusive playground. Currently at Otter we havean accessible playground, which means that students who are, a lot of students that arepart of our cluster programming can access parts of the playground. This playground, whether they have physical challenges or we have a lot of autism programming, these new pieces of playground equipment are designed for sensory needs. And so, we're really excited and so, so, so grateful to the district as this is fully funded byWhite Bear Lake Schools. So we're so excited to have this built and have a huge celebration, which we hope everyone comes to. And then of course, which I've alreadytalked to you guys about is the Spanish Dual Immersion kindergarten program next year, which just recently got fully staffed and we're very excited about that. Lastly, every day I dovideo morning announcements and it ends with thislittle Otter Lake Chant where I say my part. And then on the morning announcements, I say the student part too, unless the student's with me,they say the student part. But it's actually adorable because as you walk through the building, the kids like actually say it. I always thought, like, "Oh, they're probably justsitting there listening to me." But they actually say itand then we end, "Go Bears!" And if I don't do thatexactly, students will say, "Was something wrong this morning? You said it a little differently,there's something wrong?" "No, nothing was wrong." But they like their routine. So do I, I guess, 'cause I say it the sameevery day by accident. But, so that is the end,I will take questions. - Thank you, Ms. Nelson. Do we have any questions? - Why are you guys looking at me? - I don't, sorry. Do you have a question? - Well, yes, I could ask- - Okay, sir.- I took some notes. You mentioned that youhad 150 students on IEP, what's the trigger pointto get 'em off of a IEP? Is it a test or how do you determine that? - Well, there's so many different, that is a really complex question, so I'll try to answer itin a very simplified way. - [Skaar] You're gonna need to answer it in a simple way for me. - They would have to meet allof their goals and objectives to the point where theteam could not come up with any more goals and objectives. They would say, "You know what? We can't even think of anotherthing you could work on. You're at grade level,you're independently doing it by yourself with no supports needed." I'm looking at Lisa. I mean, it would really be at that level. When I see that is, you know, we have quite a few studentsin speech language at Otter. Students do come off ofspeech language only IEPs. So they have these goals and objectives, they work super, super hard, they can't say their R's. They finally master it,they do it independently, they don't need those services anymore, therefore they don'tneed that IEP anymore. Most students, though, you know, if they are diagnosed with adisability and need an IEP, a disability is a disability, that's not something that goes away. - Right, I see. On your website, I wentto each school's website. Is there a location on thewebsite that shows, you know, the investments thatwere made in your school as a result of the bondreferendum and the LTFM? - Ooh, that's a really good question. Probably not since you'reasking that question, (laughs) but I will make a note of that. - I think it's more forthe finance team to do. - Sure, sure. That's a really good point, though, when people go to thewebsite to highlight, especially when thisplayground gets built, I mean, like, that's a really big deal. - Well, and also show the amount. - I can mention quickly that the Building OurFuture page of the website does have by building projects that were on there as well. So it's in a way yes, it's absolutely there froma district perspective, but I suppose we hadn'tlinked it from the school right to their page. But it is there and availableby building, a page for each. - Yeah.- Okay. And that's on today's website,okay, just couldn't find it. I think it'd be helpfulto put it in each school where we made the investments so the parents that go to that website could see the investments that we made in that particular school. I think that'd be helpful. Obviously you don't haveto do it for North Stars, you know, because that's a new school, but I think it'd be helpful. Thank you. - Any other questions? Yes, Ms. Beloyed. - I know we, I know we adopted a new dyslexia identificationprogram protocols at some point in the last year, correct? - [Speaker] It was a... - The identification and ways to work with those kids. - So we've screened fordyslexia for multiple years. It was highlighted in the READ Act in terms of solidifyingit for across the state, but we were alreadymeeting those criteria. And that's one of the reasons that we progress monitor three times a year through FastBridge. - Okay, so is every child screened or are they just identifiedas potential and then... - Every child is screened, and also for some reasontheir IEP might dictate that they don't take FastBridge testing, but that's a very smallpercentage of students. - At what age do we start doing that? The screening. - Kindergarten, when they'reentering kindergarten, exiting early childhoodif they're with us. - Okay. - And then just to add to that, through the progress monitoring and all of the data meetingsthat grade level teams do, if something starts to flag,like, "That's not right, this isn't adding up," conversations with familiesare consistent and start early. So we send home paper copies when a student startsand ends intervention, but they also receive communication from their classroom teacher and/or the interventionteacher they're working with. And people are willing tohave hard conversations if that's what needs tohappen in terms of like, "This doesn't seem right." Or, you know, like, if they'reworried about something so that there is no surprises for families 'cause that can be ahard thing for families to hear like, "Oh, my student's notreading at grade level and something might be wrong." So having those conversations early and often are super, super important. - Have we found, or have you found withinOtter specifically, or Alison, this could beto you in a general way, a correlation between theresults with FastBridge, I know we've only only beenusing it for a little while at some places, butbetween that and MCA's? Or do we find that there's a gap there? - [Nelson] We talkabout it a lot actually. - [Speaker] You wannatalk about it for Otter? - Sure, yeah.- Okay. - [Nelson] So yeah, Ican talk about for Otter, there is a little bit of agap that we do see sometimes. And so, we often, we talkabout why our MCE scores tend to be lower than Fast Bridge. One of the reasons isFastBridge is a screener that it's looking forvery, it's screened skills and that's how I mentioned MCAis really the whole package. So a student has to be ableto take all those skills to answer these questions. You know, MCA is a testthat's given on two days. If a student is off thosetwo days, that could be it, 'cause sometimes we havestudents where we say, "Oh my gosh, on Fast, theywere totally at grade level, yet they were not proficient on MCA." We struggle with that and we do a deep dive onwhy, what their scores are, to really look at, isit appropriate for them to have intervention moving forward? And sometimes it's not, to be honest. So then it's the conversation, what was happening on theday they took that MCA that possibly influenced that? I think the other thing for Otter that we really started workingon at the end of this year that will be our focus for next year is how we're engaging withour new literacy curriculum in different strategies. So, for example, on the MCA exam, you're able to use toolsto highlight, circle, do things like that. We hadn't been doing that inour new literacy curriculum at Otter partiallybecause some of the books you're not really supposedto write in, right? So brainstorming, like,"Hmm, it's really important for students to have that skill." So now we're gonna figureout how we're gonna do that, and practicing that with students. So we did that leading up to the MCA test and it was really having ahigh impact right off the bat and just what we were seeingand on the progress monitoring. So we know now that high-impact strategy will carry us into the next year and I'm certain will helpus kind of bridge that gap. But there is a little bit of a gap, yep. - So we think of abalanced assessment system for our district. And so FastBridge, really, as Ang said is progress monitoring universal screener that we're required to do by the READ Act but we also were doing it prior to that, screens for dyslexia helpsus with those skills, as you think about that buildfor reading comprehension. Then the MCAs really test students aligned to our academic standards. And so that is the testthat we talk about. You know, it's an accountabilitytest, comes out in August, and what we have in themiddle of trying to help us are our common assessmentsthat we give for students that are aligned to the curriculum. And so, for CKLA, ournew literacy curriculum that we're in the second year for, we're looking at those assessments and how can we better use thatdata to also help us and see, "Okay, with FastBridge, with CKLA, what correlation are weseeing in terms of MCAs?" And so, we're all working together and that really is commonwork across districts in the state to make surethat we have a robust way of seeing how kids are doing and learning to read in school. - Okay, thank you. - Other questions? Yes, Ms. Thompson. - Well, my first question was gonna be how many students have IEPs? 'Cause you put it in your goal, so I figured that youhad a higher rate of IEP. So you already answered that one. And then I just think it's important to point out that ourcurrent fifth graders, our kids who were inkindergarten the year COVID hit, so they basically lostthat first year at the end and then they didn't go backto school until second grade. So when I saw, like, at firstyou would see those numbers and go, "Oh my gosh,what's going on there?" But then you can kind of piece it together and you know what happenedto those students. So hopeful to see what the numbers are gonna be the next timewe get the numbers for that. And then pretend you're a student, Ms. Nelson, why do we do it? - [Nelson] Oh, the whole chant? - Just the last question. - [Nelson] Oh, because I deserve the best. - (laughs) Good job. Thank you. - You forgot, go Bears. - Go Bears! - Any other questions? I just have one quick question. I'm excited to hearhow many kindergartners are enrolled in the Spanishimmersion approximately? - So we have two full sections. I think it's 49 at Otter and I think it's reallypretty close at Matoska. Yeah. - All right.- So we're on track right now at Otter to have five sections of kindergarten with potentially a third one if we can, or a sixth if we can fillanother immersion class. So, it's a lot of kindergartnersand we're so excited. - It's gonna be exciting next year. Okay, thank you very much. - [Nelson] Yep, thank you. - We're gonna move onto discussion item B2, Vadnais Heights Elementary,Dr. Gillespie and Ms. Svir. - [Dr. Gillespie] ChairArcand, members of the board, I'd like to introduce Sara Svir, Principal of Vadnais Heights Elementary. Hi, Svir.- Hi. Good evening, everybody. Thanks so much for having me. I'm Sara Svir, and I've been in thisdistrict, this is year 17. I don't know how that's happened, but three of my own children went through White Bear Lake Schools and graduated and off doing great things, and the years just kept on tripping by. So it's hard to believe. Being at Vadnais everyday is a great adventure. And I wanna start this off tonight with our mission statement. Vadnais Heights Elementary is the cornerstone of our community. Together, we, and notice that it's VHES, V, value each person as weprovide a high quality education, H, help our community as we prepare studentsacademically and socially. E, enrich lives as we inspire students, and S, safe spaces are created that celebrate diversity andfoster lifelong learning. A little bit about our school. We sit right about 400students kindergarten through fifth grade. We are a little unique in that we set up three K-5 neighborhoods. So there's kindergartenthrough fifth grade in each the Grizzlies, thePolars, and the Kodiaks. It creates a great sense of community and I'll speak more tothat in just a bit here. We have near 43% of ourpopulation qualifies for free and reduced lunch, which makes us a Title I school. 49% students of color, near 18% of our schoolreceives multilingual services, 19.3% in special education. And Vadnais hosts a cluster program in EBD for emotional and behavior disabilities. We also have a tier two program for students on the autism spectrum or developmentally cognitively delayed. And finally, I said 100% amazing and I'm referencing ourstudents, our families, and our staff. We also had three goals for this year, one on literacy and our equity goal, both of those are focused on proficiency. In K-1, it's the earlyreading assessment in Fast. In two through five, it's the aReading assessment in Fast. And our equity goal isspecific to students in three through five looking at their reading proficiency. It's such a largepercent of our population with approximately 20 different languages spoken in our school that it's key that we focuson the needs of these kids and how we can best support them, and I'm so excited to saythat the new curriculum and the program thatgoes along to support ML aligns with what theyget in the classroom, so they have the opportunityto have the content pre-taught before their classroom teacherteaches the information and that sets them up for success. We also have a student experience goal where we're serving the students and we look at this information, and then we try to figure out how we can make our school better. What do we need to bring forward to better meet their needsto make each day better if it's helping them get to school, getting them or theirfamilies to The Closet, and our school is one who,I go to The Closet a lot, the thrift store righthere within our campus. It's to the point that Iget phone calls, emails, I've met them there because all of a sudden they wake up and the kids don't have shoes. So I spend a fair amount of time, they know me by first name at the ALC, and, "She's here again, give her the key." And I love to do it becauseit's what our families need. We also, with the addition of the new social worker full-time, Bear Care is a huge hit. And Carrie Zirbel is her name, she does a great job to help our families get the immunizations, to get medical care and treatment which they otherwise mightnot be able to afford. So looking a little bitcloser at our literacy goal based on proficiency, here you can seekindergarten and first grade in the early readingassessment from fall to winter. And I of course wish it wereall green, meaning low risk. But I am very excited about the growth that our kids are showing. These students have only experienced the new curriculum CKLA, and I especially am proud ofthe information at first grade, it's our second yearusing working with CKLA and the curriculum spirals. So what they learned in kindergarten comes back again in first grade and to be in the classrooms. And here the kids share, remember, celebrate what theyknow about key concepts, whether it's history orwhatever it might be. It's exciting and it's good for kids and it invigorates them towork harder, read and learn. Here's our results forstudents two through five. I used a different formatthan what Ang just showed, but you can see in blue it's the kiddos who wouldcome up as advanced. Green is low risk, yellow is some risk, and red is high risk. My whole school wishes the datawere consistent throughout. Yet I also recognize some ofthese kids coming into CKLA as, let's say for example, a fourth grader because it does spiral, it assumes that they havesome of this knowledge already in their skill bankand we need to build that. So watching our kindergartners in first grade go through the system and through using CKLA, I'm really excited to see future results. But the staff, all of usare doing our very best to get these kids going and keep them on track in their learning. A big part of the student experience and family experience are the community engagement and partnerships that we have. Being the only publicschool in Vadnais Heights, we partner very closelywith the city of Vadnais. Last week we had the citymanager out for Earth Day. If you've been in Vadnais, you see that they're workingreally hard in our backyard, our Bear's Backyard, we call it. We have seven acres back there and they're building a roadway back because it is a water source for much of the north metro area. And if there were any troubles, no one in this room livingin the area would have water. And the kids were very curious how this impacts the water flow. The city manager came out and shared and it's just a greatpartnership to work with them. Safe sidewalks to school. The Vadnais Heights Days, there've been many opportunitiesto partner and it's fun. The Vadnais Heights Fire Department is over quite frequently. They especially, they spend a week with us over Fire Prevention Week in October. The Lions are very good to us. We do some community partnershipswith food and toy drives. This year they were very generous in providing all of our classrooms updated globes and mapsand document cameras so kids could see themprojected up on the wall. Kline Nissan is a new partnership and sustainable automotive. They reached out and wepartnered with them last week. Every student in first and third grade went home with a sapling, withparent permission of course, because trees are the Earth's ventilators and kids heard all about it and were very excited togo home with their sapling. Kids Hope is a program that's available across the United States. We've partnered with them for 12 years and what it looks like at Vadnais Heights, it's retired professionalsenior citizens coming in. And we work very hard to determine kids who need that littleextra something special. It might be a gifted studentwho needs more challenge. I can think of a kiddo right now. He's brilliant and he'sgot a retired engineer doing some really cool stuff with him, and he looks forward to every Tuesday. Other kids might justneed that special person to give 'em that one-on-one attention. So whatever kids need, theycan get it through Kids Hope. The University of Minnesota, they actually host a collegecourse on site at Vadnais. It's a Reading Buddies class,that's what we call it. They call it whatever they call it. But the undergraduate students, it's a class about teaching literacy and then we determine theclasses with the highest needs and they push in to support and either read to the childrenor the kids read to them. So a class of 25 going into our classes of approximately the same size, it works out great. In addition, we've been apartner with them for 15 years. We have year-long graduatestudent teaching placement. It's grown, I've pushed and encouraged, and to tell you, next year, we're looking at 16 sections at Vadnais, I have eight year-long student teachers coming to be at our school. We have a reputationfor teaching them well, helping them find jobs, and our students benefit,our teachers benefit. It's a great, great partnership. Children's Performing Arts was another partnershipthat we just began this year for the first time two weeks ago, our fourth and fifth grade students, 33 of them performed "101 Dalmatians" at the Hanifl Performing Arts Center. And it was just a blast. So a great thing for us to do. Right within the building, we hosted our first Community, Connections and Conversations. That was in the second week of school. And I have to be honest, there were parents very skeptical to come. One dad actually said, "I feel like this is a timeshare sales. When do I have to buy something?" And as I visited withfamilies around the room, many of them were skeptical that we wanted something from them. So in my welcome thatevening, I made sure to say, "We're here for you, dinner is free. We wanna know how we can bestmeet the needs for your kids, for your family, make our schoolthe best place it can be." And it was great. And they said, "Will youplease do this again?" So I hope we have that opportunityto do it in the future. The other thing that wedo in our neighborhoods, the K-5 neighborhoods, the teachers of the Grizzlies,the Polars, and the Kodiaks each take on the responsibility to host one evening event. So the Grizzlies do the Bear Bash. We do that on the Fridaynight of Halloween weekend. And yes, there are costumes, but it's beyond the schoolday, and safe costumes too. And it's a great opportunity for families to meet other families of the kids, the friends their kids are playing with so they can set up play dates,make connections, and visit. We don't have an agenda that night other than we want people to visit with their child's teacherand make connections. We do a parade of costumes, we have free food, and it's a blast. We usually get over 800 people, and on our playground, if I don't get in too much trouble with the police stoppingtraffic, life is good. In the winter Snow Much Fun. And this year, the Polarneighborhood mixed it up, it started out with a family game night and the building was full, every room had families playing games with their kids and staff. And then we ended the eveningwith our kindergarten, first and second grade concert. And it was more than a concert. They actually invited parents up, one parent up to come dance with the kids. And the videos are unbelievable. Just crazy times. Spring Extravaganza is coming up May 8th, that's a communityservice learning project. And this year the Kodiaks aredoing Kindness with Chalk. So going out into the community and spreading positive messages through chalk on the sidewalks. And you might see it all over the place. And hopefully, we won'thave a rainy day like today. And then that evening wewill also have a concert by our third, fourth,and fifth grade students. Our PTO, although small, it's very hard to get parents involved, works very hard to fundraise for us. They support all of ourclassrooms financially, they support all of our field trips. Each grade level takes one trip a year, and we're very strategic in setting it up so each grade level has aunique and different experience, but we wanna keep kids in the classroom and focused on learning and make sure they hitall the required content. And so they really lookforward to those events. School-wide Climate and Culture, every day we have Bear Time and BEARS at our school is brave, empathetic, aware, responsible, and safe. And we tie that to our socialemotional learning time that we have in ourmorning meeting each day. And it's set up by our building. So this week, for example,the message is all about, sorry is just a word. And we're teaching kids why apologizing isimportant and how to do it. So it's giving lessonsfor primary age kids that are specific to their learning level, and three, four, and five students, they look a little bit different, but the whole school is talking about when you say you're sorry,what it should look, sound, and feel like. And it really makes animpact on our building. Every Friday, our fifth gradersdo the news over the system. So it's shown into the classrooms. If you're not familiar, Veterans Day is a big eventat Vadnais Heights Elementary. We have celebrated it aslong as I've been there. And it's all about teaching kids why this holiday is important. And then students have the opportunity to invite in moms and dads,grandparents, aunts and uncles, or close family friends who are veterans. And we honor them. And it usually brings about a few tears, but through a messageand learning for kids as well as music, it's really cool. Community service projects,I've mentioned a few of those. And finally, I'll shareMarch Book Madness. When everyone else in the world is probably filling outa bracket for basketball, we are working on a book bracket. Our staff are readingbooks within the school. Kids are voting each weekwhich book they like better. And the big bracket onthe wall is whittled down to one main winner, and it's a big deal. And to get kids so excitedabout books, it's just cool. So as we finish the year strong, we have five or six weeks to go, there's still plenty to do. We will have spring assessments, both academic and social emotional, which will start the middle of May. School-wide Run Club broughtto our school by the staff, about 50% of our studentpopulation will participate, so we'll have about 200 kidsout running starting Wednesday. At the end of it, we have a color run andthat's our whole school. So during the school day, every single student will participate. And we do that with great intention that it's during the day, once upon a time we did it in the evening and too many of our kiddos couldn't get back to school. This way, every kid ispart of this great fun. We'll have a talent show,field day, all of these things, right on our own field at school. We'll have a survey onceagain for both students and parents this spring, what's going well andwhat can we do better? Tomorrow, we're never done, we gotta keep the momentum going. So Educators Thrivingis doing a presentation for all of my staff after school tomorrow, and it's focused on the core values. This time of year, it gets hard. You need to keep pushing,you need to keep working, you need to keep your energyup, and it gets tough. And tomorrow they're gonna get a boost from Educators Thriving. The Spring Extravaganza will be exciting and we'll have the student concert and community service project for the kids and families and staff. A final thought, Vadnais Heights Elementary isa proud neighborhood school with strong community connections, a commitment to students and learning, and a belief in the powerof partnering with parents to support every child's success. What questions might you have? - [Arcand] Do we have any questions? - I have a question.- Okay, Ms. Daniels first, and then you.- Oh, go ahead, go ahead. - Thank you, sounds so remarkable, all the connections and all the communitypartnerships you have and how enthusiasticallyyou represent them all. It's really great. I just have one question, maybe you don't have the answer, is there much turnover interms of families coming or going in your school, in your building, moving in, moving out? Or is that not something you usually see in that kind of a neighborhood school? I know in some schools it'sdifferent for different reasons. - I don't think our,I don't have a number. Our turnover rate isn't that great. We of course have some,but it's not significant. - [Daniels] Okay, thank you. - [Arcand] Mr. Skaar. - Thank you. I was the night custodian at that school district backin 1981, believe it or not. - You're kidding.- I cleaned the boilers out. I had to throw the clothes out that I used to clean the boilers. So I'm wondering, did they geta new boiler and burner set? Is it still oil or is it natural gas now? - [Sara] Beats me. I don't know.(people laughing) Tim? - [Tim] It's likely the same one. - [Sara] Okay, as long as itworks, I'm good, I'm not sure. - Fair enough. What's the capacity at thatschool district for students? - Well, that's a good question too. When I came, there were 550students in that building, but the class sizes were incredibly large. We also didn't have preschool, the multilingual population wasn't near as large needing the space, the special ed programs, we didn't offer as many as we have now. And so it was, the building looked muchdifferent with 550 students. I'd say 420, 430 is agood number right now. We're feeling pretty fullwith 18 classroom sections, but we're very creativein how we use this space. - Thank you.- Sure. - [Arcand] Any otherquestions? Ms. Beloyed. - The boundary change that we had, how did that affect thenumbers within your school? Is it just more the last couple of years where you've seen the increase or you've been pretty full for a while? - It truly wasn't significant. There were a few families on the north end and some of those choseto continue at Otter. Some of them were alreadychoosing to attend Vadnais because as families commuted to work, they dropped their kids off on the way. So the impact was insignificant. - Could you, as a Title I school, you're having to deal with a lot of differenttypes of situations with students and parents and teachers having to teach all ofthose different groups. Can you maybe talk a littlebit about the importance of why it's important tofocus on the whole child as opposed to just teaching them to read, teaching them to do math, and if we're only doing those things, what happens to those students? - So when I startconversations with families, I often start with, "I want your child to love school." And to love school, that means they havefriends, they're learning, they're growing, they feel good inside, and they can take home the worksheet or whatever they might have done in the classroom with pride. And so, it's looking ateach individual situation and talking to mom and dad,or grandma and grandpa, or whomever I might be visiting with and trying to get to theroot of what's going on. As a bar school buildingassets, reducing risks, the structure that wehave in place for MTSS or the multi-tiered systemsof support, I love it. That was in here and Iforgot to talk about that, but every week we have a meeting. So in the first and third weeks we have our grade level teams. And the second and fourth weeks we have our neighborhood meetings or as bar calls it, big block. And it allows us to focus on data as well as that informationfrom the teachers who work with that kiddo, including the specialists, what they do well, where they succeed, are they a good friend? Maybe they have great rhythm, whatever it is that wecan find we can build on, we're using all of our resources to just focus in on that child and make it specific and individualized. So I think it's justabout looking at each kid. When you look at all of the data, I also say this, you know, if you're going and lookingfor our school report card, you might not be overwhelmed and go, "Wow, that's a school that I necessarily wouldchoose compared to others." But I always encourage families to look at your individual child, see where they startedand where they're growing, because they're making great gains. And if they're not, we'regonna work with them and come up with a planto ensure that they do. - [Beloyed] Thank you. - Any other questions? Well, thank you very much. Good luck. Have a great end of your year here. - [Sara] It's gonna be busy. Come on by.- Yes, it is. And now, Mr. Skaar, it's good to know when weneed that boiler cleaned, we'll give you a call. - Thank you.(Arcand laughs) - [Sara] Thank you. - I won't be able to fit it in anymore. - All right, we want to go on to B3, one of the subjects that'snear and dear to my heart, so Career Pathways, Ms.Babish and Ms. Olson. - [Dr. Gillespie] Chair Arcandand members of the board, I'll introduce Katy Olson, ourCareer Pathways Coordinator, and Russ Reetz, our High School Principal. - All right, thanks for having us. I am the Career Pathways Coordinator, as Dr. Gillespie mentioned, and along with my principal here, we're here to talk aboutthe Career Pathways program that not every school district has, and I always like to mention that, that we're really luckyhere at White Bear Lake to have the support tohave this programming, which I will talk to you about and what we've been upto this school year. We've had extra impact withthe new high school building. So thank you for shifting gears with us from the elementary levelup to secondary now. We can age up a little bit. So Career Pathways really has a structure kind of nationwide of how we look at what is a Career Pathwaysprogram, what does it entail? Oftentimes, career and technical education is thrown into some of this work, but really we look at it as a bridge. So there's programming andexperiences and academic classes that we can offer our students to help them be much more confident for life after high school. That is really the goal. And we are proud to sharethat all of these elements you see on the screen in front of you are things that we offerat the secondary level in our ALC, in our mainhigh school building. And so these are all the pieces really that are gonna set students up for a more confidentchoice after high school. Something you see on thescreen in front of you, and I'm sure Dr. Arcand'sfamiliar with this, but just came out in the fall of 2024s and updated what's called Career Clusters. This is from the Association for Career and Technical Education, a national organizationthat basically updated what was about 10 to 15 years old data about what do jobs looklike across the country and how do we clump them together? Why am I mentioning thisand is it important? This change, and you can read a littledescription on the screen, is how school districtsfunction, industry functions, our workforce systems, how do we all interact together, and what are we trainingand educating our youth and our adult learners about and for? What does that look like? Funding will stream in inthese same kind of sectors. And so you'll see workforce saying, "Hey, we need more folks in this area." And then secondary folks saying, "Okay, well, we wannaget you those workers. We wanna get youth excited about this." So we all work together. To bring it back, if you heard of in Minnesota,we have a career wheel, lots of folks have thatin their classrooms. You see it again in the workforce centers, that is now gonna be updated probably, I think they thought by like 2027, it'd take a while to alignwith these new Career Clusters. So a lot of what work wedo in the school district is going to funnel downfrom what you see here in these National Career Clusters. So also important, we stay in touch with our Perkins leaders, Federal Perkins fundingis really important to the Career Pathways program, but we also stay in touch with real time talent a lot on what's our labor industrylike and our workforce needs. So labor and industrycan change really fast. Our secondary schooldistricts not always as fast, and so this 10-year outlook is really important and impactful for us. So this would be lookingat the old career wheel. 12 of the 16 clustersthat are in existence in that career wheel are expected to decline in employment, in Ramsey County specifically,in the next 10 years. But four clusters aregoing to show growth. You can see those on your screen. So that's a trigger for usin the school system to say, "Okay, what are weteaching in our schools? What do we need to ramp up? Where do we maybe need to pivot?" And we start thinkingabout the next school year. And you might see courseproposals and things like that coming across your desks to reflect and follow alongwith these areas of need we're gonna have right in our county. Of course, we'd like to educate our youth and get them excited about careers and then keep them here locally. So a lot of this kindof outside conversation of things happeningoutside the school district are really important to, I like to emphasize what wedo in the school district and what we're offering our students. We want it to be relevant,we want it to be updated. So something exciting that'shappening partnership wise, it's really important to stayin touch with our industry. I sit on the WashingtonCounty Partnership. This is a brand new group and we service studentsin Washington County, which is why we alsoparticipate in activities and initiatives that they're doing. And it's all of the secondary schools have a representative on this committee. We have all of ourexecutive directors and CEOs from the Chambers of Commerce for every city in Washington County. And the county officials,county commissioners come and we sit and talk abouthow are we bridging youth to industry, work experiences? Where are the gaps? Where do we need support? And what conversationsdo we need to be having? As far as we know, we're the only work groupfor Washington County that exists in the entire state having these conversations. So we're kind of excited to lead the way and obviously we're excitedas our school district to be in that group. I also partner regularly with the White BearArea Chamber of Commerce and the Vadnais HeightsEconomic Development Council. Those industry partnerships are critical so they know what we'redoing in our schools, they know what our needs are, and then that's how we canoffer opportunities to students as well to give studentsthose real-world experiences, get the industry andemployers into the classroom and working firsthand with students. Also important in this work is the Minnesota ConcurrentEnrollment Partnerships. So concurrent enrollment is something that even incurrent technical education you can offer students 'cause they might have to go to college, they might have to get a degree still. They might go right intoworkforce, they might not. So being able to offer those students hands-on college creditclasses in the high school is a great incentive, can really light thefire in students and say, "Hey, I already completeda college class." We all know this, theworld's best workforce. We want our students tocomplete some college. They have a greater persistence rate than if they graduate and go to college. So we are excited to continue engagement in that partnership as well, and then work on thinking, well forward-thinkingwith work-based learning, that is a national movement that we don't wanna miss the train on. And so we are talking to industry partners and we have some teacher champions that are excited to navigatewith our new trimester system and our new high school building, how can we offer workexperiences for students built kind of into the school day? They get college credit,they sit with a teacher, they talk about what they'redoing in the workplace. So we're excited to seewhere that leads us as well. All right, so what issome of what our students have been doing this year? Something that you might remember from the bridge that I showed you, industry credentialscan be really impactful for students to earn whenthey're in high school and help them get a job after high school or while they're in high school in a field of interest to them. So these are some of the numbers we have from what our students havebeen doing this school year. OSHA 10, if you're familiar with that, that's typically kind ofconstruction, trade and industry, workplace safety. We have students in a construction class that go through that, and some of our students at the ALC. Certified Nursing Assistant, we'll talk about that againin a couple slides here, but we had six. The maximum class size is 21. So there's small classes anyway, and that's state mandated. But 16 students got their Certified NursingAssistant certification and they can work in the workplace. And we have a whole nother semester of students completing that right now. Ford ACE, this is actually one of our stellar programs we have, and I'll talk aboutthat at the end as well. They had a little data snafu on their end where I questioned what theysent me for an update this year and they said, "You know what,we gotta look into this." So Ford ACE is sponsoredby Ford Automotive. It is a high school secondary curriculum where students are actually completing Ford training to be a technician. So it looks fabulous on their resume if they do wanna workat a Ford dealership, maybe they're going intoan automotive program and they're gonna even go inand sweep the floors, right? And you just start, youget your foot in the door, it really looks great on their resume. And there's also asimultaneous two-year program at Hennepin Technical Collegethat's the next level up. First Aid and CPR, all of our 10th grade health students take First Aid and CPR intheir 10th grade health class. They all meet in the curriculum and are eligible to takethe certification exam. Not all of them do. There's a nominal fee of $5, but we did have 92 students already this year get theirfirst aid and CPR certification. And then we'll talk moreabout this as well ServSafe. So that's for the serviceindustry, if you will. And this is tied into ourschool grounds coffee shop we have on site and thenour culinary classes. We have a lot of studentsgoing through that as well so they could understand workplace safety, sanitation, and food safety. We had a really big endeavor we took on this last school year in December and we started the planningJanuary of last year. And you may have heard about it, we did get a little spotlight, I think it was Channel 5News, which was exciting. But we partnered with Royal Credit Union to offer Test Drive. So I have some of my descriptionover here in my notes. Our entire junior class wentthrough this simulation. It is a hands-on simulation where students visiteda variety of stations to make key life decisionsand manage a monthly budget. So, to back up, about the week before they went through this event in their social studies class, they all got to sit downand say, "What do I want? What do I think my dream career is? What do I wanna do?" Okay, let's back it up. "Do I need to go to collegeto do that job or not? And if I do, what kindof degree do I need? Two year, four year, eightyear for, you know, medical, things like that." And then, "Okay, now I knowwhat kind of degree I need. Do I need to go to,let me pick a college." And then they pick their college of choice and figure it out what theirfour year tuition rate would be or an annual tuition rateif they broke it down. So they went into this simulationhaving made that decision, "Here's what I think I wanna do and now here's my college planand budget based off that." Students were required togo through the simulation, living off their career's monthly salary while paying for thingslike student loans, insurance, housing and groceries, as well as accountingfor additional expenses like entertainment, pets, life surprises. We had our SROs goingaround the simulation, handing out random speedingtickets and things like that. So that was a fun extra. And at the end we did, so we had about 200 volunteers that came in from the community. And I know some of you were there, so you got to see it firsthand. We did a student survey at the end and then we also did a volunteer survey. So I'd like to sharea few quotes with you. Students were asked, "Didyou learn anything new? And if so, what did you learn?" One of the students said, "I learned that savingmoney is important." Another student said, "I learned how much workgoes into budgeting." And our last student I'll highlight said, "I learned a lot abouthow much things cost and it made me more aware ofmy lifestyle and how I live." Our volunteers shared, "The students were extremely engaged. I was really impressed." Another volunteer said, "I wasnear the end of the stations. It was great to hear the students review their prior decisions and think about how a different choice could have helped them out." And our final volunteer said, "It was fun to interact with the students and to watch them navigate this activity. There were some definitelight bulb moments as they worked to balance their budgets. Many of them developeda deeper appreciation for what their families and guardians have to deal with each month." And this was a great activity because it was all free ofcharge from Royal Credit Union. They really just wanted tofoster financial literacy, that's part of theirmission as an organization. And we're lucky to be oneof the handful of schools that they've chosen topartner with on this activity. The last time I was here as well, we talked about a brand new grant. We had just been awarded Grow Your Own from the Department of Education. We have taken it upon ourselves to call our program in the district, the Future Bear Educators. And this has been a reallyfun program to watch blossom. And it just started this spring semester. We took our fall semester to take one of our champion teachers and she stepped in asa program coordinator to really build out whatis this gonna look like. She's concurrent enrollment,met those requirements, we're offering our classesthrough Minneapolis College. And really this program was to foster studentsgetting excited about teaching and especially to diversify the workplace. In the end with hoping that our students were going to go off and do their training to become a teacher and then come back to us. And so we did have somegoals for our first class. We just offered one classthis first semester, Intro to Urban Education, again with Minneapolis College. We have 18 students enrolled,which was more than our goal. I think our goal was 15. And then in partnershipour students get to go out and they do a field experience. And so, it was a perfect setup when we worked with Mr. Mauer over there and some other folks, they had a need with theirextended day program. They had a wait list and they said, "We need to hire high school students. We've been trying, what's going on?" And we said, "We mighthave 18 here for you. Let's partner." And so we have, some studentshave requirements that, you know, that limit themto being able to travel or do this experience after work in which we've set up otheropportunities for them. But 14 of the students are in eight different elementary school extended day programs. And within Mariner MiddleSchool's AVID Tutor program, and I think we eliminated the wait list. - Very close.- Very close. - I mean when you, I'llchime in real quick. So we're super appreciative of what we said aboutwe're doing in the future. Sorry, my voice tends to carry. But I mean, if you average10 to 13 elementary kids per the 14 kids, I mean that's the impactthis program has on us on our wait list and supporting our familiesthat need that care. So we're super appreciative, we're really excited and very thankful. - Yeah, and we'll talkabout our sections for this I think in another slide. But it took off and we'vegot more sections of this and students excited forthe next school year. Students who havecompleted this first class then move on to the second andthird and fourth tier classes next school year. There'll be five total in the program all through Minneapolis College. And important to note, our goal for year one was to match the student demographics in our classes with ourdistrict-wide demographics, which was at 30% students who identify as a student of color. We have 78% of our students enrolled that identify as a student of color. We also have two school-based enterprises, as we call them in our building,which is really exciting. A coffee shop that is,as the kids call it, super rizz, I think. (people laughing) But not, I mean, right? Coffee's the thing these days. And so this School Grounds is an actual class outof our culinary program. But we have a real coffee shop, if you haven't seen it,I'm guessing you all have, that's open during theschool day in our building. And students are learning how to work in the service industry, how to manage their peers,how to work with supervisors, they're going throughthis ServSafe training. They're also learningabout roasting coffee and flavor profiles. And so a lot of thesestudents are interested maybe in having a small business someday. So you can see some of the highlights here that are on the screen. It's been a really great opportunity. We can also support a lot of our students that are part of our specialeducation programming. And then our nutrition services actually was able to create a positionand hire a student manager, that is the one positionthat's paid through this class and programming, the rest of the students carved out an hour of theirschool day to do it for credit, but we got to hire astudent manager as well. So that person then will be responsible I think next year for doingmore of the supervision of their fellow classmates, and that school store, so. That's been really fun to watch. And feel free to stop by if you wanna get a latte or something. We have another school-based enterprise called the Roar Store that is more of your school spirit store, school swag that is runthrough our business program. And that was kind of a pilotthis year of how did it work, how did it go? We learned a lot, and our business departments decided they're going to separate out. We're gonna start, stillstart our DECA program, which is a student-based organization where they get to learnall about business, they can go to competitionsand things like that, do some extra work in the business world if that's their area of interest. But then there's a market,or merchandising, excuse me, merchandising class as well where they're gonna learn thestore management inventory, product, design, things like that. So we are gonna be doing a ribbon-cutting coming up here in May withthe Chamber of Commerce. We haven't done, we didthat for our coffee shop. We haven't been able to dothat for our school store. But we have a couple big name alumni that we're looking to highlight. And one of those is, if you've heard of the brand, Legendary, it's a golf apparel line. Brock, the owner who started it, he's a White Bear alumni and he's really excited to partner. And we got a banner thathighlights so we can show students, Brock, I think he was class of 2008. He's the owner of Legendary. Like, this could be you. We have alumni banners in a lotof our Career Pathway spaces so students can see what theirpredecessors are doing now. All right, enrollment. So it was really fun to seeas we moved to trimesters, tons of work for the teachers. I got to tag along for a ride and kind of talk with themabout new ideas and innovation and then see what struck the students, what did they wanna register for based out of what theteachers put out there. So some of the highlights for our new classesthis coming school year, we are still in theworks of piecing together what we would call a Visual CommunicationsCareer Pathway program. I know Mr. Reetz over herehas got all kinds of ideas about what he wants to do with it. But two of our initial classes that are, one's through business andthen one through kind of art and our communication departmentare both sports related. And so those took off booming with like four sections or eightsections each or something. So that's gonna be really fun to see how they partner together. That's kind of that same pathway. We are gonna start a drones class. Students will get theirdrones pilot license through this class. We, surprisingly or not,have a number of students who are interested in gettingtheir private pilots license and are pursuing that. So this was kind of one wayto help engage those students. But also, this is, you may or may not know a really up and coming area and industry, you can use drones inprobably every industry. And so, to have that pilot's license is I think the average incomestarting out is like 80,000. So we were really excitedto take advantage of that. And our teacher went andgot her drones pilot license 'cause that's what she has to have. And so, it's been reallyfun to watch it play out. Computer hardware technology. In our school building, we have a tech hub, if you've seen that, it's in our learning commonsthat the vision behind that was always to have our students, if you're familiar with Summer Tech Depot, they get to work on Chromebooks, take 'em apart, youknow, do all the things, tinker with 'em on a more official basis rather than just at home. Our vision was always to bringthat into the school day. And how can students bedoing that for their peers and for staff for that matter. So a computer hardware technology class is gonna more formalize that technology, working on computer hardware curriculum and experience for students. And we actually have twopartners, industry partners, that are really excited to work with us and have come to us and said, "We wanna hire your students. We'll work with your schedule, get 'em a little bit of training, and then we'll bring them on." And so that's one of those maybe work-based learning opportunities we're hoping to see come to fruition. We will be offering first aid and CPR as a standalone college or concurrent enrollmentclass with Anoka-Ramsey. That took off with likeseven or eight sections, or four sections or somethingtoo, which was crazy. But that's importantbecause First Aid CPR, that class offers the BLS certification, which is required to getinto nursing programs, any emergency medical services programs, which are all really importantand popular right now. So now students don'thave to go to college or take an extra class to do that after they've graduated high school to get into a nursing program. They can say check, we alreadydid that in high school. Certified Nursing Assistanthas over doubled, no, I guess, I don't know whatyou call that, tripled? Not exactly tripled, but in its sections for next year also, that's also a concurrent enrollment class. We partner with Century College on that. And then Intro to Healthcare Career is another concurrent enrollment class with Century really took off. So that was exciting. Also unique, and I emailed out a lot ofmy school district partners and said, "Hey, who's offeringmath through the trades? We're looking for curriculum." And they all said, "We're notand we really wish we were. Tell us what you do, what youpick, we wanna know about it." So that was amazing thatour math department said, "We wanna dabble in this. We see there's a need, adifferent way for students to learn math and to use it." And so, and studentswanted to take it, right? That was the next thing. So that's gonna be reallyexciting to roll out, kind of watch to see howwe make strides there. Digital photography is a classwe've offered for a while, but we had twice the enrollment in that class coming up next year. And then a slight increase for our Intro to ConstructionTrades and Small Engines. All right, I'm getting closeto wrapping up, I promise. We talked about this at our Systems AccountabilityCommittee meeting last week. I was presented with the data you see in front of you backin March at a conference that I went to where theorganization Advance CTE did some national polling last fall to see where our constituenciesacross the country, how they felt about careerand technical education. And I wanted to be ableto share that with you. We tied it back last week then to some of our feedback fromour folks here in the district. And really, if you'll see nationally that folks at middle schooland high school level were presented with different areas of the high school experience, and were asked to rank where they felt theseareas fell in importance for their students' experience. And they either rankeda one, two, or three, the areas you see on the screen, and obviously in order, right? The most picked one, two, or three for the top one and so forth. So as a school district, it's exciting to see that we are doing all of these things as it relates to career preparation, career and technical education, just exposure for students to be able to make amore confident choice. It was also exciting to see that that's important nationwide to what's happening within the walls of our schools these days. As we compare it, thisisn't an exact comparison because what we did lastweek was we did a poll and it was just ranking it, it wasn't grouped like one, two, or three, I don't know what each individual picked, but I wanted to compareit to what our folks at the meeting last week responded on where they felt that each areawas of importance to them. So a little bit differentthan what you see nationally, but, again, it doesn't exactly align with how they did the rankingof one, two, or three. So some of this might be surprising, some of it might not, butwe're doing all of it. The last thing that I'll wrap up with, we're really excited and proud of our automotiveinstructor, Mr. Doescher, and all of the programming and work that's happening inour Automotive Career Pathway. I don't think it's come outas a public statement yet, but our Minnesota State Center or Transportation Center of Excellence selected our automotive career pathway as Exemplary Secondary Program of the Year in the entire state of Minnesota. So this was for a program that showcases secondarylevel transportation, oh, that serves as an exemplary model of institutional support,instructional leadership, and program wide excellence. And this is a big thank you to everyone in the schooldistrict from top to bottom to teachers to the studentsto make this a success. That's it, yeah. Thank you, any questions? - Any questions for them? Oh, Ms. Daniels. - How do we partner with the career and tech school 916 offers? Do we partner with them and do we have, do kids go there becausewe don't have, you know, or we go back and forth? I know they have an automotive. We have an automotive,but they have cosmetology. We don't, I mean, I knowwe have like 90 students in that program, or 95 Ithink is the last count. - Yes, yes. Great question. So 916 Career & Tech Centerservices 16 different schools. They are a fabulous resourcebecause they primarily exist because our schools can't have everything. And so we do have some overlap in what we offer and what they offer. At that point, students we hope wouldchoose our programming, but may choose to go to 916. 916 offers diesel. We don't offer diesel. They offer auto dismantling,taking the cars apart. That's not part of our curriculum. So there's some nuances there, but overall, we're very supportiveof students going there, especially when it's not somethingwe offer in our building. We don't have the infrastructure to have. So cosmetology is a great example. We're lucky, our students are lucky that they have the opportunity to go there and work in that clinic or salon there. And dental careers is amazing opportunity because those are thingsthat we couldn't offer. So we really feel that's an extension of our Career Pathways program. - Great, we bus our kids.- Yes. - [Daniels] They select thatthey have a way to get there. - Yep, I think we havetwo different time blocks or waves that our students can go in. - Thank you.- Yeah. - [Arcand] Other questions? Mr. Skaar? - Thank you for presenting. What are our numbers thatparticipate in this program? Are they increasing, decreasing, flat? Can you comment on that? - Yeah, I can. So our easiest metric tomeasure is course enrollment, which isn't all of what Pathways offers, but as far as course enrollment, we've doubled for next year actually, we had about 2,700 students in Career Pathway classes this year, we're at 5,400 for next year. So I think Trimesters has been huge in supporting the opportunity for students to have more choice and take more thingsthat really strike them along with our teachershaving great innovative ideas that are moving and shaking and taking advantage ofthe wonderful facilities we have in the building now too. And then I do track the outsideof programming and events and speakers and thingslike that that we put on. And I track those numbers. I think those numbers certainly have grown because now we have the opportunity for our 9th and 10thgraders to participate. Where before it maybe was, here's the one event at thehigh school for South Campus for 10th and 11th grade students. Now, how can we do something but maybe a little more beginner for the 9th and 10th graders? And then that engagementwasn't always there. But now with the older students, 9th and 10th graders are muchmore apt, more comfortable, they'll just pop in for this,that, or the other thing, so. - So now I have suggestions. - Wonderful.- That you can think about. One of them is, and I used to be a speaker inthe St. Paul Public Schools to try to get kidsinterested in accounting. Tough, tough sell. Tough sell. But we are in such ashortage of CPAs right now that they're doing all kinds of gymnastics to try to get peoplelicensed to do that work. So anything you can doto boost up the numbers in that area would be key. Your IT program, you know, there's IT and then there's OT, operation technology, which operates our infrastructure. There's a lot of cybersecurityrisk related to that. How can we get kids to, and students to getinterested in cybersecurity at a early age because that's the best time to do it. They're curious and they probably wouldmake the best applicants for, you know, that in the future. So that's one, you know,even getting somebody to talk about cybersecuritywould be, I think helpful. And then, related to construction, driver safety credentials,that would be one. I mean, like safe defensive driving, that's usually a requirementfor a lot of trade. You know, construction trades and things like that whereyou have to drive a truck back and forth from a work site. That's another one. And then on the, just twomore on the retail side, do you do like customerservice role playing on when you're communicatingwith a customer, you know, how you approach the customer, those types of things. Do we do that? - [Olson] Do you know what? - Well, we don'tnecessarily do role playing, but our students areserving the community. So if you come to an event,the store's often open. So they are in a realcommerce type situation where they're providing customer service to those patrons as they enter that. - So there's a training, you do a training for how to interact withcustomers, customer service, what's the expectationsfor good customer service? The other one was with,I'm familiar with the PSEO, but I was curious, I know it applies with community colleges, but what about with trade schools? Because you can, if somebody in their junior senior year could take like the classroomtests or the classroom classes and test out of that andthen they can do the hands-on after they graduate, is that something thatis done across the state or is anybody doing something like that? - So separate, liketaking, separating the two? So I'm not sure I fully understand. - Well, there's two aspects to the trade, there's the classroom aspect and then there's the hands-on aspect. So I'm wondering if you could, if they can break that apart so that the classroomaspect they can do here, get credit for it, and then after they graduate,they do the hands-on piece. I don't know if you couldsplit it, I'm just curious. - Yeah, so I don't think you could, but I don't think you have to. That is part of whatwe are trying to embed with concurrent enrollmentclasses in our school is that, and especially in tech ed, that's oftentimes wherelike Century College, that's their niche of coming in with a concurrent enrollment class that is the college class, and it's both the theoreticaland then the hands-on, 'cause I think you have todo both at the same time. I think that's important. And a lot of our teachers, the value of a highschool teacher teaching it instead of the college professors, they can also teach thetechnical reading piece of it of here's the theory, here's how you read the textbook. It's a little different, but maybe you also kindof get it a little better and then how you apply it. - [Skaar] Okay, I got it. It's helpful, thanks. - Yeah, okay. - I just have one.- Okay. - Wait, just, I'm sorry. No, no, I didn't see you.- Ms. Ellison. - Okay, thank you. So I have a comment and a question. I was at the SystemsAccountability meeting last week and shared that my daughter is involved in the Introto Urban Education. I had no idea this was even a thing. And she came home and she said, "I'm doing this thing becausea teacher recommended me." And she had not had any sort of focus to what she wanted to do after high school until this program. And there's such ateacher shortage right now all over the country. And I love the fact thatWhite Bear, it has the trades, has construction, has automotive, but is also focused on education as an important careerpathway for our students. So it's been tremendously helpful for her and I really look forward tothe growth in that as well. So my question is, I love theidea of math for the trades. And so that you said cameout of the math department, it makes me wonder like whatare the other departments, like, are there other,writing for the trades? Because in every position you ever have, you're gonna have to dosome writing of some kind. Are there classes that are percolating that are similar to this? - Well, we're meeting withlanguage arts teachers tomorrow and they're working on someinnovative course offerings. One of them is technical writing and technical reading for the trades. So we could see this expandacross other departments. But yeah, everyone is sort of looking at what they could provide, you know, with a certain pathwaywhere students can come in and out of a pathwayand have an experience within their department. So we hope it grows. - And I think to touch onMr. Skaar's comment as well about customer service. So part of what we'd seen, I have a paper visual ifyou want a copy afterwards, is our Career Pathways Course Guide. It's a visual for families to understand what classes really are in automotive, and this is gonna be my example. And then what classes are affiliated, meaning part of kind of the general education core curriculum, what of that might tell me as a student, "Oh, I'm interested in those things. I should look at the automotive field" or "I'm good at those things, I should look at the automotive field." Our teachers pickedthose affiliated courses. So our career and technicaleducation or pathway teachers are not all CTE, pickedaffiliated courses. Mr. Doescher on the screen in front of you picked public speakingas an affiliated course. He said these students haveno idea how important it is because of all the customerfacing they're doing, the confidence and theprofessionalism they need to have when they're reporting back totheir clients, what happened? They need to document things. People are complaining,how do you handle that? So that was part of our tiein to make that connection. It's exciting to hear about language arts and if I dare to be sobold to make a plug, so for example, Math for the Trades is currently an elective. There is a push by theDepartment of Education to make classes like thatpart of the core requirements and count towards a math requirement. So wink, wink. - I really like the ideaof putting out a path or putting out the classesin front of students so they can see where they connect. Because I think a lot ofstudents, they look at, I mean I can only speak forthe ones that live in my house. They look at the course catalog and they're like, a lot of this, right? And so, I love that you're setting it up so they can see their skillsand then also see the path. So I think that's wonderful. And one more question I thought of, I forget what the name ofthe event is, Ms. Olson, but it's the one where youhave community members come in and talk to sophomores. - [Olson] The mock interviews. - Yes, is that happening again this year? - [Olson] Yeah, that, well,that just happened in January. - Oh, okay. - [Olson] Yes, it happensevery January though. - I missed it. It's such a great event. Highly recommend thateverybody participate. Thank you. - Kathleen.- Kathleen? - Oh, yes. I was first, I thought you had something. Yes, I did have a commentand it was only to say that I'm so proud ofthe facilities we have to teach these classes, and because we didn't have those before, we have our new high school. I mean, I look at theautomotive and the CNA and the coffee shop andthe Bear Wear Gear Shop and all the things thatwe have now that are so, the facilities do matter. And so to have those availablein addition to the classes and the curriculum is so important. And I think, again, thankyou to the community for passing the referendum and then for everyone makingit happen in this room. So I just have to say, it's astounding, if you haven't seensome of the facilities, to view them and see thatit makes a big difference for the students using them in particularly thesekinds of classes, so. - [Skaar] I just had onelast if nobody else is going. - Hang on, Ms. Thompson? - Well, I am a huge fan of Career Pathways as many may know because thishelped me graduate high school and it provided me witha job all the way up until I went to school tobecome a social worker. And it even supported me through college while I was earning my new degree. And I just, Mr. Doescher is fantastic. I used to go in and sitin some of his meetings he would have with theautomotive at the old high school where it was a very smallspace he was cramped into. And now, just his space is fantastic and he just, I mean, he just lights up when he talks about it. So that's wonderful to hearhis hard work has paid off 'cause he definitelyworks very hard on that. Just to highlight a littlebit of the cybersecurity need, I had brought this up back in'21 when Jenny Moore was here and I had had a conversation, I have a cousin who works in cybersecurity and just MSBA had highlighted that you're a huge needfor cybersecurity staff. And my cousin who works in the industry for Abbott had said there's nobody who qualifies for the jobs they put out. So they just have to hire them and then they have to train them. And she said even if wecould just train them in how to work Excel,Word, and PowerPoint, it would be a huge bonus because they have to teach 'em everything, which is kind of scary to think that they can't use someof those basic programs. And then for my own self, when I went to school and we had, it was called on job training back then, and I took math for the daily living, which let me tell you, that class, that was a helpful class, taught me how to balance my checkbook, taught me what interest was, like, you learned a lot of things that you were like, "I hadno idea about that stuff." But the path I had was administration. So I was the athletic director secretary for my senior year of high school. And then they actually hired me on after I graduated for a year and I was just an administrativeassistant in the office, and then they lost fundingand they couldn't keep me. But some other things to just think about, I mean our districtwouldn't be where it is without a lot of ouradministrative staff that we have. So it is a good pathway to maybe be easy and it would help some kidslearn how to use Excel, PowerPoint, Word, Googlein like a career platform and environment whichthey're going to need to use. And so it just alwaysmakes me think of that. And I know at the time they said one of the biggest barriers to bringing in a cybersecurity programming is to getting the staff that can properly teach that class because the degrees and the certifications that they need to have was something that theyhad always looked into but just didn't have thecapabilities to do that. So they did, they do partner, I believe, and we probably still do with Century, has a program regarding that. It would be great to find a way to bring it into ourschools as we're growing. And technology is definitelyan area that's growing. Being someone who worksin human services now, I was happy to see that was the number one for growth coming up here. But just, yeah, so thankful that we have this in ourbuildings and it's just wonderful. So thank you. - Thank you for sharing. We do cybersecurity is the revolving conversation we have of how and when is the righttime to implement something, what's the right partnership. So that is 100% on our radar,at least so you know that, it's finding the right, the right time and the right place, and the right partnership Ithink to make that happen. So that's definitely on our radar. And then also is thestudents having that gap in knowledge of Microsoft products versus what we use in school. And there are certificates out there that we've talked aboutembedding into various classes. And so that would givestudents that opportunity to learn that as well. So that is also on our radar. - Thank you.- All right, Mr. Skaar, you have one more comment or question? - Oh, this wasn't related, it is related back to cybersecurity, but I have a different question. Minnesota has like a cyber, the State of Minnesota hasa Cyber Monitoring Center in St. Paul that wouldprobably make a decent partner I would think. - [Olson] Thank you. Okay, thank you. - I looked, this is relatedto Ms. Daniel's question about the investments made and I'm looking at the slide that shows the investments in each school and there's two bullets per school. So there's probably a total of 25 bullets to justify a $400 million project. I don't think that's adequate. I think there should bemore transparency with that. - [Arcand] So is this aquestion directly for the- - Administration. - [Arcand] Okay, so this is,that's something for them. - I think it's germane to the topic. Not with your question, the question had to do withupgrading our facilities, which is a good thing, right? In the high schoolacross the other schools. So it would be nice to see that, where did we put the money? - Can I just offer some clarity? - You may.- So that is, that information is all in the documents that have been presented to the board over the various school board meetings, so they're all on the website. So anytime that we get an updateabout the bond referendum, they'll come in and they'll say, "This is what we've done so far, this is what we've spent, this is the projects that we're doing." And so that information is all out there in the board documents, and is also, like, if you look in some of theseother sections of the process of the Building Our Future, that information is all there. So the information that, 'cause I mean, I've beenhere and Deb's been here since the very beginningof the bond referendum and it is all public information on all of our presentations. So you can find thosecertainly on the website. - It's not, well, it'snot easily accessible, it's insufficient in my opinion, it needs to be more transparent. It should be on each school's website to see exactly what you did by school- - [Arcand] I'd like to bring it back to- - Well, and plus we haven't had, we have not had a review of the project since August of last year. It's time to have a review of it. - [Arcand] But right nowwe're on Career Pathways, so I want to bring it back to that. Yes, go ahead. - I love the visual that you had for, here's the different areasthat kind of cluster together and if you're interested in A through Z, this might be the pathway you choose or if you're interested in, this would be the first year that I haven't receiveda registration booklet so I didn't look at it. So I'm assuming it's not in, well, I call it a booklet because we used to get the booklets, but now it's all online. I would think that would be something that could be really helpfulfor students to look at. I mean parents too. But for students to look atespecially 9th, 10th graders as they're choosing the classes that they're gonna be taking10th grade and on basically, just to see sort of asthey're working through with the counselors, when they take their assessment to see what areas their aptitude is in. And then they can say, well, these are thedifferent kinds of classes that may be availablefor me for these things, just to tie it all together for students. Some students already know from the day they were bornwhat they're going to do. And then there's the vastmajority of the others who have no clue but would like to look at, okay, "So they say I'm good at this. Let's see what that falls into." So I think maybe that kind of visual or that kind of informationwould be super helpful as the kids are looking through and the parents are looking through what am I gonna register for next year? So just throwing that out there. - Well, you're totally right. So something we have in developmentare called career trees. If you've seen them at Century College or the 916 Career & Tech Center, they are a tree of a pathway. And our industry partners and our teachers came together to talk about what are weteaching in the high school and then what does that look like after, what are the options? And it's tiered byentry-level, technical careers, and then professional careers. And so that we are, we have two of those already printed for ourhealth and wellness pathway and our automotive pathway. And then the others are in production and working together with our partners to get those printed as well because I totally agreethat that's really valuable. And then there's curriculum with it and the teachers can tiethat into their classes as they see fit. So yes.- I think that'd be great. Super helpful. - Thank you. And I just wanna say thank you for all the time you'reputting in Career Pathways. The old career wheel was 18 years ago because I sat on the committee, and so, and I actually went around and taught it. It needed to be updated. And I like the new national one because it's taking it from the pathway tomore of the cluster area because in high school a lot of our kids don't go that far down, but they're at the cluster area and then it still openssome opportunities for them. They still have the opportunityto go down to the pathway, but the new clusters are gonna allow them tohave a wider scope and that, because we also know we don't change as fast as industries sothat it lets them be ready. I also want to, I also want to give credit to our certified nursing assistants to earn their certificate, 'cause what we don't maybeknow is the state mandates, they have to have so manyhours in the classroom or they can't sit for the exam. So it's not like theycan come once a week, they have to be there, andthat's the state requirement. So they're putting the time in for that. And the last thing is your Test Drive, as you're talking about it, there's so many standards from our new personal finance course that if you can pair that up because some of those, everything you talked abouthits one of those standards. So keep what you're doing, it's exciting. And I want, I'm excited to see what we do next for our students. So thank you.- Yeah, thank you. - All right, thank you very much. - [Reetz] Thank you. - We are now at our adjournment. Can I get a motion to adjourn? - Mr. Chair, I move that we adjourn. - Ms. Ellison, do we have a second? - Second.- Seconded by Ms. Thompson. All in favor say aye. - [All] Aye. - Opposed (indistinct). (gavel bangs) We are now adjourned. Thank you.