Last Thursday, the board interviewed Dr. Bitman for the position of superintendent of Edina public schools and by unanimous agreement, the board voted to extend a contract offer to Dr. Bitman to serve as the permanent superintendent of Edina public schools. So, I want to congratulate him and congratulate the community on their engagement in the process and the wonderful hire that we ended up with. The future of Ida public schools continues to look bright and it is a great day to be a Hornet.

I will be tableabling the employment agreement for superintendent of schools schools which is item 7 F until our February meeting.

I took inspiration from Frank Sentoali who is a guest speaker that came to my eighth grade English class at Valley View. Um he taught us how to write and perform poems and I use those skills to help the fifth graders do the same.

I also taught recorder to an eighth grade music class and I um decided to teach this because I learned recorder in fourth grade at Normanddale and I really enjoyed it. So now I'm continuing playing flute at the high school.

I was really amazed on how the students um enjoyed learning with me and I was proud of how excited they were to learn from me. I was also really impressed by their gratitude because um at the end of my at the end of the ceremony, they presented me with cards and letters showing how grateful they were and some even wrote poems to me.

Was it did you already have a connection um related to that or is this something that you discovered as you were thinking about your trip?

Yeah. Um the schools actually my mom's aunt started it so Yeah. So, she kind of helped me organize it.

Um I don't think it's a big part. There were certainly some music teachers at the school which I kind of worked with to help um like organize everything but the students that I taught had like very little music knowledge. So I taught them a lot I guess. So I think I think it's optional for some students. So it's not like a part of their curriculum.

what did you think of being a teacher? Do you have interest in maybe going into education?

Um I'm not really sure yet, but it was really fun because Yeah.

So, I mean, it's in progress as we've been working towards and we'll see what those results are when they come.

Madam chair, my my on the first one, balance annual operating budget aligned with board policy. I mean, I would say that's a yes. I mean, we do that on an ongoing basis. So, it's technically in progress, but the way we manage it monthto monthth, yeartoyear, I feel that we're always a yes as far as that outcome is concerned.

I would also state that the second item um of clear shared understanding of timeline of levy renewals and necessary board actions. I think that's in progress because I think there's a constant there's never a singular date where that's the case. it's sort of something that we have to do and when you look at the overall when we get to the end of the fiscal year did we appreciate that I think then you could say that's achieved but it's an ongoing kind of component from there.

the maintenance of our AAA bond rating I think that's a yes I mean again it's ongoing all the time but we're we still have our AAA bond rating I know we're going to have a discussion maybe later about um one one of the actions we're taking it's all predicated on our AAA bond rating so I think that's still a yes.

and as far as our successful collective bargaining agreements. That's again when you look at each one that comes up, we have successfully in in the ones that we've been engaged with this year. Um we have already successfully come into agreement and we are all settled for this year. Um and that one on the fourth one, I think we actually have that one outcome is achieved because we've settled all our collective bargaining contracts for the year.

we have a very busy next six months that of all the things that are still in progress, there's a lot of work to still be done and um I'm glad that we're tracking this and that we're talking about it in a mid-year uh review.

the administration recommends discontinuing the middle school compacted algebra course beginning in the 26 26 27th school year. And in its place, we are creating a new twocourse sequence at the high school level that compacts three years of content intermediate algebra, geometry, and algebra 2 into a twocore sequence.

It is important to emphasize that through this proposal there is no loss of acceleration opportunities for any student. We are not lowering the ceiling of what our students can achieve. We are simply redesigning the compacted experience to ensure foundational mastery for success.

Good, good question. Uh there would be no change from a staffing standpoint. It's really about um by compacting three years over two years. It gives us more space to compact that as opposed to trying to do two years in one year. And really it it provides us with a little bit better uh experience for students overall as we think about the shift in standards and kind of the more the greater expectations that there is around data analysis uh that that's coming out of these new standards.

So it's just that the compacting would occur later. So that student would go pre-alggebra algebra 1 and then we would compact at that new course one new course two. So they would still get the compacted experience. It would just be later in their their secondary experience if that makes sense.

Um I I had a question on just so we're shifting and now and the algebra one will become a course for for all unless you're in this middle lane here like in eighth grade, right? So from a staffing perspective, is there any anticipated change or pinch point there? Is it being absorbed?

Um and you might not know the answer but um in a traditional school in India would music be part of the curriculum?

If we could not talk standards for a second and not talk acceleration for a second, just bear with me for one second. Um, one of the things that I really appreciated about how we had the compacted class before was what you just talked about, um, Mark, was the flexibility of the on andoff ramps. And I thought that that really benefited students in two ways.

Um, and what I'm wondering is like first of all, if I am a kid and I took the first sequence of um the compacted class in seventh grade or I took it in eighth grade and I realized this is too much for me. Is there an offramp?

Um, so that's a concern I have because there are kids that get pushed too fast in Edina and I would like us to think about an off-ramp for kids that go too fast and realize I actually need to go slower because I want to make sure we're about right fit and not just acceleration.

Um, and my second question was about the the pathway forward that if I enter in um pre-alggebra and this was just I'm just trying honestly I'm just trying to understand if I enter in pre-alggebra and my teacher is like you are a rock star can that kid go to the compacted class or because we've taken algebra 1 out of compacted does that kid have to take algebra 1 to then that that's the part that I'm trying to understand.