Agenda items D2 and E1 require the opportunity for a public meeting. Unlike regular public meetings, which include a notice that the meetings are public. Work session notices that go out to the public don't include such a notice. This may explain why the public is confused sometimes with work sessions and public attendance. I know that I've received that since I've been on the board. These are important matters. These two matters. And the public should have the ability to weigh in through the public forum before the board considers anything. Work sessions don't have a public forum.

So I make a motion to move agenda items D2 and E1 to the regular public meeting on June 8th, where we would benefit from more public attendance and a public forum.

My main goal for middle school athletics is kind of to create a school spirit and a good energy in the building and have students participate in multiple sports offering throughout the school year.

During the season our middle school team does practice at the Field House Monday through Friday and they do work with the varsity team on occasion and do workouts together too.

So we're just kind of gaining ground here. This was year two. We're still kind of navigating on how teams form and getting new jerseys next year hopefully.

This is our second year offering it. There are currently not a lot of middle schools offering boys volleyball, so we're kind of just doing internal scrimmages, getting them during those eight sessions.

The biggest increase is we went from about 22 girls last year I believe you had said. We're up to 62 girls in our middle school flag football program.

All our recreational leagues are driven by volunteer coaches. So we have hundreds of volunteer coaches serving our programs. So it kind of speaks to the connection within our community.

Probably our biggest challenge right now is we're trying to figure out ways that we can increase our girls' participation at that high school rec program and mainly who we can play against.

So we've heard from a lot of parents, families that are very happy with a convenient, low cost option for their kids to participate in a gymnasts offering that's right here in their neighborhood.

So if you're not doing anything on Friday, May 29th, we have our, I think be our fifth annual Bears Explore outdoors event. We are gonna host it at the high school this year.

So we'll be giving away, raffling off between 90 to a 100 bikes that night for people to take home.

My favorite was like little sluggers, tball and I have very fond memories of both of my boys doing that. I was kind of wondering these kind of act like feeder programs into the high school sports and I love that we have so many things for kids to try out because not every sport needs to be competitive for every single kid, but I was wondering how much interaction do you have with the high school coaches?

Yep, absolutely. And we try to just grow on it every year. Again, with middle school sports, we try to connect that, make that connection as much as possible. It trickles down into our youth rec leagues and our summer camps as well, so.

I just wanna say thank you. The increased enrollment over time and seeing that more and more people are joining and participating is great to see. And just to give kids in middle school an opportunity to try out things that if they have not been in it in elementary school and haven't had those opportunities, you're providing them with opportunities that could lead them into things that can really affect their high school years And their sense of belonging.

I remember having this conversation with Dr. Kazmierczak a long time ago about the fact that there weren't a lot of middle school athletic opportunities that if students wanted to participate, they had to do it in a club setting, which can be prohibitively expensive. And so I appreciate that we've added basketball and wrestling. Are there plans to add more middle school sports?

We offer tons right now, we offer more opportunities than most schools in our area will say that. We're always looking to add on if we can, the issue is who will we play? So whether it's a boys volleyball club that scrimmages each other for, you know, eight sessions, so be it.

One, maybe we'll get some more girls to sign up for baseball and stuff as we now have Women's Professional Baseball League coming back in for the first time since what 1954 I believe. If I'm right. So that's exciting to see and hopefully that'll bring some more participation there.

Just wanna specify we're not accepting donations that night, we're giving them away.

They're still accessible, they're still more popular than ever. And if you think about it, that's what makes this kind of one of those pieces to this whole community. That's what makes this community awesome. Is just a t-shirt, like, 'cause it's three, four generations now.

And I believe they give it away for free. All you gotta do is volunteer to coach.

This is our mission statement at Mariner Middle School. We love our diversity, we want our community to feel like a family. We value our students' unique strengths, and we commit to the success of every learner.

This past January at our Meet Mariner event for current fifth graders and their families, we asked them, 'What are your hopes and dreams?' And so these are some of the things that they said.

So last fall, we were notified by the Minnesota Elementary Principals Association that we were being recognized as a school of excellence. And what I wanna tell you about tonight is the work that we've done that really got us there.

A family is a place where you belong. And at Mariner, everyone's part of the family Advisory is a time during the day when students in our space are known, seen, and connected. It provides students with the opportunity to build relationships with peers and with trusted adults.

Each grade level at Mariner is divided into two teams and students on each team share the same core teachers in language arts, math, social studies and science. This middle school model is long used to help larger school communities feel smaller, more connected, and more personal.

Sunrise Mariner is on its 22nd year of sending students to nationals for History Day. If you're not familiar History Day, students who participate in that do intensive research on a historical topic or person and they do a presentation, either something that they can show or video documentary or they might act something out.

Our seventh grader, Chase Cortus, scored first place out of 281 students. We also had two students score in the top 10% and our seventh grade team was number four out of 25 schools.

Tremendous teachers make rigorous and relevant instruction possible by combining high expectations, meaningful relationships, thoughtful instructional design, and the core belief that every student can learn.

AVID is an example of rigorous and relevant instruction happening at Mariner. AVID stands for Advancement Via Individual Determination and it helps create pathways for students to access more rigorous coursework and build the long term academic skills to maintain that success.