is there anything anyone would like to remove from the consent agenda uh hearing nothing um do I have a motion to approve the consent agenda

one out of 20 kids have asthma which is regularly triggered by the tox fumes generated by diesel school buses according to the National Health in of Institute of Health a kid riding a school bus may be exposed to up to four times the level of diesel exhaust as someone in a car ahead of it

the electric school buses are uh important for protecting the health of the school children and the bus drivers uh the benefits to them and our community include no harmful uh diesel exhaust and Studies have shown uh that there's better school student performance and less absenteeism uh for kids that are riding electric school buses

the latest EPA electric School Bus Grant has just come out for 2024 so we encourage Edina Public Schools to consider applying for the next round of funding as well and additionally the Minnesota Department of Commerce will be releasing their funding soon so school districts are allowed to stack those grants essentially for a free bus

why is it that the Ed fund exists I get this question all the time being a public school you would think that we have all the money in the world um you of course as our board or perhaps as a Cabinet member or people that might be listening in um regularly to board meetings would know that there is definitely a deficit when it comes to public education um we try as much as we can with to work with the revenue that the state gives us but as we all know um usually those expenses outweigh the revenue that we have coming in and it leaves us with a gap

in the 23 24 school year it ended up being about $4 million were there some certain ways that we approach that first thing we do is we always try to go to the state or the federal government and we tell them that they need to fix it

I always asked well how many people actually then donated to the Ed fund during that entire process and if I remember correctly it wasn't a huge increase um that we then saw so I just really want to just reflect to the community whoever is listening that the Ed fund does an absolutely critical job for our community and for our school district for both our students and our staff and for our community who says they're fully engaged in what we're doing in our community this is one of the easiest ways for them to become a sustaining member

we encourage all community members to natur just donate to the ad fund but to become a sustaining donor that is something that means the world to us um instead of making a $100 pledge to donate once a year we would encourage people to donate $10 a month um that's something that we can Bank on that's something that we can plan for and that's something that's very meaningful to us

it's been very exciting I have um enjoyed my first several months here at Edina it's been definitely a a career dream come true so it's been very fun

when I came on board I wanted to make sure that all the staff understood in the families and the community that we are serving started to understand that we're going to come together as one team and so that was our first guiding principle that we talked about during Workshop week and something we continue to work on and that we're going to talk about through the school year um and then the second shared agreement that we came to during Workshop week is that all decisions are going to be made from the lens that we're going to be doing what's best for kids and families

inclusivity will C will continue to be a core value of the E ELC I would just like to say um when I stepped into this role I was very impressed by how our um team at the ELC values every student this is very apparent when I stepped into the ELC so everything that we do going forward is just going to be something that we're going to continue to do to enhance the experience of in inclusivity here at the ELC

when I talk about capacity it's also how do we strategically decide what are we able to serve our community to what level and so on so forth even if there's still more demand that exceeds that but this is our kind of upper bound that we have to where we can then maintain so that we're not making a big investment in something for the future to where then we might struggle with how are we going to fulfill it

we came to all of you last year and asked for approval for um this orientation day and really our goal was to give all of our sixth graders um an equal opportunity to participate in this or orientation experience previously it had been done through a web day in the summer before school started so the last school year we had 15% of our students miss that day so 52 of our kids missed this you know onboarding experience so this year having it on the first day we met our first goal and that all kids had access to participate in these shared experiences

and then Midway through the day then we welcomed all of our students back and before before I speak to that we also had all of our brand new Tu students our seventh and eighth graders that were brand new and our ambassadors had this extra time with them to walk through their schedules and show them parts of the building and really help those students as well have a have a positive experience coming into a brand new school

one other change that we had this year which was very um motivated by in August of 2023 selfie offered a sensory hour um that was open just to students who noise could be a barrier as they walk through the door the first time so we had a small number of students that were offered um the ability to attend sensory hour

the relationship piece right that's what we always strive for each and every day is making relationships with their families and the connect and assess really hits home on the number number one reason why parents appreciate the connected assess is the opportunity for the teacher to sit down one to one with their child and have a conversation

I do really appreciate um that your staff rallied and said we can fit in extra on Monday or we'll make it work so one of the things that we did last spring also is in I believe it was May perhaps it was early June we sent communication to our families as a save the date when we realized we will be changing it to Friday Monday and a conversation that we had as principles is if we do the Friday Monday again we would do that again and then a reminder in July and then a reminder in early August as well

there's a lot of celebration in this report and that would not be happening without the day in and day out hard work that are teachers and administrators are doing directly in our buildings um It's really because of them that we're seeing the progress that we are in so many in so many of the areas

had some areas with our teaching strategies gold assessment our math our literacy and oural dropped and the reason for that this is the only data point in the the plan that is not comparing Apples to Apples it's comparing apples to oranges because the learning in the Early Learning Center prompted them to do a more indepth assessment knowing that that's what our kids needed in a developmentally appropriate way and so you see the kindergarten data has a huge jump and that data is our kindergarteners who went to our Early Learning Center and then had their Assessments in Adina kindergarten classrooms and that huge jump I think really um emphasizes that that additional learning

when you look at the data for literacy and for math yes you will see gaps among students groups but when you look at the questions of do you have a teacher that cares about you there is no Gap all of our students are scoring at like the 90th percentile right do you in the last week has there been a time that you enjoyed learning no gaps 90% across the board and I think that speaks to the work that our teachers and our principles are doing every day

something that jumped out at me from this section of the report was um while we've made really good gains in a lot of the goals was one of the goals um that says not on track but that we would expect uh aggressive growth in literacy and based on National data you would expect 25% of the students would achieve aggressive growth and we actually had 42% achieve aggressive growth and our goal still says that's not good enough um that just to me spoke to the dedication of the staff

it's also the fact that the goal is high mhm right yes cuz as we know with statistic you can have them spin any way you want in terms of depending on what your context is and so the fact that our goal is not a low goal it's not like a bare minimum goal it's this is where we want to be with our Learners and our effect of doing that and we're on the right Trend and so and soth which is great but it's also because we're striving to be at the right level

when we started implementing the science of reading and training our teachers on the science of reading we started with Early Elementary School yes um and um do we know as those students progressed are probably would have been second grade have been the fir I guess the first round of students that we were able to touch do we know what grade those students would be in now and are we able to see any correlation

I just also want to make sure that we're the first choice for residents so I don't know if that data indicates anything at all I just want to make sure we're looking into it

it's not that we're then satisfied when then an individual I think maybe it was Cheryl when one student is not hitting their goal right like oh well our overall goal might be met but one individual student's not so we're okay with that no one has said that no one is banking on that there isn't a single person in this organization that's doing that we still have to be responsible for each and every

I really do believe we can get pretty close to the goals that we've set we just cannot minimize I don't want to minimize the impact um that we're seeing for teachers when you get 42% accelerated growth and the growth piece is what works to eliminate the achievement disparities

the thing that I look at too in a reminder where I get my mind in the cont ual part of what this report is doing M it's telling us not only where we were spring of 23 it's telling us where we want to get to the spring of 24 this is just a midpoint to that process

the evolution of the state of metri plan Kudos is phenomenal from where it started to where it is today um not only with your leadership but with everyone who's been involved um Echoes to everyone I just remember the original conversations around it and to go from where we were to where we are today and imagine where we might be going as the years continue on I just think it allows a level of consistency that I think we sometimes lose um when we don't have something like this you all the seven people along here will change over time um not the eighth person by the way just the seven of us um and so being able to have that regardless of who's in the chair is also another kind of foundational element

we know you read the board report um so this presentation is going to focus specifically on the highlights around our letters implementation um as you know I'm Bethany van oel assistant director of teaching and learning and this is Sandra Harley she's one of our literacy coaches who you've heard from before um so you're going to get to hear a lot of um amazing things um about her work around letters in the classrooms with teachers

the read Act was important legislation that was passed um uh this last summer a year ago 2023 and a critical component of the read Act is uh a commitment to um have all of our teachers trained in the science of reading um and so Minnesota school districts have to have all of their teachers trained around the science of reading in two different phases