all right welcome everybody we've concluded the question-and-answer session and now I'm going to call to order the regular school board meeting of March 19 2018 we do have a quorum tonight and I would like to start by having John review that just the highlights of the meeting thank you chair the well tonight you'll work to prove the minutes we got recognition I also saved those announcements for recognition because it's pretty exciting consent on reports in discussion tonight we're at a presentation by Randy and team on the high school personalized learning experiences we're gonna give you the first reading on the 2018-19 budget presentation and discussion for school board meeting dates for for next year and then you have some policy updates they'll be presented by the board policy committee for action tonight you're going to be making a decision on school start and end times both improving the schedule and the year that it will be implemented also be for action improving the partial roof replacement furniture package and an additional Paula and then the policy update 628 can be moved so and then we have some information on enrollment and in staff recognition so that's it for the meeting all right thank you oh and did you have a motion any questions about that hearing none all in favor of moving policy 628 from action to discussion say aye all right any opposed motion carried Thank You Owen all right so that will be e under discussion please remind me when we get there all right next can I get a motion to approve the minutes of the February 26 2018 regular meeting for every 26 work session March 1st special in closed meeting and the March 6th special meeting second are there any changes to the minutes all those in favor of approving the minutes say aye aye any opposed motion carried and we are on to recognition we have the privilege of having a number of recognitions tonight we stirred Troy are you starting us off thank you [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so my my name is Troy Stein this on me alright so my name is Troy Stein I'm the assistant principal and athletic director at the high school and extremely proud to present to you tonight our back-to-back Minnesota State High School League girls hockey state double A champions way to go ladies it was a fantastic year and this team exemplified the best of what we offer in terms of great participation they work extremely hard they're passionate and they're they're well coached by the staff over here so what I'd like to do is I'm gonna I'm gonna start on this end and I'm gonna have them introduce themselves and one aspect of the season that you're gonna remember most and then share that out and then just pass the mic on down so introduce yourself give us your name in your grade and then one aspect you enjoyed most my name is Annie keel I'm a junior and one aspect I'm going to take away from this season is that hard work pays off I'm Olivia so I am I'm a junior as well and one thing I'll remember the most is fun pregame rituals my name is Evelyn Adams and also junior and the thing that I remember the most is just bonding with these girls everyday I'm Brooke Tucker I'm a senior and something I'll remember from this season it's just making new memories with these girls I'm Lee odden I'm a senior and what I'm gonna remember most is winning saved twice I'm Lucy Bowlby and I'm a sophomore I'm Sophia doll I'm a sophomore as well and I'll probably remember the teammates Matheson's being with them every day I'm Hannah torski I'm a freshman and I will remember our crazy superstition I'm Ellie Lee I'm one of the coaches not in agreed I will remember just coaching an incredible group of girls I'm Sammy Reber and the head coach yeah I mean everything that these girls said I could absolutely agree with and it's definitely gonna be a year that we'll never forget oh another round of applause so what I find so impressive is that while they all compete extremely hard and they will all want to win they all take away the basics of team and that's and that's playing together having fun together and building memories together that was the common theme coach Hoiberg so this is a Sammy Reimer whose Edina high school grad played hockey at Harvard coached a little bit at the University of minnesota-duluth and then we convinced her to come back to Guyana high school to take over this program two years ago tell us a little bit about what it takes to get these girls to play at this high level that you're able to do Wow sure okay I mean they're extremely talented on paper probably some of the best talent in the state let alone in the country but it's just them coming together as a team working for each other playing for each other not playing as a bunch of individuals which has been so fun for us to see as a coaching staff and has been a big reason why we've been able to be so successful well we we appreciate all of that you do as coaches and your guidance and dedication to the program so with that mr. Wallen Friedman would you get the team together and take a little picture with them with their commendation let's squeeze in for a group picture a couple rolls yeah [Applause] [Applause] next we have recognitions of several volunteers in the district our first presenter is Karin Rorick hi there thank you for having us if you guys want to come up from champion hockey teams to champion volunteers we have a mixture of our human and canine companions I hope everybody can see we've got Phil up here is a springer spaniel and oscar is a golden retriever not to be outdone by nick ball getty who is originally from Long Island just really quick I want to let everybody know that we are actually heading into April which is National Volunteer month so we're looking forward to celebrating the hundreds of parent community member and high school student volunteers who class or who support our classrooms and our programs year round just some quick stats about our robust volunteer program over the course of last year which includes the summer volunteers we had over 18,000 hours of support which translates into over four hundred and fifty thousand dollars in donated time and that is what these are people are all a part of we also had 448 classroom presentations throughout the school year through our curriculum resources program but tonight we want to highlight the volunteers here at the front of the room were also being honored for their work by the larger community Nik ball Getty here in the center he assists teacher Deb Johnson in the options classroom and EHS options as a state-approved alternative learning program that provides students a second chance to design and pursue a graduation plan Nik tutors students three to four times a week and is on site for several hours each visit Nick takes on a variety of tasks including one-on-one student support leading small group lessons and helping Deb create curriculum as Deb Johnson stated he is great at meeting students where they are at their level and re teaching or differentiating until a solution clicks for them Nick served our country during his time in the army he's traveled to Morocco to teach ESL he's fluent in French and is a champion kickboxer he excels at everything he sets his mind to and we are incredibly grateful that his journey has led him to volunteering at EHS this month Nick was a recipient a recipient of the connecting with kids award from the Edina Community Foundation so congratulations to Nick and I'm just gonna have him share with you guys what drives him to volunteer and what his favorite part is with working with EHS students hi thanks Karen my drive taxi volunteer young high school is gonna help promote mathematics as a concrete tool not an abstract science in terms it's a concrete tool that you can use improve their decisions in life and succeed in life so I approached Matt America's applied science as opposed to just theorem and unchecked approach and the reason I keep coming back to even high schools that do appreciate the contact with the students a full of energy and they always grow on me like there's always options and there's always hope in the future so it's I said doing volume.i time in the high school thank you very much [Music] [Applause] all right and last but not least here if any of you walk through the halls of Normandale you may cross paths with Phil and Heidi Sargent or Oscar and Lise Strauss five years ago Phil officially became the first tale Wiggin tutor as he and Heidi began their journey volunteering by listening to students read and practice math games apparently dogs also enjoyed networking because three years later Phil and Heidi recruited Oscar and Lea to join their ranks both dogs are certified through the therapy dogs international program and love patiently listening to the students read to them or work through their math problems Normandale is lucky to have two pet therapy dogs and they're generous owners who provide the learners an opportunity to grow their skills in a non-threatening environment as principal Chris Holden says Normandale has gone to the dogs and the students and staff couldn't be happier about it these four volunteers will be honored next month at the city of Edina volunteer awards reception I want to give them a round of applause so I'm just going to quickly ask Heidi to tell us a little bit more about Phil and what your inspiration was in starting a therapy program with Normandale so Phil is an English Springer Spaniel he's 6 years old and I've been training and showing dogs for over 20 years and when I got Phil as a puppy he was the calmest kind of a lazy dog which is not what people think of when you think of an English Springer Spaniel and so I thought well I'll try this whole therapy thing go to the hospital see how it how it pans out and as I get into it find out that you can go to the school or that there's this you know kids reading to dogs and so I brought it to Norman Dale once we finished our certificate and they said yeah let's give it a try so we started with our Success Center which at Normandale is kids that need extra help in reading and math and so the children read to us they read to us in French so I some second-grade French vocabulary Phil's probably better at it than I am but anyway he loves to go and coming into the school tonight as he does every time drags me in that's the most excited this dog gets is when we are coming into the school you can't get in there faster and then Lily if you will tell us about your favorite part of volunteering and what does sir Oscar like to do when he's not working so Oscar would tell you that his favorite part of volunteering is definitely all of the Pats and loves and snuggles that he gets on Mondays and Wednesdays when we go to Normandale from the students and the staff as well and my favorite part of volunteering is the variety of connections and that oscar has made with the students over the last year and a half that we've been doing this it could be connections with students who are just coming out to have fun and read and clearly it's a happy highlight of their day it could be connections with a student who is having a tough moment in their day and you can tell by the way that they Pat Oscar or talk to him and read to him that it's very reassuring and comforting to spend some time with him for their day could also be students who have a fear of dogs we have a few of those who start out a little bit away from Oscar when they're reading and then it's fun to see over the next few weeks or even months how they inch closer and closer to Oscar is they feel more comfortable with him and I remember one girl in particular last year who was afraid of dogs but after a few weeks she would always keep a little distance between herself and Oscar but always had one hand on him when she was reading to him and that was really special to see that happen and finally as Heidi said the original reason why we started it was to help students especially who need a little extra practice with their reading so it's fun to see the progress of reading over time with these students and to think that these dogs are even just a small part of that is also very special so in Oscars free time I'd say there's there are two things that he loves to do the most the first would not surprise you at all and that's to spend time with our two daughters who are here he loves to lie near them when they're playing have them read to him or even practice some of their dog training skills but the other part would surprise you overall posture is a very mellow calm dog but he's also a bit of a goofball so he loves to wrestle and play very hard with his older brother Riley and his younger sister Lucy both golden retrievers as well so he has fun doing that [Music] [Applause] Karen Karen before you sit down I just had to let you know that when a community member saw that you were presenting up here they texted me and said that I had to call you out and they said they said you have to say this though I did have to change the language for one word that they used that Karen is one of the best darn people and employees in the district she has an absolute Rockstar and make sure that she's recognized as well so I wanted to make sure you O great group of people so historically at the end of our board book we have a staff recognition listing that I go through and there was a suggestion raised that we move that up towards the front and so we do have a recognition of one of the staff members this was an email that was sent in by a family commending Jessica Fralick who is a language arts teacher at the high school basically the parent wrote in to thank her for the work that she did as a teacher as well as the support that she continued to give that person students in general even after they graduated so again thank you for Jessica Fralick [Applause] chair wall and Freeman also want to recognize just shout out to our ninth grade government class bi you can all wave really high so everyone knows where you're seated all of you well they're not they're not listening to this house well welcome all right next we have hearings from members of the audience we every month at 7 o'clock we do have a three minute period for people to come and give comments to the school board we do have a number of people that have signed up our rules for the 7 o'clock meeting is to limit your comments to 3 minutes please don't make any comments about individuals at all if you have comments of an individuals those should be duress addressed directly to the superintendent we do not typically have discussion of the items that are presented we do have a 6:30 time period where questions can be asked and those are discussed so we also welcome emails of which we have been getting a few lately so our first speaker tonight is David I think it's Bice welcome just grab a microphone thank you very much this is I'm assuming this is on thank you very very much for serving you guys it's you guys put in a lot of time I appreciate that I really do my name is David vise and on September 28th there was a request that u.s. flags be put up in the high school and those u.s. flags were at that point in time we were told that they were lost in construction on October 26th he put in another request for flags we put up in the classrooms and we were told at that point in time that we weren't able to do that because of construction in the school on November 16th we put in a third request each one of these requests were documented and again the request was denied on November 9th of 2017 there was a Veterans Day assembly that went on at the school I'm sure you guys remember that I don't know if any of you were there it was held in high school gym everyone was in the bleachers 11 students from the Black Student Union were allowed to come in onto the gym floor led by an assistant principal and it was at the point in time that during the plane of taps that those students happened to sit down while everyone else was standing at attention but they didn't just sit down quietly they sat down and started playing loud rap music on their phones that's what most people don't understand and what happened after that was a video was made of those students doing this and then it was posted on Twitter and it was posted by a member of the YCC what happened after that was a backlash that came on social media towards that student that I can't repeat the things that were said the threats that were made that student and those students if you're associated with the YCC and the school became really really divided at that point in time my daughter was part of all that and anyway I I don't want to drone on about that but what I can say is that there were remarks that were made to the members of the YCC that nobody really knows about that were horrible in response to that on a private group me chat there were some remarks made by ycc students internal to that private group me chat while nobody was proud of what those remarks were nobody knew about those remarks and in fact the president of the YCC actually reprimanded those four students for doing that and took them out of about a 200 person group me chat removed them for some of the things that they said there was I would just call it I guess a mole inside the that group each at that thought it would be good if they printed that stuff and turned that in and turned that over to the members of the BSU which then resulted in a meeting with those four boys with the administration and they were ultimately suspended two of those kids filed lawsuits that there is nothing being discussed about those lawsuits the kids won't talk about it and which being a business person being around the block several times I'm sure that those kids were gagged and in other words they weren't allowed to discuss it because I'm guessing that there was some payments made that aside we ultimately and and I'm one of the parents of one of the plaintiffs we ultimately filed a lawsuit against the school mainly for flag code violations but also for disbanding the group me app of the YCC after that was all done those four kids are suspended the group me app was had to be removed had to be taken down is what was said which literally disbanded the youngest service club so a lawsuit was filed at that point in time mainly because we were upset about flags not being so no mr. bracelets the idea was to keep it to three minutes and so I understand you've got yep so you're gonna need to wrap this up yep no problem I just wanted to make sure that everybody knew that there was no payment made to any of the plaintiffs I also want to make sure that the board knew that the the school district has disc I'm your Liebert I'm your liability insurance there's a deductible that needs to be paid per case per lawsuit and I'm guessing that there was quite a bit of money that was funded from the district and I wanted to make sure that the citizens will be dinah knew this and I wanted to make sure that you guys had school board members knew does this didn't need to go a lawsuit this could've been settled over a cup of coffee but instead it took three months for a settlement to finally be reached where we achieved everything that we wanted to get I just wanted to make sure you guys knew that that that there was money paid out by the district for a lawsuit that didn't have to happen all right thank you next will be Lionel doraville please no applause please we do not applause during these things so that we can continue to get and hear the speakers that have signed up to speak mr. dorvil welcome thank you for your time everyone Hey okay my son is a student within a district and I tell his story not for empathy or sympathy but for a clear understanding of what he experiences within the district recently he lost his name Dinah before me Dinah student last corporal Kevin plac'd which he considered to be his brother passed away his grandma passed away so my son has had to endure a lot one of those I'm not too proud of is something he experienced in hockey in youth hockey where I told him it was okay to walk away he told me he made a commitment he wanted to stick with it so for him I'm just encouraged by his strength that I don't know where it comes from I take some credit but that's something within recently under your Student Conduct policy 506 my son experienced what I would refer you to number 35 and 38 which is your abusive language policy so throughout the year so far he has been called and the quotes he has been called a they don't call him the n-word or say the n-word to his face he's been called a five times in his school I didn't receive a call from the principal informing me of what happened I heard from other parents of the students that were the perpetrators under your policy if a student is under k5 and under there is no clear disciplinary policy for the offender so now my son who is the victim of this verbal abuse nothing is done to protect him after each incident involving a white student it is said this is a good kid that's his friend I'm 37 years old went to predominantly white schools and I have lifelong friends that have never called me an idiot so for my son it is a struggle for him to try to reconcile that these kids are calling him these names we have a zero-tolerance policy within the district but no one protects him as a discipline a student is literally sent home after calling him a repeatedly for the third time sent home for an hour now I'm okay with whatever discipline the district chooses to use but I only asked you to understand every time a kid of color has been called a by someone just imagine that could be their first time ever experiencing that and how do they reconcile that there's no mental support for them there's no one consoling them and the parents aren't brought in to get input so again my son has to deal with all of this at 11:00 and the district and his school principal find it okay to justify others behavior by saying well he's a good kid the family is good and it's just for me and I won't throw out numbers because you know them better than I do but kids of color on your disciplinary spectrum represent a disproportionate number of those who are suspended or some form of actions taken against them whereas their white counterparts are given discretion and that's where that bias come in that for me I find unfortunate so I would only encourage you to look at policy 506 your own student code of conduct policy number 35 and 38 and you will see students aren't looked at as victims if you say any other slur towards a cultural group it is offensive it is hard to hear but for some reason people are comfortable with hearing or sand to other students and the only reprimand is they don't know they're still learning at some point I think we have learned and we need to move forward so I would only encourage you to please strengthen the policies that are already on the books and make sure you're looking at these students who are on the receiving end of that verbal abuse as victims that need to be treated with some kind of empathy and respect thank you for your time thank you hello so next person I'm sorry I only have a first name it looks like Brooke oh all right I said Brooke all right we'll go with Carolyn Jackson good evening and thank you very much welcome is it on okay so thank you I'm here to talk about a bill that's currently in front of the legislature at Senate file 24 87 and it's a direct response to the district of Edina it's all for all policy and I'm here to ask you tonight to send a letter to the legislature to oppose this bill there have been two hearings on it so far in the Senate there were parents from the city of Edina who testified there were teachers from the city from the Edina school district they testified but there was no statement from the Dinah School Board or from the district and I would like to you two I respectfully request that you would send in a letter opposing this bill it seeks to limit multicultural education in the state and it will have a chilling effect on addressing racism and other emotional topics in our school whether the teachers are standing up and the students are standing up on behalf of the school district I think it would be appropriate to hear from the school board as well one of the things that this Act would do is limit critical thinking it would prohibit teachers from assigning students to argue on behalf of it's something that they don't believe in this would essentially kill debate and debate class and debate competition and it would also be very difficult to have a teacher give an assignment where you had to see something from a different point of view and that's essential to critical thinking I want to read from you the overall statement on from the district ivana public schools led a strategic planning revision process from January through May of 2012 community members and school staff joined together in studying the current state of the district in discussing suggestions recommendations for improvement one particular outcome of those conversations was a clear message from the community that achievement gaps predictable by race and income are unacceptable so this was not a randomly selected policies very carefully put together and I would ask you to defend it at the legislature thank you next is Maria locks this locks are you going where are you we haven't we haven't seen you in a while quite know how this works so I figured I ask the questions then and give the statement out okay well you're welcome again okay alright hello again umm I know the board is in the process of discussing a strategic plan for the district as you mentioned and as part of the strategic plan I would like to ask the school board to have the administration improve the evaluation of curriculum educational initiatives and schools I think it's great to have a vision and I have absolutely no doubt that the intentions of the administration and all teachers are the best however any successful organization needs to have a role that a robust feedback loop to make sure that they are meeting their goals successful organizations set clear goals gather objective data analyze data thoroughly and use what they learn to improve over the years I have spoken at length with the superintendent and members of the administration about my concerns that they are implementing many new initiatives without properly measuring the impact I have been told and I call it true learning cannot be measured and I've been also been told that the administration is waiting for strategic direction from the board I have asked for two years why there are no student surveys given by the administration to evaluate curriculum and have been repeatedly told that this is a work in progress with that in mind I bring to this board I bring this to this board in the hope that the strategic plan encourages the creation of a robust evaluation process for curriculum educational initiatives in schools here are some specific suggestions that I have that I believe would improve the evaluation process number one move the map test back to the fall from the winter it was moved two years ago and used the map test to measure growth as one input of evaluating schools and curriculum it is the most appropriate test for measuring growth number to analyze map scores to understand the impact of curriculum across multiple dimensions including race special populations and including the starting score of individual students so we know we are serving students across the ability spectrum number three implement district-wide student surveys on a regular basis that help evaluate curriculum learners have the ability to give feedback about the pace and depth of the curriculum with our focus on personalized learning I am concerned that the choice of the student to flex out of classes and do their own thing as viewed as a success when it could also be interpreted as feedback that the curriculum is too easy and too slow for many learners number four make sure that the world's best workforce and the assessment committees include community members that are knowledgeable about objective data gathering and analysis and empower these committees to make recommendations to the board that improve our processes the goal of robust evaluation system is to understand what is working and what is not working in an objective and thoughtful manner in order for this to work the group doing the assessment has to be objective given the pressure to be successful it is going to be very tempting for any administration to skew results to show successes the school board needs to understand this and make sure the evaluation process has checks in place to assure objective and thorough analysis thank you thank you next is Heather teats welcome this one so I'm going to be reading a email I sent on Friday members of the board I'm seeing a renewed a publicity push for personalized learning but we haven't answered any of the questions I and many parents have been asking about Piell since the beginning what is the plan for personalized content what is our plan to measure and track Thank You Maria what impact positive or negative PL is having on academic achievement of all learners what do we have to show for the Piell trials we've been running for the past four plus years other than anecdotal stories about student engagement since we are having pl open houses and sharing stories I would like to share a personalized learning opportunity in seventh grade science of value Valley View which is a perfect example of PL that does nothing to advance academic achievement the students take some form of pretest sometimes the quiz online sometimes write a short paragraph sometimes draw a diagram etc based upon results kids are broken into two or three groups with the teacher taking anyone who scores below X the other groups I'll do something independently by themselves or in small groups with the what determined by their score usually the highest scoring group has to do something that is more work and time-consuming but the work completed in these small groups usually does not contribute to their summative grade so there's no incentive it becomes don't do badly enough to be in the teacher group but don't bother to put any effort into the pretest or activities they hurry through them so they can do other homework during the time allotted because it might be over several days or talk with their friends then after that there's usually a lab or reading or don't taking that happens before the students take the to actual test which is what the grade is based on I'm guessing the teacher and administration would consider this differentiated content based upon the pretest scores but the work isn't challenging it doesn't allow for any ability to go through content faster or bypass content already understood it just differentiates which level of busy work the student must complete that has little or no impact on the grade so we are once again asking or needing the students to choose to go deep remember that and with no real benefit for them other than the intrinsic in my email below and this is an email I wrote in April of 2017 the basically said the exact same thing and I that was read in two minutes at that time I asked the board to ask questions about personalized content when hearing about PL I would like to make another request please ask if any of the personalized learning activities are part of the summative grade if you are told they are part of the formative grading ask what percentage of the formative grade the total grade is based upon a very normal class split is 10% formative and 90% summative as a side note we've been hearing about PL again a lot but we haven't had any update at the board level or the GT DAC about the promised acceleration and enrichment activities coming out of the gifted education study findings shared in spring of 2017 we also haven't heard anything about the previous board's request to understand if we could provide enriched classes all three years of middle school for all the non math core courses language arts science and social studies rather than having one or two enriched courses offered for each grade may I ask that the board follow up on these expected activities I look forward to seeing you all on Monday any questions please feel free and I'm Heather teeth I'm a mother of a seventh grade value student and a North Normandale fourth grader so here's the concept if it's not contributing to the grade the kids know it it's not relevant so if we're truly going to try and say pl is meeting about academic rigor and about meeting the needs of all students and academic achievement then we need to make sure it's something that is appropriate level of rigor and counts toward the grade thank you thank you alright next is alright again could we please hold the applause next is Carmen Nisha wave right Mike this is the right way the right way yes well thank you for letting me speak this evening um I'm here to talk about the early start time or the decision that you're making this evening and I know that you've had other opportunities to talk but I have had been out I had some ankle surgery and have been on a medical leave so tonight is my first chance so I would really appreciate just being here in my message tonight I have a prepared statement but I think I just want to talk for a minute so I'm going to reach you from but let me just tell you I am a nationally board certified my name is Carmen nos I'm I'm a nationally board certified teacher to happen for 20 years I have given my heart and soul to this school district I have a master's degree in curriculum instruction I've got an education specialist degree and I've completed some doctoral studies all of that an early childhood early elementary learning and best practices and I come here tonight with a story and a message and my message is to really hero it the importance and the significance of really why it matters to change the start times for elementary to the earlier time and you know I thought through those they have scads of research all kinds of things I should share way more than three minutes worth and so I really struggled to bring this down to three minutes and here's my story there's really two important things that I need you to hear one doesn't take any research and that's that little children wake up early they have a little fixed window of stamina and they're kind of done by the afternoon and secondly it really matters and the priority needs to be and this is all my educational trainees talk then we're really matters are those foundational skills and knowing that our youngest learners come out of school so that they can do this higher learning things at the middle school 'no high school without a lot of extra gaps and here's the problem when we have the kids at school till 4 o'clock they're done learning by 3:00 please listen they are really really done and as an educator who comes with high energy do anything and everything I can to entertain and keep these kids engaged in learning it's really really hard for me to come and do my job and feel good about that job I do I come to work hard and it's hard to do that when the kids are just checked out their little window of learning developmentally is in the morning they're early risers they wake up this is developmental I've done a lot of research from the National Association of education of young children and they have some policy statements that will support this and the other piece I need you to know is they have something called an optimal zone of learning and that talks about how they can be available there's a developmental nature of their executive functioning and it's probably the most critical reason for making this decision to move and to support it and I think I believe from all I've learned is probably as important as the research you have on adolescent sleep time moving back it moves back because it starts with the younger ones at an earlier time and changes so what happens with their the five and six year olds are just beginning to develop cognitive skills to do focus and engagement I just got checked my notes for the critical reasoning that they're all of their learning skills and being its screen out distractions and all kinds of things like that are just beginning when they're five and six those things don't really mature and become developed until middle school so when these kids are not even able to focus later on in the afternoon and screen office distractions we're trying to do foundational skills during a time when kids are just not really available and with developmental things you can't force it it's not gonna happen we can I can do all the bells and whistles in the world trust me I do I'm like whatever costume you can think of to show up to entertain and and it just isn't learning so what I'd like you to do is to consider the benefits of moving it extends the morning-time and instead of two hours in the morning and about 60 to 90 minutes of instructional time to closer to three hours of instructional time in the morning which more closely matches the kids learning and for that reason I would like you to really consider that and you've got a lot of elementary you've got sixth grade levels that this impacts and we have some of the best elementary school teachers and we all come with our heart and souls to come and do a good job but I can tell you most of us are really really having a hard time keeping these kids here at school past 3:00 so as you make that decision that would really like you to consider the developmental nature of their learning as important as this research that there is for sleep for the middle schoolers if you want more I'm more than happy to spend lots of time with you to go over a lot of this but thank you for hearing my message tonight and please let us do the best that we can for these kids and teach those foundational skills and thank you for your time thank you that concludes the hearing from members of the audience thank you everybody we do appreciate the input from the public and again as I pointed out we do have a 6:30 session that occurs prior to the seven o'clock session and that 6:30 session is a little bit more interactive all right we are now turning to consent agenda all right is there a request to remove anything from the consent agenda oh it's can I get a motion to approve prove the consent agenda all right all those in favor say aye any opposed motion carried and we are on to reports and discussion and we are starting actually a personalized learning we've got good evening school board chair Wong Freedman superintendent John Schultz community members we have a number of staff and students here this evening to talk about some of the work being done at the high school level my name is Randy smuzzle director of teaching learning I do a couple of introductions here we have Alec sculpt on my far left who is a mathematics instructor at the high school we have Andy beaten our high school principal we have Lee Antho who is our school psychologist at the high school we have Kristen Benson one of our language arts teachers at the high school and we have Taylor Johnson are one of our counselors at the high school and then a couple of writing coaches and I'll have them quickly introduce themselves I'm a senior and I'm Anna long Quest and I'm a junior part of our so I'm trying to advance this working there we go okay so part of our process over the last few months is around just updating the board and our community and some of the progress around personalization and this as a reminder to our community is it's one of the core strategies than the strategic plan currently is to advance the personalized learning experiences for all students and so we're doing this three-part series we did middle schools back in February we're doing high school this evening and we'll have elementary schools coming up this next month so sitting at the core of this framework are really these three pillars this this idea of proficiency based progress is really about advancing based on where you're at with the standards and we have a lot of work to do around that but the the premise is that students will advance their learning based on the standards that they're proficient upon and so part of that is really understanding the student's academic performance and their growth in the learning experience learn profiles is about knowing the learner and helping the learner know themselves as a learner so knowing their strengths and challenges as a learner because those elements play into the academic design in the classroom and customized learning paths is about helping to find those pathways that maximize engagement and empowerment for our learners now we have a design team that we've recently developed that has administration and teachers on it and the goal of the design team is to help develop the strategic action steps and goals as we move the personalization strategic core element forward and on the design team we have some high school members middle school members elementary members and early childhood members so part of their work is to develop helped develop common language across the district figure out how we're going to continue to monitor our progress determine what professional development needs exist with staff and then what communication needs exist as well when students leave Edina Public Schools there are many things that they will carry with them and sitting at the core of that are these six competencies these competencies represent the outcome of the high school and of our middle schools and our Elementary's in addition to meeting all this is in addition to meeting all local state and national standards as they're assigned through their academic pathways the goal when they leave us is that we have responsible citizens who are effective communicators and collaborators who are globally aware their innovative problem solvers they are motivated to learn unlearn and relearn things that they'll need with them in life all while being able to manage their own wellness which is they increasingly challenging tasks for our young people and the challenges for our young people to demonstrate that they have these competencies prior to leaving Edina public school not just simply to expect that they have them when they leave us and so that's part of the proficiency-based progress so with that introduction I'm going to turn it over to Andy Beaton in our high school principal to talk about these core components at the high school a little more depth good evening everybody thank you for the end superintendent Schultz members of the board so it's a great pleasure to be here with some of our outstanding staff and students here I don't want to be too redundant on some of the things that Randy talked about in terms of the core components but essentially and I can and break some of these down about some things that are happening at the high school but also some things that are in progress you know one of the key elements coming in a new to the high school is what I determined is is kind of a framework that we look at and that framework really is about preserving the core and the tradition of excellence that has been in Adana high school but also at the same time stimulating progress so I think it's really important we talk about personalized learning this is not an either/or by doing personalized learning we do not lose excellence at the high school we do not lose the outstanding teaching and instruction and goals of our students so it's an aunt and I think it's just important that we're looking at those things that are fit for the high school that makes sense but really how do we continue to move forward so as Randy talked about some core components that resonate with a high school the learner profiles is really about getting to know what students need to learn in terms of that content and curriculum but also about the student themselves so I think that's that's the the key idea from here proficiency based progress is you're seeing some changes is about time being the variable and learning being the constant you've heard that before so essentially how do we look at a student's second accelerate more quickly and get to proficiency how do other students need more time to be able to be proficient with the end goal of all of our students meeting their potential you see some examples that if we put here up on the slide for example over Spring Break we have a group of students that's going to China another group that's going to Spain to do language study to do global studies to do cultural studies so these would be some examples that would be different pathways than the tradition so the tradition that will still be there but also some new opportunities and then ultimately customized learning paths is also some things some examples so we put up there around capstone which is similar to how we do independent study how do we have a culminating senior project that's in-depth for our students to be able to tie that to their post-secondary plans or an air passion we've had some discussions about choosing career majors you know not that we all don't change our minds over the course of our lives but having some focus around instruction and I know that the counselors and tailor is going to talk a little bit about how they're aligning those four year plans and then the basic concept is how do we create pathways for students versus pipelines so pathways would be individualize some opportunities of choice not just one size fits all so with that I'm gonna ask Taylor to talk a little bit about the work in the counseling departments around learner profiles good evening I'm Taylor Johnson I am one of the licensed school counselors at Eagan High School I'm also a 2004 graduate and first year member of the French immersion cohort so Bonjour - lavond talking today tonight I'm gonna talk about four components of the school counseling program within that we've really tried to shift from being reactive to proactive and when that in mind we wanted to encourage flexibility how students learn when and where they learn helping students become more empowered having choice partnering with the community with parents and guardians as well as setting expectations and encouraging students to reach their goals so the four components I'm going to talk about are on the slide behind me the first of which is the college and career readiness curriculum we've been able to take advantage of new components at the high school including advisory and Flex block what's neat is that in our advisory program students are actually able to hear their college and career readiness curriculum from their actual counselors and on top of that we connect a distance learning such as screencasts powerpoints and assessment tools with that so students can learn how they learn best student can also relearn they can get reteaching from us our flex blocks we've been able to partner with our community with Edina rotary where we now have two additional students who are looking at exchange programs partnering with local institutions such as Normandale than U of M to provide PSEO opportunities academic advising work for NCAA athletes and also a large sum opportunity's fair to make sure students are aware what is out there for them when talking about kind of working with the community our parent Knights have been very successful and we believe to truly support students in reaching their goals we have to partner and to give you an example we typically have around 350 to 400 parents who will show up to our evening events and we're trying to get more feedback from men on how we can move forward to help support their learners in reaching their goals two specific tools I'm going to talk about tonight are my app which stands for the multi-year academic planner so if I say my app and I will repeatedly the multi-year academic planner as well as Naviance so if you look at the next slide we'll see that every student has access to a learner profile or portfolio and what this does is it shows the college and career readiness curriculum for all students so you'll see as an 11th grader here for example we see students being able to access information on creating a four year plan on goal-setting everything from building potentially a college list to learning more about your career interests now yeah absolutely so when a student logs on to Naviance their student portal they will have three different opportunities on the top there's a colleges careers and about me tab under the about me tab it should say portfolio in the portfolio links everything a student has had access to and gone through to this point with the counseling department absolutely so we understand that everybody is in their own path not every student is ready to talk about what happens after high school let alone what's happening next year when it comes to registration so we give students an opportunity to enrich themselves but then also to take time to take an activity at the pace that's appropriate for them as well as working with us on a one-to-one basis the next slide is going to show you another aspect of learner profile and this is where we see students becoming more empowered with their choices and anymore about themselves every student has strengths here the items such as the strengths Explorer and the do it you are assessment help identify how they best learn what their strengths are how they best work in general and helps connect them to resources which they can enrich themselves and find different pathways to different careers different college majors different career clusters that might fit them best and they have access to do this on their own as well as hitting the sport from us in the counseling department so one thing that we see is over time soon is becoming more and more empowered in their learning many students come to us and they don't know to start a conversation with a teacher I'm struggling in this class and we can use assessments like this to help to identify you are really good at this this is a strength of yours as well as this is actually an area where we could see you grow even more at and using this information that they can get on their own empowers them to make those choices the third slide is just an example of how we create individualized surveys for students so in this case the student chose a four year college as their future plan and we identified different beginning questions to ask them this is helps us to fold one it helps a student begin to think about this process of what does that college fit look like for them too it gives us information that we can grab any point in time so that we can have more in-depth conversations with them so Naviance is a very strong and powerful tool that we using for several years now and if we go to the next slide we can kind of just see how this could progress in students so from advisory to small group meetings to enrichment opportunities to revisiting them and giving them opportunities to work with us towards academic advising so we really try to loop it all together for them to know who they are as a learner than to understand the opportunities that are ahead and to feel empowered to make those choices while partnering with the community at large my app this is probably the newest feature that we roll out in the counseling department and this is related to academic plan academic advising for a very long time has been at my desk and we wanted to move that so it could be at your kitchen table so it could be in the living room it could be with the Latin tutor you connected with the math teacher that you love the administrator you built rapport with so with my app students are able starting in eighth grade to create and modify a for your academic plan that keeps them to cop to high school graduation what's great is you don't need to know what the prereqs are it is programmed into my app it guides you through the process it allows you to continually update and change your plan as a parent you could log in and view before your plan you can access it over the summer to update it it's not just a one-time thing it's something as fluid and living it also just in general brings stakeholders together better communication more transparency and what goals are I think we all know that the more student understands a goal the more likely they are to meet that goal and exceed that goal we see this as a platform that we can build on right now it's a high school graduation path there's no reason we can't look at it being a French immersion pathway a Fine Arts pathway a four-year college pathway two-year college pathway the options are limitless and students could use this to identify customized paths that could fit them and then our last my last slide or second last slide actually just gives you a visual of this the multi-year academic planner it formats their plan in the visual manner so that students and parents can easily interpret it in the past we've done this paper and pencil every year with the student but we all know that not everything that goes into a backpack makes its way out this way students and families can ensure that that for your plan is always accessible and always viewable and we can continue that conversation at an early stage did all of our let's see so incoming nine ten eleven twelve graders have to do and complete this plan this year so all current eighth ninth and tenth grade students did a multi wreck number four your plan 11th graders still have paper pencil review with their counselor and yep because the multi essentially what it comes down to is we when we transferred from ties to Infinite Campus our course numbers change and the way that my app interprets course plan is through course numbering so for current eleventh graders they have two systems in their transcripts so moving forward all students have that opportunity currently thank you and the impact we see and I think this is just great stats to see to see how the community and how the students and learners are excelling this year we've had over 250 colleges that came to visit with our students there saw their admissions reps the people that are on the application decision committees we've had we see an average of a hundred and forty students in the counseling office each day with upwards of four hundred and thirty three we have as of last month eighty seven percent of the senior class has had applications to two to four-year colleges total applications we process is near four thousand and counselors meet with all students either in small groups or individually as well as an addition in the college and career readiness advisory curriculum so an advisory they meet us on large setting but in addition to that they meet us either in small groups and or an individual meetings so in quick summary we're trying to empower students to understand their strengths to understand where their growth is and we're trying to give them more pathways to choose what is best for them moving forward and we're doing that with flexibility in how they learn best and where they learn best and creating more communication with the community and with our colleagues as well yeah all right a lot of this is wonderful so thank you for presenting it and putting it together um I guess a question I have is especially with the learner profile and having students explore their strengths how do you balance that with knowing that these are high school students and they're going to evolve and they might feel something to strength one day and be interested in one day and then the next day it could be something else how do you work with students or position it such that these are strengths that maybe in a year or two you might have a whole different set of strengths and work with students to realize that since they are still kids growing and my second question is do you ever feel that having kids look this deep into trying to understand themselves creates a layer of anxiety and stress for them just give at my whole high school experience I never worried about that and McDonald's so how do you how do you balance those two things well what I meet with a student I tell them my job is to keep as many doors open for them as possible that there are so many more opportunities that even I had going to graduating high school from gap year to two-year schools for your schools military trade schools to joining the workforce right away I'm not going to tell them what's best I'm gonna try to hold all doors open for them to choose what's best for them I think that we encourage students to grow and to change their minds I often tell a student that okay this is what your career interest inventory has so this is what your personality assessment is you have an idea of where you want to go to school or what you want to be I think this is amazing let me support you in this let me give you opportunities to dabble in it but if you change your mind I'm very proud of you for changing your mind because this is growth and some kind of growth is changed and sometimes change is scary but that it's natural I think part of our students deal with these days is this open life script there isn't just one path and that can be really intimidating I think we collaborate and team with a lot of our our teachers as far as working with students to keep your expectations realistic while also striving for more it really is a it's a building effort to healthy students realize how amazing they are and to realize how amazing their opportunities are and that they can achieve it just really quickly that there there are competing ideas should you be trying in a lot of things which is a very healthy mindset for kids you know especially as they're entering high school should be trying to further develop your strengths which strikes me as so - the second tier you don't want to say well we've tried a lot of things one of them really wasn't for you so that's where you're gonna focus your time which is sort of that that last tier of what will will develop some weaknesses and that's maybe especially once you've got a direction you want to go where is it that might be a barrier to entry and develop the weakness to make that more accessible but in the first place yeah it's it's very important I think to sort of have a what have we tried and what have you think of it type approach so I'm very grateful for the for the documentation that goes into this so we're not trying to hold it in our memory banks as much anymore I remember my own experience it's very difficult if you have an idea or tool for you're going it's rediff achill to answer some of these other questions generally you kind of picture what it might look like when you're answering a question about your if your interests or what your future might look like and so this sort of documentation layered upon you know years of discussion and analysis really seems to be a just an invaluable tool for our students I just wanted to follow up so the two tools that you're talking about my app which i think is great I know we talked about it at teaching and learning and went through the process of my current 10th grader I mean you even if it's a school board member I had to go oh yeah that's right we can't just say what we want next year we have to complete the whole plan so I think that's fabulous the one question I have though since Naviance is such an important tool and I know that over the last couple years we've really been pushing to make sure we're using that across the board are you guys monitoring to make sure that students have taken the steps to actually go in and use the tool why are we tracking and making sure yep we do have access to run reports and we do frequently and we set goals for typically around 70% participation in these areas and we use flex slack at the Flex block as a time to meet with students who haven't individual meetings we have junior meetings coming up and that's a key touch point to where we ask students to truly use these tools they're here for a reason and I'd say overall we do pretty well with that but not all students will choose to participate in everything at least at that time so students typically we see in tenth grade we do this personality assessment but it might not be till 11th grade that they truly buy into it so typically over time we see high rates of use but typically our gauge is around 70% okay and so do we have a goal of wanting a hundred percent participation or is you know is that not an end goal for the district well I think for the counseling department we hope that all students take advantage of it and we give our efforts to do that I think we see that other students will use other tools beyond Naviance as well such as Google they might choose more than Naviance at times but I think about good comments and one of the things that Taylor talked about at the beginning was how the counseling department is really shifted to bring their work to students that's been a goal of theirs instead of just waiting for the students to come that might have been the old model and even with Naviance is a tool without the structures in place to be able to see students during advisory or seeing them at Flex block you did just have that segment of students that were home talking to their parents about it and working on Naviance because there were self-motivated so now we're jump-starting that I think with a broader section of our whole student population that was uh these numbers are impressive so you guys are handing a lot of volume with supporting kids you really are so thanks for all you're doing in terms of the process from tracking being a very passive process to actively engaging and intervening when you see something start to slide off from a path that you see a student on I think a very active process where are we in that path right now just at a high level yeah I think so I'm Leon tool I am a school psychologist at the high school in this year I'm serving in a role more of an intervention coordinator um just as we start to roll at all these different policies nurses alright yeah well in our schedule changes and things so um I can't really tell if this is working very well um so I you know you're talking about a student who may be we know is on a path and we start to see them slip we have in place our student support teams and so each it's broken down by Elfa so we have our both art we have two counselors per team and then admin for that team and myself a school psychologist and the social workers that's just that support that part of the alphabet as well and so we meet bi-weekly and talk about students may be a concern has come up through the counselor I have a teacher forum that teachers can fill out if they have a concern about a student we do run you know data based on like the D and F lists and then I dig into those and look at who are students right now who have these and EPS and you know who do we need to talk about and look at for further support so we do have some mechanisms in place to catch those students who we do see start to to fall and then add through our student support teams we do build kind of okay what our next steps with supporting these students so as you do this each year you were finding your triggers so for instance when a student gets their first D yeah the warning goes out to the teacher but you don't want to pull the student every time they get a bad grade Ivan that's right so is that a refining process we're still going through yes I would say it is yeah we're retaining as we go and it's even even changed from first semester or second semester as we understood better what are some some better trigger points so yeah I've got a question first off I think it's just a great idea to Ray consciousness and create more intentionality in the parts of the students to think about what their next steps are not that they just graduate and what am I going to do or I'm just going to college passively that they think through this so anecdotally it resonates with me is there are there any metrics surrounding the success of these learner profiles have other school districts had before-and-afters is there any way to track how students are doing after they leave high school their college graduation rates how are they doing in the military correctional records is there any kind of success that we can track coming that we can put some numbers onto with the learner profiles well I think some things that are available actually through MDE is the sleds data that you can look at how students do longitudal II after their four years we have such a high graduation rate at the high school already so it's it's not like we're looking at six or eight year plants in terms of high school graduation but in terms of some data that's out there about employment college graduation I think some of that data has been collected starting to be collected from MDE if you look at that sleds data yeah yeah so that would be if you go actually into the report card in MDE the acronym what does it stand for somebody but thank you yeah so it's longitudinal data thank you around students around the state of Minnesota solely and you want to talk a little bit about our next piece so again LeAnn tool I'm just wanting to build on some of the things that Taylor has talked about Mandy has mentioned so far I think one of the strengths that we have going right now at the high school is that we've got some great structures and policies in place that are enabling our movement towards more personalized work so as Taylor mentioned we're reaching more students through that the career in counseling curriculum through our Flex block through advise we've got some of these different things in place given our new schedule where we can reach more students also you see a picture here of our flexible learning spaces we know that the the school was really redone to provide a lot of flexible learning spaces for our students and as part of our schedule change as well we have a student prep our all students are encouraged to take six classes and have a seventh student prep hour so that they have time to complete their work and choose where they need to go to help complete or help get that work completed students can go to a collaborative space if they need to be working with other students students can choose to go to a quiet space if they need to be working in a quiet space and students can also choose to go and access our tutor supports which you'll hear more about here from our peer coaches as well as Kristin and Alex as part of you know a way to help support their learning through their choice as I mentioned flex lock is the time for not only the counselors to connect with students but for teachers as well to pull in those students who need some extra support and students also have the choice to be able to say I need to go work on my physics I'm going to choose to go see my physics teacher during Flex block so there is that element of choice but also that element of support and intervention as well for students who who are needing that extra boost and then a few times it's been mentioned our advisory curriculum and just having that advisory piece not only does that help the student have access to the the counseling curriculum for the career paths but also just kind of a different relationship with a teacher who they maybe wouldn't have had I for example have an advisory and I think it's so great because I had said group of students I don't necessarily get to see in my typical job role and it's just it's fun to celebrate they're different you know strengths and things in a role that I'm not usually and so it's it's it's a nice connection point for students and for staff do you know what percent of our our students are using a student prep hour this year in the through 912 for this year we encouraged all current 9th and 10th graders as their first year in the high school to take a student prep I would say that kind of to Andy's point I think we are around that 75 to 80% mark for students utilizing that student prep side note we're doing incoming ninth grade family registrations that are new to the district and a lot of them are hearing from peers and upperclassman's how beneficial those student preps are which I was pretty excited to hear about all right the one thing I just want to point out that's different this student prep idea I think for the public to be aware is is you know in a traditional study you know you sort of the sit and rows and the quiet study we're trying to create different pathways and personalized pathways about how students use their time during the school day which could vary daily so today I want to work collaboratively with my team on some calculus videos tomorrow I'm behind in my reading in English so I'm gonna sit in a quiet space to get that done the next day I've got a test coming up in calculus again but I have some questions and I go to a tutorial space so that's that personalization we're looking at and having students make those kind of choices so I'm gonna let Alex and Kristen talk a little bit about their work in Smash and the Writing Center so a couple of years ago I was teaching BC calculus and then I was also teaching advanced algebra prep so I had the highs and the lows during my day and in the middle of the night one night I thought why can't I get these kids together so my BC calculus students can help hold open the door for for math for the the lower end students that I see during the day and I went through and kind of talked to Kristen about the writing black at that time and how to create something like that for math and it was and when it first started it was the math hive and we met we had some tutors and it like the structure in place right now forced math means that kids can get help on their math any hour of the day because it's during all of the periods of student prep and I also think that it really benefits my tutors to be helping students with math when I talk BC calculus some of the most commonly missed questions we're solving quadratic equations because they did all the calculus right and then they got to the part with the algebra and they floundered so it's a chance for them to review their algebra as well and so it's personalized for the tutor as well as the the kid getting help these pictures that are up on the screen right now are pictures that I took one day when I thought my dream is coming true there's a BC calculus student helping another student with her with his math and then a group of students working together and those those kids have a special place in my heart because they were in my in smash with me every day and they came every day and that kid in the blue sweatshirt Moe secretly got to be on his final exam and I think it was a big part of it was that he was in smash every day and sometimes it didn't look productive but overall the fact that he came there and got help every day really paid off there's some usage data this is second semester data for the science and math and I'm a math teacher and I'm kind of glad that it's called smash and not most science or something but it is also a science tutoring center and and this is actually visits for any subject area so also including the writers black students come in to the tutoring center during their student prep and they sign in at the desk and so this is their like where we take attendance but also where we ask them what are you here for and so we had second semester so far we've had 331 student visits and that's just in January in February and those are a hundred and twenty-five unique visitors so there might be some people like my friend Moe who come every day but but the others are unique visitors the vast majority are underclassmen but we have had some seniors come so it's exciting hello my name is Kristen Benson I am an English teacher and the facilitator for the Writing Center and I want to turn it over to a couple of our student coaches to let them tell you more about what we do but another piece in addition to what Alex talked about is students coming to see us and I love with this new structure that we have with this student prep that we are available in an equitable fashion seven periods of the day so it's not just come see us during lunch when kids want to be eating lunch or you know coming early so we're accessible we have a lot of students that come and drop in but another exciting piece of what we're doing to help customize those learning paths and really offer more systemic support is that we are renting out our coaches so there's a coach reservation system so if you look at this spreadsheet we have set up this is shared on this one that you're looking at is a sample from a specific week where teachers will log in to that spreadsheet and say this is the day when we're working on the of mice and men or to kill a mockingbird or the passion project day I've got a Writers Workshop going on I've got 25 to 35 students in this class as a teacher I want to get to every single one of them but I know that that's not physically possible so the teachers will say send me two to five writing coaches and so the writing coaches will be used as the the teachers see fit either sitting outside in the flexible learning spaces or walking through the classes and really able to personalize ask questions and really give them that student-centered sort of learning and we found too that a lot of times with that instruction coming from student to student sometimes that level of just intimidation or the ability to to ask the question of another student who's hey I've been there I've done this paper I know some of the the stumbling blocks it's really been positive and so in the first semester with this new model we had over 422 conferences in the Writing Center and about a quarter of those a little more than a quarter of those came from the push outs into the classroom and we just see this model sort of taking off and really meeting more of the needs of the students I wanted to turn it over just for a moment to Kayla and Anna to talk to you a little bit more about how they see productive writing conferences working how they're helping to move kids more towards proficiency and then also some of the enrichment I think that they get from being a student who has to not only be a writer but know how to talk to people about writing and so I think they gain something from that as well so okay so so a lot of what we've talked about is about like personalized learning and how how and specifically how the Writing Center in particular can enhance that and so I've really found that as a Writing Center coach like every every student that comes in it's never the same conference like there's not wheat we got a basic like tip sheet at the beginning of the year like you can try these things to like help the Year help wherever they are you can follow these guidelines and hopefully you'll get them to somewhere productive where they feel like they've got something out of the conference but you can't necessarily just like check things off a list you really have to kind of figure out how to work with the kids because some kids have come in and they are looking for enrichment they're meeting standards but they would like to take their writing to the next level they have their ideas down on the paper they have their evidence in like a thematic novel or in a format a thematic essay but they would like to figure out how to really like get their reasoning to the next level or get their thesis to the next level to where it really ties in to the essay so what we can do then as Writing Center coaches who have oftentimes written the very same essays that those kids have before them and have thought about the same ideas we can help them see what ideas they're thinking of and kind of ask guiding questions to help them understand what their ideas are a little bit better themselves so we can really enrich them in that sense but we can also if kids are struggling we can also help them of that upper level I have had like within the same week I have had kids in the same class come in and ask me like very deep questions about their writing but also have kids come in and ask for clarification on what a thesis is so that's just there's a very different level and the teacher might not always see that and class is kind of will keep going whether the individual students are really following or not so what we can do is those kids or the teachers can decide with kind of requesting Writing Center coaches they can send out individual students that they think need help is we can help them get up to a level where they really feel like they have a handle on the writing assignment their understanding the concepts that the teacher has told them and how to work on their writing and so then we can really help enhance the learning experience of people at all different levels of their writing hi I'm Anna and Kayla mostly covered basically everything that is beneficial about the Writing Center but one thing I just wanted to touch on was both in the classroom push outs and when students visit the Writing Center I've definitely received feedback from the students and the teachers on how beneficial it can be just for students to have another set of eyes on their paper or another student so maybe someone that's a little more approachable than it like maybe their teacher just to talk through their paper with and as a writing coach I've basically read most of the books or done most of the assignments that they're working on so I feel like I have a pretty basic grasp on it going into it so I feel like I can definitely help them talk through their ideas but at the beginning of the year we sort of like during writing coach training one thing that was emphasized was how we're not there to just tell them quick answers on how to improve their writing and get a good grade on the project but we really want to try to ask them questions that will help stretch them as writers and in the long term improve their writing proficiency and their ability to succeed in their courses so like Kayla said every conference is individual and different but I think that having those personal one-on-one tutoring conferences either in a classroom or in the Writing Center can definitely benefit the students as we try to ask them questions that challenge sort of what they've are there what the ideas they've already come up with are and help push their writing to the next level and build writing skills that can help them in the long term rather than just on that specific paper well before I move on to this next segment here I just want to say thank you to our tutors our coaches the coordinators this math and the Writing Center it's one of the things that I said I wanted to make sure that I did is take advantage of the incredible talents of our students at our school that also care a lot about Edina high school and want to do service so it's a great combination of great teacher leadership and also student leadership so kudos and one of the things we did do yeah absolutely you know and this whole piece continues to evolve so if you've been to the high school lately where we had Smith and the Writing Center was a little bit in kind of the dungeon a little bit of the bowels of the high school and they were perfectly nice spaces but just not necessarily immediately accessible so we're trying to create that the Commons and the Career Center and Student Services and the Writing Center in smash like a central hub and so I think we've seen that just that visual line to of students that come from the Commons they're in a collaborative student prep but now I don't understand how to do this math mine go over an access a tutor right away those little things I think make a difference hopefully we'll see that in the volume of students at access those those programs um the next piece I want to talk about here is about you know my work and management's work around personalized learning how do we set the stage you've done that and the community has done that in terms of facilities and spaces the core planning team and has created a schedule I think that allows a lot more flexibility with that but my work is really around relationships and roles and that's a piece in terms of my Community Connections one of the things we're working with the College and Career Center is how do we get a database of all the talents and career fields of the people in the community that want to volunteer and come in so a flex block we can have a speaker series of people that have their MBAs or a speaker series of people that are involved in the medical industry that students are interested in tying that to their career pathway family engagement I think on multiple levels I think is a goal in terms of me getting people into the building and also being intentional about people that we get into the building that maybe wouldn't necessarily just access on traditional time slots that we have like counseling and then obviously coaching work you know as much as we look at the financial constraints of that I'd love to see over time if we could build upon some of the coaching work that we've done at the high school amongst teacher talent and build instructional coaches around PL to help this embed more of this into the classroom like they've done at the middle school so I'd say the high school is down the path we kind of have a different role in terms of structure I think and but now we need to move some of that into the classroom about what that looks like in terms of instruction some of its there but in many ways I think we could support that more around how we do culturally responsive teaching personalized learning interventions that are classroom based enrichments that are classroom based that I think we can build upon that so we're down the road and I'm pretty excited about some of that work one piece I guess I want to talk about in terms of connections to is some pieces that we built this year and I found out this fall about how our students want to have a voice we have a new Student Senate this year that we created as an advocacy group and also gives me an opportunity to talk with students about new ideas I just had a long meet the student senate about safety to get their perspective their concerns but just run ideas by them as well so i think this all comes into how students feel connected and feel that that school meets their needs all right leanne we're gonna talk about this one about teacher work you I'm gonna go alright so another phase is you know we are very strong at the high school around PLC's professional learning communities which meet these are really teacher driven teams typically by courses so Alex would meet with other algebra two teachers Kristin might meet with other April teachers to try to define kind of those key questions about what students will learn how do we do assessment to find out what they're learning how do we intervene when we need to so some of the things that come out of personalized learning are not new to us so these concepts you see from the Institute from personalized learning around voice and choice about relevancy and application about assessment practices about culturally responsive teaching practices this is right within our wheelhouse of that work that we're already doing with PLC's so that's why I brought up at the beginning that PL is not some far-fetched idea that takes away from really the work that we're already doing so it's really an ADD so if I'm gonna look at this idea that we were talking about recently as a leadership team this idea of how you change a classroom or not not everything in a classroom but parts of a classroom that go from this model of lead which is teacher directed to something that is shared that students do collectively to something that is owned when you think about a capstone project right that's owned by that student so not everything it doesn't mean everything goes to owned that the students are just on their own but I think that if the mindset is there amongst our teachers to think about some things need to be led clearly right and other things kids can really bring that together and other things they can take off and you want to give those opportunities for students to take off and it with an area of passion and in a depth of study what you want to add to that lian anything I just I had a really great meeting with I just wanted to give a shout out kind of to our biology PLC I just was they have such great practices in place for their assessment practices they have aligned really all of their assessments and they give students at the beginning of a unit all of the the standards that they need the students to meet for that that that section and as they learn them the students can go through and check off that they've learned those and then the tests are directly related to the standards then the students when they were given the test go through and go back and do a test kind of where did they get it wrong what standard did I miss and where do I need more work and that really can kind of guide their flexbox fun and their choosing where they can give more support to students who need it so I just I was very impressed when I met with that PLC and I wanted to kind of highlight that that's kind of all these things working together so common can be on the the idea of going deeper but still having that the weighty for the grade you know in accounting as a summative somebody's summative being rough too even more difficult than somebody else's summative so we're not just grading everybody based off of the same state standards which my criticism of them have always been that it's not they're not that difficult or not that aspirational they're not that impressive and for a board that says what we're not we're gonna cringe a little bit when we hurt ourselves compared to Metro average or statewide averages and yet we we aspire to the state minimums you know there's just as a disconnect there in my mind and so to the extent that we give up or two of these to go deeper then we have this question earlier two of the what about backing it up with an expectation that we go deeper a huge part of your grade is gonna be based off of how you how well you learn while attempting to go deeper because I see that the first day of the unit you you were at the state minimum so the next two weeks I expect a lot out of you you're not just waiting for the wimpy summative well I can try to address that question also maybe some students can address that question too because I don't see any of the students sitting here thinking about doing the minimum and I would say that the vast majority of our students in Edina High School are not the type of have the type of culture that's about doing the minimum we have a really a culture of excellence and kids want to excel and there's that peer culture around excellence at the high school I think when I see students on a student prep what they're doing is studying trying to get ahead trying to make sure that they understand something trying to get help trying to self-advocate and so on so I think that's when we talk about students meeting standards we want a hundred percent of our students to meet the standard we don't want students below standard but that doesn't mean that we're not looking for students to go farther and exceed and to have those opportunities to go further and I would say that in terms of the expectations that our teachers have in classrooms would be at a very high level at that exceeds level to be able to get kids to that next step to be successful so I don't know if any of the students or the teachers want to address that question either one things other sad is that in the PLC framework there's a specific question that it that addresses this concept and that's part of the work is what do you do when students are already already there know the content and have the skills etc what do you do with those students so part of the strategic planning of every PLC is to start Road mapping what do we do a student's when they've already learned the content when they already have those skills what is next for them what can we do with them next so again that's that's built into the structure but that's part of their ongoing continuous improvement I'm going to ask the students that kind of speak to maybe just reiterate what kind of experiences you see when students have met the standard and what kinds of things how do you push them above that what are they what do they do next okay so I so this year as a senior I am taking four academic classes but they're all a piece so I feel like that just in choosing of classes you can choose what level of activity or what of difficulty you would like but then within those classes I feel like there's the opportunity not to be only meeting the standards but to be learning beyond it so I'm taking AP French and so what goes in the gradebook are specific assessments and it's so one of the things that we have of our vocabulary tests and the vocabulary is 20 words and the first I think seven our vocabulary words the teacher that you choose from the ones that the teacher has assigned that she has decided are very important but the other ones are vocabulary words that you have picked up as the unit has progressed that if you do if you read an article in French or if you watch a video in French a words that you pick up in class and you as the unit progresses you write those down and you learn them and then you choose to put them out in the test so you can kind of self select a little bit of difficulty there and you can really choose to learn those words like it's very easy to kind of fit a word if you want to like oh no I didn't know that word before and it's on the it's on the quiz now but I personally and I know many other students try to avoid that so that we're actually progressing our learning versus just remaining stagnant so similarly to what Kayla said I think one big factor in for me personally trying to continue academically challenging myself would be through the selection of courses so this year as a junior participating in multiple AP and enriched courses has definitely been challenging as I feel like the standards and the pace of those courses are faster but I feel like across all of my courses I think that my teachers do a really good job of monitoring how myself and other students are progressing in the course and I feel like if they see a student that is really excelling in the learning and the standards seemed to click easily for them I feel like there's definitely extra resources available for deeper learning so one example of this is I'm in AP US unit US literature and language this year which is an AP English class and for all of our essay they've definitely as a writer they've definitely challenged me to think more deeply and analyze the text more deeply but a lot of the work kind of behind the scenes so formative work that goes into that students you can definitely meet the standards by completely doing things like analyzing certain texts through a variety of lenses but you can also I feel like there's ample opportunity to go beyond the standards and challenge yourself through just like commitment to doing the work and really challenging your own thinking so I feel like the courses that I'm enrolled in and the teachers that I'm enrolled in offer sort of somewhat self-directed opportunity for challenges but also they'll provide more challenging opportunities if you would like I have a question I was camping with the scouts this weekend and they know I'm the board and I told them that I'm gonna be hearing about personalized learning today and so I brought that up and I said what do you guys think about this and by and large they're a self-starting crew and one concern that they expressed was for some of their classmates who aren't particularly mature who aren't particularly self driven their concern is that these classmates will kind of slack and personalized learning sounds great for self-starters what about the kids who don't have an adult vision for themselves who don't see why it's necessary to study hard to think creatively they're just bored they don't really sense an interest in why this material is important for them how do we inspire or guide direct encourage the kids who may be less than motivated I certainly remember that from my high school and my high school experimented with modular scheduling it worked well for the self starters it worked well for me but there's a whole set of kids that it didn't work well so I'm just kind of curious what you'd do first do you think a population like that exists at EHS and if it does how do we engage them well yes EHS has some students that sometimes need more motivation my kid needs more motivation at times at home to take care of things and and I think this kind of goes down to that model of that lead shared and owned it's not always owned and on your own and it's not always led directed by the teacher and sound always shared so depending on the assignment and the kid and the instruction or what the data is telling you about how kids are doing that can change your instruction you know I think that these teachers would probably make adjustments section to section my first hour is different than my third hour in terms of how I approach it I have some we have some teachers that I would say yeah my first hour I I'm splitting my class all the time letting in the Meuse the extended learning area I'm conferencing with students in smaller groups my my second or no way are they leaving the classroom they're gonna be here with me the whole time so those adjustments are made based on individuals and the culture of the class now the other thing we've done too is you look at student prep for example something that we built and we call it student prep intentionally because we're building that up similar to how we view like a teacher prep so when a teacher has a period off we don't necessarily tell them exactly what to do they might grade papers the entire prep time just by themselves they might be collaborating with a colleague and doing some planning but they also just might be getting a cup of coffee and just taking a break for a few minutes before they get back into their work so we're viewing that same way for our students however LeAnn would tell you is something that we built around student prep is that we have multiple levels of student prep the traditional student prep that students have that choice but when we collect data and have some students that are struggling in that we've actually pulled them into something that we call prep plus that's with the counselor to diagnose what the issue is academically for those students and it's meant to have on and off ramp opportunities so it's not permanent you might be in for two weeks and we figure out what the issue is to try to get you right on the back on the path the correct path and then you're off again we have a third layer for those students that really need more intensive support call directed study which is a small group directed check and connect on a daily basis so even within the structure that we have that's personalized and flexible it doesn't mean that we're not being intentional about trying to get kids what they need it's the same with flex block we have office hours for students to come in and get help if they have the motivation and initiative but flex block could also be directed so Alex might have a group of students that need help in algebra 2 she's not asking him to come in she's telling him to come in and assigning them that's the word that we're using we're assigning you to come in because you need help with algebra 2 that doesn't prevent the self-motivated student from getting the help that they need but with those students that are not necessarily doing those things by their own volition we have to take that responsibility to get after those students to get them connected to stay up to speed to be successful in the class so it's a combination that's why I keep saying it's an and it's not a one or the other to be personalized doesn't mean that we are not being directed and directive at time to those students that need it it's a combination because ultimately we're looking for all of our students to reach their potential and that can mean a different approach depending on the kid I don't if that answers your question and it might meet a different timeline for different kids because you know from a growth mindset perspective some students need to develop and build those skills around their own time management around how they manage their course load etc and we believe that kids can develop that so it's putting them into a structure where if they don't have that skill set right now we have safety nets for them but as they move through school we want them to develop that engagement at a higher level so they become more and more empowered as learners I'm just wondering how long have we been using personalized learning skills that like the ones you mentioned at the high school and how pervasive it are they all call courses or like I said it depends on how you look it's and maybe from we've seen elementary and middle looking like inside out I think at the high school and coming in new they sure it's in many ways sort of outside in that we're looking at how we've created spaces scheduled structures infrastructure support systems to be able to do some of this work and I think our next step is how does this look in a classroom base you know what does this look like in terms of the mindset of our teachers and some of our teachers do it naturally others need more professional development about what this looks like on a classroom based level or how our teams like Lee Ann talked about our biology team very being very far along and advanced and how do they share that information with another team that is not as far along or they haven't been together long enough to establish kind of that rapport to be able to be really aligned so I'd say for the high school it's interesting we'd say who's the furthest along I'd say that there's some things in place at the middle school level from an instructional strategies and so on that's further along than a high school but I like some of the work that we're doing and seeing that structure and systems that we put in place to be able to have those touch points with many different kinds of students so for example in the biology classes how is the district evaluating whether this teaching methodology is as effective as a traditional and that all students are growing so I can just say you're gonna look at both you're gonna look at quantitative data and then you got to look at qualitative data so in the end our students doing in terms of graduation rates a CT scores graduation from college that longitudinal data about how students are doing their success but then you got to ask them you know does your school also provide a sense of connection and joy do you like being there do you feel like you're engaged challenged connected to your school whoever you are are you getting the appropriate supports that's safety not to be able to help you be successful everybody feels like they can meet their potential so I think it's a combination of that kind of data that we probably need to that we need to connect collect to see but again it's not a it's not a either-or so I could ask both of these teachers that our veteran teachers all these teachers here and they are have been successful in their work okay and they have maybe taught in some days in some ways traditionally but they continue to evolve as educators and that mindset about intervention or instruction or culturally responsive teaching or personalized learning how does that end up getting us to where we need to go and ultimately that's what we're looking for is high levels of achievement high levels of engagement and an excitement in connection with the school one last question first of all I appreciate all of you coming here and talking for so long and all the great work you're doing I was wondering as far as the tutoring the reading and math tutoring which is great but do you collect data as to why students are coming in not just the grade level but why students are coming in so on our current spreadsheet that we're using for a second semester now and so it was one of these evolving pieces but we do have a column for you know what class are you here for and what yeah what subject are you seeking help with and I just I think we added that maybe after we pulled together this data so because we are always looking for what what more can we you know know about students right we we aren't asking specifically what what area of mathematics is difficult for you we're asking who's your math teacher and what math class are you here for at this point because it could be it could over time be an interesting indicator of pockets of areas where students are struggling or at the beginning of the year you see a lot of kids maybe there's some transition issues that just a leading indicator to help inform so thank you one of the things we're hoping with the tutorial model is to change culture amongst our students that it is acceptable and an excellent thing to do to ask for help and to get help and to work together so that mindset that if you are somehow needing help or needing to work with someone else that that somehow means you're not as strong students those are some things that we're trying to overcome a MUX a very strong peer culture as well so and I think we're seeing some inroads in that area because it's fun to go to Smith hopefully fun to go to the Writing Center you know I mean I think from the standpoint of of connecting with other classmates you know upperclassmen that you know I'm connecting with kids to be able to get a different way to have someone explain this writing assignment or this math assignment I had one last question are the writing coach is available to help board members we have a fee-based structure that we can establish now this was actually guys thanks for coming in I would just like to publicly thank Andy Alex Kristen Liam Taylor and our coaches for all their hard work and their just daily dedication to trying to improve the learner experience over at the high school so thank you very much for being here tonight [Applause] thank you next on the agenda is budget recommendations we'll give a minute or so for those people who are leaving and then Margo you've got the floor it's the whole board leaving or just check-in you do that all right we're going to go into recess for five minutes just to let people stretch we shall be back [Music] you check [Music] oh just say the details are in the package yeah that's what I'm saying can we call everybody back to the bar table please all right welcome back everybody we are back from our recess and we are going to get into the budget and we have Margo and dr. Shultz Thank You chair well in Friedman and members of the diner board we are gonna run through the budget parameters for the 2018 2019 budget and also discussed the reductions that we're proposing to you I just want to let the audience know that the board has had a work session on this last Thursday and have detail there's detail within the report so I'm gonna turn it over to Margo to go through the budget parameters and some of them in your budget adjustments so just a quick reminder that we as part of our plan starting in January did make some mid-year adjustments I won't go through all of them today but the one at the very bottom on the committed fund balance reducing that from two percent to one percent that is a later agenda item in policy for discussion and then approval will be requested of that on April 9th along with this budget plan as well two separate approvals but they tie it they tie together our budget parameters we did have the levy renewal in 2017 it was there was an increase in the levy but that was to go for additional costs for that were added in 1718 for square footage and scheduling and programming but it did not address the additional money to manage the fund annual funding gaps that schools had to include Edina and just a reminder this is the chart that shows the funding gap and that the state funding has not kept pace with it historically kept pace with inflation even though we have received increases which we very much appreciate and included in detail in your board packet along in summary in the presentation are the overall parameters of the base plan what's important to understand is a base knowledge of the the plan that we start with whether it's enrollment or expenditures or revenues because enrollment for example will change between now and October and November when we do the final budget and so it's important to understand where we start with and then any variations up or down we we understand why go ahead in the reduction number so with the 1718 mid-year reductions that with all the projections come into play that will improve our projected fund balance to be roughly between five and five and a half percent and which is an improvement and then the reduction amount of a little over 1.7 million that's included in your packet for 1819 that would result with all projections coming forward a little over six percent six point three percent fund balance and then in order to continue to maintain a six percent fund balance in tune 19 20 we would need to make an additional million dollars worth of reductions in 1920 but we we have an annual process for that but we always look multi-year to say how does this this addition or reduction whatever we're talking about impact future years and so we did talk about that at finance committee and in terms of the process we also looked through previous Berg budget reduction reallocation and revenue generation items and also budget advisory task force items from previous years as we developed this list of reduction ideas Marco can I just have you clarify you said that based on mid-year cuts our fund balance projections are better than we had thought yeah the board approve the final budget yes and then with these mid-year adjustments for 1718 if all other projections hold true it will improve our fund balance as a June 30th 2018 it's that multi-year planning approach looking at the current year the upcoming year and then two years forward so the process that the team used our leadership team we've first thing we didn't spend quite a bit of time looking at staffing data ensure the alignment with the details within contracts and within the budget we talked about how we're gonna establish priorities and focus for the budget and those are on the slides that I'm going through now principles work closely with their teams in the buildings to propose their reductions as well as the district leaders the district office and we resort we in front of you is a chart that was presented to you last Thursday and I'm not going to go through each one of them in detail they're all laid out within the report primarily at the elementary middle and high schools the reductions took place through staffing enrollment schedule so manipulating those three things at any one of those schools resulted in reductions the changes that were made still have class sizes below the class size guidelines the board is presented athletics and activities for example we'll be working with their advisory team to identify fees and staffing and then with the district office teaching and learning looking at materials as well as staffing and building buildings and grounds getting to supplies materials and staff and then district-wide Margot do you want to talk a little bit about those the district wide area in the long range based planning parameters we plan for an average amount of retirees in the variety of bargaining units we have and then there they're typically as a savings because newer new hires come in at a lower level we had higher than average retiree submissions this year so we were able to gain some additional savings their professional development allocation we have some additional funds they are freezing supply budgets all across the board so no inflationary increases in the various departments district office and out of the site's some contracted services within the business office and then some savings and summer interns and dues in the human resources department and one enhancement request for additional section of second-grade at Concord that class is currently in first grade it's a larger class and so we need to continue that forward into second grade so the administration also did their work we also want to propose looking at our three studies for looking at 19:20 which we'll start with if these are studies you would like to go forward with elementary instructional paraprofessionals are we deploying all our dear professionals an efficient way that support all student learning can instrumental music we scheduled to insure instructional time is not interrupted and then secondary schedules are we efficiently scheduling students in our secondary schools that maximizes time and human resources and our these schedules sustainable for the future I think it's important to ask those questions with the lack of with the funding gap that Margo Marco demonstrated with the with the chart I think we when you could continue ask these questions on how we're delivering our learning in light of that gap so just so that we are delivering efficiently and using it in a transparent using our resource and a transparent and effective way so with that that's really the budget presentation a couple things one thank you one I really appreciated when we did have a work session on this last week that all the representatives of the different areas of budget cuts were there to actually answer direct questions with the board which is really really helpful so appreciated their time on these particular areas of study could you maybe explain a little further in depth what some of those examples might be just because they're kind of kind of broad I know that we were given some examples on a pair of professionals having to even out certain things right so so some of the is really looking at the class size guidelines and how paraprofessionals are deployed related to those guidelines on how those guidelines in front of me I know there's looking at the confused progress pairs at the Hyland's as well as at Countryside see how those are deployed so looking at those and it gets though with question I have is the superintendent are we using paraprofessionals to impact student learning is the question I think we can ask internally make sure we're maximizing that resource great timing instrumental music is the question comes is there a better time to do that can we schedule that differently as it was reported as we did this study that that we have instructional tenants interrupted throughout in throughout the day for students as they go to instrumental music and then secondary schedules I think it's really looking at that's looking at how do we coordinate the I think one pieces of coordinate the secondary schools between the middle schools in high school is one piece and then you heard some of the discussion in the previous presentation the schedule and really continuing to maximize that for personalized learning but also making sure that we're doing it efficiently okay so I know with secondary schedules does this we haven't looked at our middle school schedule yet I know we're gonna be taking a look at that probably next year does this probably could this possibly affect the concept of the a be scheduled as an 8 a B day it could I suppose if we look at a more efficient schedule or a different schedule okay and then on the grade 5 instrumental music do you think that that looked taking a look at that wouldn't mean potentially considering not offering grade 5 band or Orchestra I think I think we'd have to I'm not knowing that we have not talked about what it could be I don't know how I can answer that question right now but I would say that we need to look to see how we can still offer instrumental music in a way that's efficient but not so it's not we're not interrupting class so that she somewhere that's the word they kept making me cringe the idea that instrumental music is interrupting instructional time what I would say that we have committed instructional time to music education and that that we value that and I know it's a little bit of a tangent from this particular presentation because it's about this year's reductions and enhancements and I want to commend that work it was surprisingly surprisingly joyful really to hear how some of the impact of all of the the teachers who were serving our students this year will still be there next year even with these reductions the impact on students especially with mass was just the creative in responses to these cuts and I think that's comes from the leadership it comes from the teachers just all around so this is this is rather a joyful response to a very difficult budgetary reality so I want to start there but where I started here with this instrumental music talk though is that it's from my perspective a valued part of fifth grade education and bumping it to sixth grade would be a loss not an enhancement it's not interrupting these classes that even though students aren't as focused on reading in math I think that's to our districts credit that we we value so many things beyond just see maybe the easy trap of a lot of schools they'll just put them in front of the calculator a little longer become in front of the textbook a little longer and even some of the unique creative solutions of okay well they won't move it to sixth grade but what if we change the schedule put it through community ed you've drastically changed the access to it the emphasis on it you've changed our message around instrumental music that it's not there in fifth grade it's not the be-all end-all but I don't like the setup of it's it's a distraction from instruction right I don't think it's the yeah - just to clarify that it's the in in any one day what is that the student may be involved in instruction in the classroom and then those students would leave that instruction so it's more within that day how do we schedule it and and I hope you know that these are proposed studies and maybe it should say propose to you so if there's a study that you don't think we should pursue then please let us know that more yeah and I want to stop short of that I don't want to preempt you know looking at it so I'd like to make a comment or two real quick I agree with both my colleagues that these are important things to look deeper into but as a whole so I am serving the treasurer functions I've been working closely with Margo and John and the team over the past month or two this was not an easy cut process I commend the administration what they did was work with the different principals at every site and asked them to propose a list of different types of profiles things that are not easier to cut because nothing's easy to cut these are school funding issues that are faced statewide so which have the least impact of students in the classroom kind of as a high level which of these are things that we can do or can't do and made a level and a harder level and from that to get to 1.7 million dollars in cuts is a pretty big deal so mirror use the word joyful I also I use the word relieved which is similar emotion of knowing that we're giving the kids the best opportunity we have now to prop allocate our resources these three are things that I asked them to put on the board meeting for tonight I agree the wordings not best in grade five and some of these so the points are well-taken but I wanted the community to get a sense that even though we did the referendum and even though we did the levy there are issue the school funding statewide what we have to do is a couple things well a few things the first one is do a good analysis incorporate our principals and our teachers who are on the front line so we make sure we cut things that have the least impact and I think the administration did a great job of that I take no credit for that the administration did that the second thing we need to do and we're already working on a strategic plan over the course of this year is to also bring in the community and bring in overtime all of these thoughts to make sure we touch the classroom as little as possible as state funding crunches take place and the third thing is to really reach out to our state representatives which we will do much more actively in the middle part and latter part of this year to try to push for state funding at the State of the State address or Union address or whatever cool title was last week several different politicians spoke about the idea of supporting school funding and a more meaningful way in public schools so that's something I think is really important and if we execute as a team on all those three things we'll continue to make sure we have what we need but I'm very complimentary of the work that the administration is done with John and Margo and blood and I think that this could have been painful so I asked to have these kinds of things put on here because these were just some level two so these are things we all need to be aware of we had amazing volunteers here this morning and amazing people that give so much time to our school and that helps our overall education for our kids but there's some things we're just not legally allowed to spend money on or we just don't get from the state that we need to push for in 2018 so I think you guys did a great job and there's always room to improve on things but just what this was a really thorough process my thoughts I have two quick questions from a 35 thousand foot view since we're being taped and some folks will be watching I think some people have a question about how did we get into this position why almost 2 million dollars just real quickly and the second thing is people are wondering we just passed the 13 million dollar random and now we're asking for more money just a quick answer to those two questions if so to address the first question annual if there is a funding gap and this is if you attended any of our referendum presentations both questions were done at each presentation in terms of when we receive one percent in state funding for our district that's about five hundred and fifty thousand dollars of a portion of our revenue budget it isn't all of our revenue coats up so this year that we're talking about we're receiving two percent and that's 1 million fifty thousand dollars in a portion of our revenue not all our revenues if we have a one percent increase in expenditures it is there yeah one percent increase in expenditures its 1.1 million dollars so even if we hold hold our and some people would say if you got two percent new funding in revenue from the state you should be able to have 2 percent new expenses well in that example would be 2.2 million dollars in expenses and a little over a million dollars in revenue and we're already out of balance because most of the other funding sources stay rather relatively stable and so unless there's a drastic enrollment increase which were steady but in a stable district but we're not growing at five or six percent enrollment a year like some of the suburbs can be so does that answer your question on the first so that's an annual and that's not unique to Edina it is for everybody and I just actually received a new chart today that is unique and shows a Dinah's history on this funding gap and I just got it probably a couple hours before the board meeting so I'll try to incorporate that into our presentation for the night so that you're able to see Diana's data along with this this type of data and in terms of answering the other question about the referendum the referendum was continuing our excellence in our programming and what we have and in 1718 we did some things in terms of we had set aside actually first at least three years through Finance Committee set aside dollars to be able to open this the additions to the buildings increase square footage utilities cleaning maintenance costs and also bring ninth grade to the high school and have a new schedule and those are the major items but the list goes on so we were already we funded ourselves for 1718 till you get to the voters and so that that's what that increase is paying more and it's an ongoing fashion and really what we're talking about in reductions today is the annual funding gap question number one that we're dealing with okay thank you any other questions if are we wrapping the section right now it's not we're doing if we're done what's some more questions Rogers have I have 100 questions on those last three you know I want Ellen's question next I'm not gonna after question I'm just saying before we finish this section let's just make sure we tell the time line so the community knows what's happening so I I'm just wondering about those three studies that you're proposing and I don't want it to be a conclusion after this meeting that these are the the studies that we are I think the board needs to discuss this some more is that do we have consensus on that I'm seeing examples I was I was wondering if you could address the the the cuts that were proposed at the middle school I thought that our principal did a great job in explaining that I was wondering if maybe you could recap that well I tried the shell to the best I can so that the middle school reduction is going to use the flex time to provide math support so in the past there were two teachers that would provide that support for students that were struggling in math and so in this case they're going to use the current staffing and not have that extra one teacher and use the flex time to provide the support to them to the students and at Valley View it's some some reduction in electives and learner support but but I think primarily based on enrollment and then some clerical time great thank you so Matt asked about next steps well we'll continue to study this budget the budget transfers and reductions and will report back any modifications the board is going to have a listing session on April 2nd at 7 p.m. here in the boardroom preliminary approval of the budget is on April 9th and final approval budget has to be done by around June 30th to thousand 18 these cuts will be approved by the board or not approved by the board on the 9th fret and but the public can weigh in on the second stretch thank you or anytime via email of course yes thank you all right thank you I do agree with what Matt and Sarah what everybody said about this process being very well done budget cuts are never easy but I think that the process you've done the people that you brought before the board on March 15th that was an incredible meeting to be able to talk to everybody I agree that these cuts well on not what you know we would never choose cuts you have managed to present cuts I think that are least painful from where we could have ended up so I want to thank you on behalf of everybody that includes concludes budget for today next a motion to adjourn denied all right next is the school board meeting dates there is a proposed calendar included in the packet and if you believe that these will be the only meetings you are misguided they we all have these will be our regular meetings I'm sure we will have additional work sessions beyond what's listed here if people have any comments they should email myself or John with comments if they have any now they're welcome to make it otherwise this will be before us an April 9th for approval anything tonight sounds good we'll go to policy updates I think so a mere 533 702 903 yep 628 that's right okay so Student Wellness it's largely a reorganization we did move a lot of things around from guidelines over to food services there has been a committee that's been doing extended work on this from the district's level here and a lot of the ongoing progress in the district is coming from and policy has been keeping up a little bit here also we we've been working with a registered dietician within our district through Chartwells and alongside this committee to help make progress so we're updating the policy now it was updated a couple years ago more substantially and this is sort of just continuing to to keep up with it there have been some categories added now to the guidelines that were updated last time that's the end it'll be an ongoing ongoing effort so we'll we'll see this one again the policy 702 only a few changes one of them significant is that the cash flow balance that we're going to maintain his district will be reduced from 2% to 1% an ongoing manner and then slightly less significant the federal job Z line has been struck as that was incorrect me from her but one-time money from quite a while ago in the district has been saving it and growing it and finally committed it now and so having it referenced in our policy is no longer necessary good also policy 903 visitors to school district buildings has has some more substantial updates and it'll continue to be updated into the future also we have security walkthroughs with police and fire ongoing so that may necessitate a change sooner than later as we get some of their input there's there's quite a bit of language change some of it's driven out of statute some of it's our own efforts to make it less vague try to have a more clear policy something's even such as visitors to our school buildings trying to clarify for example if it's not you're not your workplace even if you're a district employee you're in one of our sites you're not normally in your air visitor to this site we are moving towards single point of entry buildings we will have that in place in the fall after this next season of construction and so this policy will be keeping up with that sort of reality which isn't there yet but it's coming also this policy is more directed towards the the school hours use of our buildings rather than some of the extended community use of the space after school hours after our children aren't in all the hallways in the classrooms and then while we're here are you done with the 903 because I that's that's right 903 a Roman numeral six communication protocol I'm not quite sure how to rewrite this but it seems particularly unrealistic at the high school because what this says is that a parents want to talk to their student their child during the day they must either call the office or go to the office and I suspect the parents text their kids at the high school if they have a question and so yeah I raised this last time and so and I know it kind of went away but unfortunately I wasn't able to come up with alternate language but I would ask the policy committee to sort of say look at this because it's not realistic to have a policy that we know people are going to violate and so maybe we can get some sort of language about the high school that applies but maybe not so just throw that back to committee here well all right right and then the fourth policy that we move to discussion oh please sorry any question about this one as well because right now our visitor procedures are variable depending on what level of school they are and then across the elementary schools and so I guess it's both a question for John and then it would be in policy do we intend to have John a procedure or policy that eventually we're going to have standardized entry way protocol for elementary schools okay so as I guess my question is do we pass this policy now knowing basically in two or three months we're going to have to revise it because this is not it's gonna be a different procedure I guess so that would be my questions bring back then to the policy committee is what would be the best thing to do for that is my question or point sure and I think I'm inclined to update what we have now and then revisit it sooner rather than later okay thank you now you're under 628 oh did you have a question only it's gonna mention that this current this policy really doesn't cover after hours and maybe at that time aren't you discussing with the various entities that you just mentioned dr. schultz about even after our type procedures yep okay I'll be included so that would be help to inform this thank you alright and then the the other policy up for discussion is our our obligation after the settlement what we agreed to do was update some of our policy language as well as the Student Handbook language policies six to eight student activities programs we have some language reaffirming our respect for students rights first brief free speech and Association within the affirmation parameters being within the educational mission of our school and within all the other detailed parameters that Supreme Court cases over the decades have put out regarding the complex issues of free speech for our students and for teachers and our buildings any questions on any of the policies that we haven't breathed so far otherwise we are on to action items our first action item is star ten times can I get a motion to approve this dirt end times listed in the schedule as well as the recommendations for the bus stops can I get a motion to approve the start times that are recommended by the administration that are listed in the board book well also it includes changes in bus stops but correct I got it we're there Marco and David the Board received community information they've been ales quite a few emails they receive emails from elementary middle school teachers from peers for citizens and the board has had several work sessions and I just want to note before discussion that we have had multiple discussions on these proposed start times and what the proposed start times are is to put five elementary schools at a 750 start time the high school Normandale and oil G at approximately in a thirty start time and the middle schools at a nine twenty start time so we've had a number of work sessions there is a relatively lengthy report within the board book materials and so that what dr. Schultz has done is just kind of given a quick overview but there has been a lot more material presented so with that do we have board any board members that have any we shouldn't add remember Pat's lock brought up just a couple Corrections on page three of the Q&A the typo the question that's there's this couldn't the district just switch from a three tier to a three tier 2 B 3 tier two of two each year and then in the example was two miles for all students where it should read example would beat one-and-a-half miles for all students I think two miles per second Aaron I'm sorry two males for secondary one-and-a-half miles per elementary thank you and in terms of the two-tier a lot of the discussion people have said well why don't we just spend more money and I think that the biggest issue of the two-tier murder you can chip in if I get this wrong besides it's about 1.4 million to buy the buses then there would be an additional seven hundred thousand dollars per year in operating costs that would come out of our general operating fund and so if we spent seven hundred thousand a year running 14 buses then we would have to make a cut somewhere else in the operating budget you are correct it's the end annual ongoing operating cost out of the general fund and then in addition of course we'd have to find 14 more bus drivers yes and in the challenge of finding drivers because that is a statewide challenge right now but money that's based on running a two-tier system with the current walking distance is in place correct yes anybody have any comments on the recommendation of the motion all right I were I typed him up too so well so this issues been with us for a long time in a letter to edina superintendent Ken drag South dated April 4th 1990 for the medical Minnesota Medical Association recommended avoiding early start times for adolescents in 1996 Edina high moved at start time later it's a complex issue and any decision whether to change start times or leave them the same will have wide-ranging positive and negative impacts on our schools our students our families in our community the district and the board have tried to gather a wide range of information and input taking into consideration educational research operational impacts and comments and opinions from parents faculty and staff I believe it's been a thorough and open process we've heard from parents that changing start times will require significant changes and some hardships for their family schedules hearing these concerns makes it very difficult to consider a pending set family schedules no matter how well supported those changes may be by other factors as a parent of three Dinah graduates we went through a few of these major changes to the Elementary start time schedule for our children and I know that the changes were hard but we adjusted as a family schedule we adjusted our family schedule and worked out it all worked out in the end we've heard mixed opinions from our teachers many of whom support shifting start times but some of whom have serious reservations we've explored the impact of different schedules on our transportation program and we've looked outside the box for other solutions our transportation analyst has indicated that the two-tier option is not financially feasible and that the change that we are considering would be cost neutral we've heard unanimous support for shifting start times from our school principals and district administrative staff who see the benefits of these changes far outweighing the drawbacks and we've reviewed the research-based evidence coming from a wide range of disciplines including educational researchers mental and physical health resources and community wellness studies the overwhelming majority of evidence-based finding supports later start times for middle and high school students based on this objective evidence the American Academy of Pediatrics the American Medical Association the center of Disease Control and Prevention and numerous other organizations advocate middle and high school start times no earlier than 8:30 to quote one researcher in the field of school start times quote moving school start times is no guarantee that most teenagers will get the sleep they need but not moving school start times is a guarantee that they that most won't based on the overall body of input I believe the changing start time promis'd is in the best interests of our students their physical and mental health and their educational performance and so I've decided to vote in favor of the proposed changed but that support is not without reservations I recognize that this change will be difficult to integrate into many aspects of our community's lives including families schedules work schedules and before and after school activities implementation of this change if the board votes to proceed will be complex and difficult and I urge the district and the board to implement a robust process to mitigate the impact on the various aspects of our community that are affected by the change while also exploring additional opportunities that this change allows sorry I don't I don't speak extemporaneously very well then anybody else have any comments or questions by the way because we do have a team of administrators professionals who are eager to answer questions I'm sure I don't know if I'm like Ellen but I have thought a great deal about this and have largely come to my own decision and while it's great that you're here many of my questions have already been answered to the point where I feel I can cast my vote and I don't want to jump ahead of anybody else so I think I'll do as Ellen did and I'll read my remarks I don't know Lenny do you want more deliberation I wish I had prepared remarks it's hard to speak extemporaneously about something that's so complex and you want to get your words right all of us face tough decisions and today a tough decision falls on me as well as my colleagues on the board sound arguments exist on both sides of this proposal I have deliberated this decision for weeks I would like middle schools to start later and the elementary schools to start earlier he had not at the level of disruption to the community I see this plan imposing because of that I'm voting no on flipping the start times I entered this decision wanting to give a win to the administration for their obvious hard work intelligence research creativity at developing a well-considered rationale and creative solutions the many challenges facing this action yet the cost of the community seems to be too great a cost expressed in one rushed curtailed or canceled after-school activities for middle scores at an age in which these sparks as one speaker described them that dude so much to develop the identities of middle schoolers and their abilities and their peer bonds to disrupting the school of first instruction the family and it's dinner hour an event of disproportionate power in the life of our students three I'm concerned with an elementary school release that just seems too early young kids getting home potentially at 2:30 to empty houses or parents paying for additional child care to cover these last two hours seems burdensome to me another difficulty I have is that many of the intended beneficiaries the middle middle schoolers aren't even adolescents yet I'm in favor of an early elementary start earlier Elementary start time and a later middle school start time my fundamental problem is with the extremes both these times present especially the last year and the spread between the first and the third tier some may ask isn't that what we have already yes but the age placement of the proposed system seems to bring with it the collateral problems I've just mentioned that the current system doesn't seem to have facing an opportunity to improve our start times our administration has played conscientiously and well the hand that it was dealt but a hand that was very constrained financially that said the plan proposed to me appears to be a half measure satisfying laudable goals but raising difficulties hard to abide then what's the full measure to me it's to tear if we as a school district are going to put our community through such a significant change attended by many limitations than why not get it right the first time to tear will cost 2.1 1 million to implement depending on the estimates and seven hundred thousand dollars a year annually a cost it discern the community would be willing to bear perhaps through cost neutral substitutions perhaps by revenue generating methods such as charging for bus service from inside a designated designated parameter perimeter or perhaps through a referendum my least favorite or a combination of these ideas indeed with the district facing of to a million dollar deficit two tiers not on the immediate horizon yet the promise of two tier that is the sound across Edina of opening school bells between 8:00 and 9:00 a.m. is a compelling goal I believe that portends better education in the classroom more satisfying out-of-school activities and a better family dinner hour some will say only you've been listening to the grumblers who simply don't like change I'm sure we've heard our share true but when my family's pediatrician and EHS guiding counselor both professionals who have cared for years about the health and well-being of my kids and those of many other families in the community weighed in against the proposal I realize we're not just dealing with grumblers that the flip troubles these competent professionals unsettles mean finally EPS administrators I want to thank you for your concern for our kids and their education you've raised the awareness well the benefits of more sleep for our a delight since and the prospect of increased alertness for an early that an early elementary start time would bring to our younger students thank you for your leadership and leading the discussion I vote we table this issue until we can find a way to make 2-tier work any other comments I would kind of like to hear her base comments before I kind of go anywhere on this I'm gonna have a general inclination but upper limits back and forth Sarah where are you next sure I did not prepare her speech as eloquent as my two colleagues prior to me I would say in general having been through this process for the second time that I am very much in agreement actually with Owens comments and so well thought out and delivered you know this started well over a year ago because we had to get the ninth graders to the high school so we couldn't not provide transportation so that was the basis for this original discussion but the board did say we know that you know there is continued concern around 740 start time at that time for middle schoolers and and sleep issues so through that process last fall and into January we had many discussions around this and and again we kind of came to this you know we can't get to two-tier we'll end up with three-tier but we're not touching that middle section so it's a flip-flop and so here we are again back in that same place we although I do want to commend as Owen did the administration and the work this this process was so much better and and I really felt extremely thorough and so I appreciate all the time the commitment of many staff coming and being willing to continue to answer questions around sports around other activities around mental health and community ID supporting the the possible ramifications of the knee of our families I to fall into the camp of the extremes in we we really pushed hard on on David and his consultant to get that 750 closer to eight to get that 9 20 closer to 9 and with the three-tier system it's just it's just not feasible with that said I I still find myself very concerned about the concept of the whole child and I do still believe in my heart of hearts that a 405 release for our middle school students will be tough when it comes to looking at the whole child and there are other activities and all the things that go into their daily lives let alone homework and the impacts of that you know I've been through two middle school students I still have one currently who based on my vote probably will not be I will not be popular with him when I get home but you know this isn't about my kids this is about all of our kids and I do think that the that the whole child is important and I really have strong concerns still around a 750 start I think the the research unfortunately does not is not strong enough to convince me that that we know this is right for elementary students and I looked back today and reread studies and reread emails from families you know tallied in my own mind what all those emails were telling us you know we do still have a very divided community not that we didn't know that going into this a year ago or going into it this year we know not everybody will be happy with the decision period end of story and looking at the the research even thus Acadian rhythms you know I I I could argue on the other side that I don't think this Acadian rhythms are gonna really match up great for our adolescents you know they're the the major dip they'll still be in school and expected to perform between 3 & 4 o'clock when their circadian rhythm will dip you know I think all kids are going to have those dip points during the day and I actually commend our teachers who deal with this on a daily basis while they're in elementary or middle school and manage those kids through those those times of more difficult attention spans and willingness to be attentive so with that said I I do so and I do not take any of this lightly I do not look at it as dismissing our administration our principals it is just where my head is still at on this issue Matt kind of leaning towards your mic my hand did go out how you caught me so um I I am the extemporaneous one I guess so I often prepare a written statement but give my thoughts a lot of thought and time going into this so I tried to break me into categories the way that I approach the the problem set so at the outset the administration is challenged of finding the best opportunity for health and wellness of our kids on an aggregate basis meaning everything that helps them grow as individuals and young people that brings in the classroom aspects that brings in the extracurricular aspects it brings in all of the learning things that we want all of our kids to experience so how do we best get there looking at the health and well in the studies in thinking about what opportunities exist and looking at the financials the two-tier system does not work spend a lot of time in the budget in the past two months it's pretty brutal but what we're trying to do is find the best opportunity for our kids today one might argue how different is 750 and 920 then 8 and 9 and can you start to you know cinch those sides in a little bit over the next couple years of efficiencies and how might that be an opportunity something else that I think about because as Sarah said no one thinks about their own kid for for me just putting this out there there will be times as I'm sure I vote that helps my family this is the opposite of that I see my son in the morning because I work very late at night or I'm at a school board meeting very late at night so the next day that's an opportunity for us to read Harry Potter in the morning or do something this voting YES for this would also cost me probably two to fourth dollars here in babysitting so I do empathize any families that these changes are hard on and this proposal would be hard on but in aggregate I think about the 8700 kids I do have a neuroscience background I did read all the APA literature a divot all the medical literature I have talked to multiple pediatricians I've listened people testify how they feel about things I've listened the doctors coming here I've listened to teachers from st. Paul and administrators in st. Paul come in I've looked at how it works in Wayzata how it works in Minnetonka and I thought about the fact that all of our administrators unanimously have thought deeply about this proposal what it does for our kids I think it's a benefit in health and wellness for both age groups and for me I support the repose I'll be voting YES tonight but with that being said I do think it is a hard challenge I respect everyone's opinion on this team I do think this board is acting as a team which I really appreciate being part of and everyone's thought deeply about the best thing they think will support our kids reach their highest potential but I without any reservation vote YES on this so I I want to validate some of the concerns of people who are saying no and not just from the board tonight but also there were there were a variety of professions that were saying no from from teachers to doctors and the the reasons were quite varied as well and some of them were unique to a family situation but so are some of the yeses and some of them were looking at the weight of the evidence I don't think the weight of the evidence to flip is a slam dunk yes but I think it's a yes I think that's an overall when there'll be plenty of students for whom this feels like a loss either because of their own sleep rhythms or because of their own schedule and other things that they have in their life that are very important to them and I don't I don't vote yes to deny any of that but I think there's a lot of that on both sides and one thing we haven't really spoken to is a lot of the the special groups in our community whether it be students special needs or family special circumstances whether it be a one adult household or a do a working household you know a lot of those got some attention for me for four trends looking to see if there's an overall trend is one of these proposals more of an impact to those situations another and I haven't found that trend I've found that there are some who say if you keep what you have right now you don't understand the struggle of a working household and others who say if you dare flip it you're wrecking everything we've set up as a working household and I think both of those are very true and unfortunately it just doesn't lend itself to to me making my decision because I see that that concern is very real on on all sides this this decision is not a financial decision at the last point because it's a cost neutral decision who goes at the 750 start is the middle schools or the elementary schools that parts cost mutual what goddess here was a discussion of how buses and bus drivers are something that we fund every year from the same budget through which we fund our in-school educational programs our teachers and our operational resources and so the only creative solution I see is stop busing people push it out to where the state finally makes you bust them that's two miles away and I don't I don't hear a strong desire from our community for that option there has been a talk also of another creative option of just bill families $500 per Edina student per year bill them for the bus and we've heard some some reasoning that that's not that's not as great of a solution as it sounds both from an implementation standpoint and then also just straight fiscally this is this is the best that I'm seeing and I know that there are some of the emails towards the end were sort of just begging us to find something more creative as if we were looking at this in a very linear point of view who has to go at 7:15 who has to go at 9:20 begging us for more creativity but given the constraints of how education is funded not just in Minnesota but also in particular in Minnesota how occation is funded where this money is coming from that we want to bust our students I don't see much creativity room left I do want to say that we this isn't exactly this proposal from last year in that the elementary schools are down to just two tiers just first and second last year they were spread across all three the split from the very start to the end is about the same last year as ninety five minute difference now it's a 90 so there's a five minute efficiency even with all elementary schools on the same tier which last year we didn't see as possible it took more of that transportation analysis to see that we can put the elementary schools closer and move the times closer and save some money so I think that's to be commended as well I do I do think 9:20 is too late and yet someone has to do it otherwise 750 becomes even earlier with all the other constraints we have and so in my own mind not only do I see the research area now lessons on the side of 9:20 but also I see that as the least desirable time and so you put it for the tier that only has three years to start at 1920 and end at four o'clock and I think that's there are a lot of downsides to that for middle school in particular they get more homework they have more after-school activities and so that's that's not a complete three years of middle school versus six years of K through five wash but that's one thing that weighed on me as well its overall I'll wrap this up I think it's it's not a slam dunk but it's it's a yes we should go to to approve this recommendation I guess I'm last unless money is going to talk so I have a hybrid notes but no speech so I just wanted to first speak about process when I first ran for office and met with hundreds of Edina parents and community members one of the biggest issues that was brought to me about during election was board decision making processes and relying on data to make decisions and I hope that this start time process has been an example of our administration and our entire board committing to providing answers to questions seeking data and seeking solutions and I've really enjoyed working with everyone on the board in this process i sat on the start and end time committee and I personally have spent countless hours analyzing reports analyzing data on this issue and relying on that data from an educational mental health and wellness perspective I believe this recommendation prioritizes students health and developmental learning needs first and that's why I support this decision and we'll be voting YES I wanted to give more context to some things that I mean I find concerning as a parent across um the district one from an elementary school perspective I understand that there's some elementary school parents that are upset about the elementary school times being before 8 o'clock and I just wanted to offer two things one is that we've received feedback from quite a few elementary school educators and it was reasoning li+ in favor of this change and they asked us to please make the change as soon as possible because it extends the morning learning time and they all felt that it was the best developmentally and in the educational interests of their students and I just wanted to make sure that that was out there and additionally I know that we've gotten a lot of feedback or interest in the study by dr. Keller in Kentucky and I personally correspondent with her and asked her she thought the closer start time was to the optimal 8 o'clock to 9 o'clock timeframe if she felt there would be minimal impact to some of the negative findings that she found and we did correspond back and forth and she reiterated that the further away it was from 8 o'clock the more problematic things became which was why it was so important for us as an ad-hoc committee and why we did sort of harangue you a little bit to get us close to 8 o'clock as possible which is how we ended up with the 7:50 timeframe and I know 750 seems far away from 8 o'clock but it we really tried to get to that 8 o'clock time frame from middle school perspective I also share some of the concern about students and extracurricular activities and balancing homework because I do agree it's about a whole student it's not just about the time they spend in school but I have to say that I I've seen just the work that John Schultz and Troy and Val have done I'm coming to us with questions and I fully support and trust that they will be able to figure these schedules out during the implementation process I know they're going to be kinks in the system I know there's a lot of complicated logistics to work out I think as a community we need to have a little faith in our leaders that they can implement some of these complicated logistics and and I personally do the last thing I want to say is that I know regardless of what decision is made there'll be people in our community that will be unhappy with the decision I just want to send out my hope that we can work together as a community to solve our differences in a productive and constructive way and if we do have problems that arise or if after this you are still concerned about something that we can work on problem solving and looking at opportunities to come together from this as opposed to making it a negative thing because I do think this can be a big opportunity for our community thank you well but for people having spoken in support of it my notes just kept getting shorter and shorter and so the biggest thing that I have is that this is a difficult decision because there are some people that it will impact negatively and other people that will impact positively I am impressed with the work of the board on this I'm impressed with the administrators as I sit here today I know we haven't asked you any questions but there's a team of people out here ready to answer questions and in fact who have been answering questions for a couple of months and I think that it does make the decision easier knowing that you're sitting there and that you have thought about this and you know Jeff Jerguson bow great now I'm gonna draw a blank Kari Dahlquist Troy Margo David got our rest of our lead team and we've had people attending these meetings and answering questions we have we as a board have asked a lot of questions and gotten a lot of answers do we have every single answer not yet but we have a lot and so I'm very excited about the process that we've gone through that would essentially give credit to John for having put it all together i I do support not close enough I'm glad I'm glad John's here I do support the shift in start times from what I've read it is what is right for the middle school and from what our principles and our elementary teachers are telling us we're going to get a double benefit that it's right for our elementary kids so I'm gonna keep it at that for now so I don't know if anybody has changed their mind and have anything further that they wish to say otherwise we can take this to a vote so all those in favor of approving the start times in the schedule which for clarity is a flip of the middle school in elementary say aye aye all those opposed motion carried thank you we are on to the next motion which is the implementation year so can I get a motion to yes about Carrie so remember remember we have to stay here - alright next is the implementation here can I get a motion to approve the recommendation to adopt the start times for the 2018-19 school year thank you so Matt motioned oh and one second I have two agenda items okay my copy has start x is the first action the second item is to start in times Matt made the motion oh and seconded it do you have any information you want to give to us on this at the last work session we laid out the the kind of the implementation tasks for each of the departments that are represented by the leaders in front of you were comfortable and ready to move on this for 1819 and recognize that as when you make these changes there are things that will go that will cause us to think differently that's that's why we're in this business and it be my my goal to keep you informed on how this implementation is unfolding between now and September I know that I sit on the and I always want to still say CES b.c.e AAS what is it now yeah anyway community education used to be advisory council okay so anyway I know that this has been a topic I know that their department is working hard to make sure that they'll be able to respond to what will be in all likelihood longer after school needs with the elementary kids I even questioned again last week will there will be something in place it doesn't have to be considered child care but something in place at the middle schools for those families who don't feel comfortable leaving their middle schooler at home because we need to make sure we have these options available and with that said I know Val has been is going to look into possibly surveying and finding out what the needs may be because some of the the concerns from our middle school teachers were many but one being that we do even now have kids being dropped off long before 7:30 which is when they're technically supposed to arrive for the 7:45 start so I do have faith that our community ed is already working on this I know that Troy's looking at some of the things that they need to do so I just would would ask that we make sure that we're thinking about all the impacts that go beyond child care and and activities but the needs of our MDM students who want to leave early for for their math that we're looking at all the possible ways that we can do this in the least impactful way within the buildings I I would I would trust though I do feel like our administration is ready to do this next year and although you know how I voted I still I think it's I think it's extremely hard on a community to wait a year when a decision has been made I you know the decision has been made that's what it is we as a board will all support that so now it's time to move forward and you know make this work next fall not wait a year at a due process does anyone on the board not feel this shouldn't move forward can we ask that question and then no I just I don't have I don't know if ever has written speeches for this one too but I just want to are you ready all right I'd be happy to read it you guys you don't have to 1020 okay and this might surprise you actually normally I think that once a change has been decided upon based on sound evidence and reasoning that change should be implemented as soon as it is feasible after all if it's a good idea it's a good idea to get get started right away however in the case of changing our school start time schedule I believe we should wait until the ninth 2019 2020 school year to implement the change one criticism that some districts have had as they change school start times is that the changes had major impacts on activities athletics and community-based programming while six months may seem like plenty of time for people to adjust their schedules and prepare for the change in school start times when I consider both the potential problems and the opportunities that accompany the start time change I believe a more integrated coordinated and thoughtful approach will take longer with this change in start times we have the opportunity not just to fix the problems we had with our previous school schedule but to incorporate positive changes into the new schedules we can coordinate those new schedules with improved services and opportunities for our students particularly at the primary and middle school levels by working collaboratively with community-based programs thoughtfully adjusting school-based programming with more time we can make adjustments to activity and athletic schedules to ensure that our middle schoolers are still able to be active members of these communities as an avid Nordic Ski supporter for many years I recognized that the participation of seventh and eighth graders in Nordic skiing will be severely impacted by the start time since Nordic practices happen outdoors without artificial light other districts in the area have had difficulty with middle school participation in Nordic since they moved their start times later and we need to explore how to make this work among other activities that are finding hardship with this later start time for middle schoolers the secondary schools are also embarking on a process to evaluate and coordinate their daily instructional schedules as we discussed earlier this evening that process should be coordinated with the changes in start times in order to fully address the impact of these schedules on each other all feasible options for scheduled coordinated coordination could then be explored including such things as placing middle school flex time at the end of the day for older middle schoolers or adjusting timing of activities in athletics and ensuring equitable access and transportation for enrichment opportunities such as high school opportunities for double accelerated students and participation in such programs as community-based language enrichment or the UMP TM program many families have stated that their schedules need more lead time in order to accommodate a change of this kind and I understand I am concerned that we will be overtaxing the capacity of our administration as they are still working hard at managing the construction at our middle and many of our elementary schools I feel that we owe our community appropriate notice excellent preparation and spot-on execution of this start time change let's do this right and not rush it I'll follow because I understand a lot of your points in fact I earlier had had more I noticed myself agreeing more with the with the speakers who were saying well whatever you do don't rush it it'll take it'll take quite a bit and I think I have an own my my own mind had an anchor point about making this decision no later than January because of how we talked about it a year ago giving families that time to respond the couple of things that have have made me want to do it sooner rather than later though where we're not only the idea of if we think this is right for students then why delay it academically it's right for students we should implement it but also I noticed the biggest the biggest stressor for a lot of families was that it's such a radical change from June to August from June to September and that's not gonna get better by waiting a year that pain is still gonna be there and so in fact it might get worse having this cloud hanging over people's minds for a year the people that say this is what's right for kids this is what will be beneficial academically have a year to think that they the board didn't act on what they they decided they let it sit and the people who say this is horrible have a year to know that it's coming and that doesn't necessarily make anything better there are a couple of unique situations where it would be better and I think that's for families who have say for example long-standing medical appointments difficult to rearrange on five six seven months notice I think that's a very real factor and yet it it doesn't just weighed me away from the overall benefit being to implement in the fall of 18 and going through some of the other realities for example middle school participation in Nordic I I don't know I do have some choice and administration's benefit of knowing how that was a sticking point for other districts and they might not have known that so I don't know how well we could respond in our own six months versus 18 months but overall that also doesn't doesn't tip me towards towards wait another year and I'm in favor of starting in in the next school year fall of 18 I have a couple questions Cory we received a bunch of emails from parents in your program just very interested to hear what you think how fast do you think Creek Valley can adapt to this change many of these parents were saying very much they wanted to wait a year what are your thoughts tell me more about the parents we're the parents of special needs students and how many I don't know ten just my that's my ballpark I think I've heard from some special parents of special needs students on our site based program and it will be it more of a challenge for them we'll work with them to try to if we can adjust the schedule that might not be their first option but if we need to ease into starting that school year we can do that we've done that with kindergarteners who when we went to full day some parents till one of the children and a half day we worked out a solution until MEA they were half-day and then they were ready to start full day I can't say that will happen but we can work together for that the flipside is when they get to middle school then they will and some of these kids are upper elementary now then they will have that morning time again so they'll end up with reaping more morning time over the course of nine years just that Bell and I've been working with this many of the special needs families we actually had a great meeting later last week where we brought in four secret presentative or five seek representatives actually to meet with the before and after school programs and to talk about options that that we can work together to provide for that before school or after school care as it may be either at the middle schools or at the elementary schools we feel like with the walk in time that we have available to us that we'll be able to meet the needs of those families and as Carrie said I think very eloquently is that within with an IEP were very much able to to modify and to accommodate those individual needs of students and a short-term or a long-term basis is necessary and again it's an accommodation of need but we can work within the time frames that are there I was just wondering from Val David and Troy do you feel that you are being given enough time to implement in and honestly I mean you don't have to lie to us oh gee do you honestly feel like you're being given enough time to implement the changes you need and get the scheduling and I mean I you know I mean you obviously have very complicated rerouting and and then from an athletic and activities perspective I just wanted to hear your perspective so I'll start with the activities and athletics perspective and you read it all in the implementation plan but I think right away you know if you voted to approve this for this coming fall initially our first action would be to meet with some coaches and talk about the impact for our 712 program middle school students involved in our high school program and how that's going to affect those practice times alluded to Nordic we have some issues with with with dance and swimming and and we'd certainly be looking at what are the benefits that we can take from it and what are the logistics we got to make some challenges and changes to but then it would be collaborating with the community as well so our local youth associations and also our swim community in terms of trying to make sure that we're not hurting our feeder system so to speak as it relates to that yet in transportation where there was this coming year the following year we will be ready it will take us a little bit of time to work over the routes but we do have the time to do it I would concur we kind of did a practice round honestly last year and tried to get as much information as we could so I think implementing we kind of laid it out immediately we'll do surveys with families meet with building principals and leads to and continue to work with special ed but we would be ready so we've heard that there be some staff turnover some of the coaches would not be able to continue coaching do you feel that you can find coaches for those to fill the slots by the fall for those who said that they can't continue on in the role yes so so we certainly we have some great coaches and advisers and leaders in our programs and certainly hate to to lose anybody with this adjustment but I also understand that it's going to impact families and decisions and and so I think then in that process as well we'd start discussing options and and do we have any flexibility to work with them and make it work and they be part-time and coach with us so we would try and work with our coaches and see if that's a possibility if it's not then we have plenty of time to get some postings out and look for new applicants if we need to all right any other thoughts otherwise sure it gets this is more of a comment I've already shared my thoughts but I just want to make sure that that as a administration and principals in the buildings that they do support their staff because clearly this is a huge disruption for their families and their personal lives as well and I want to acknowledge that you know our families will feel it and some will love it and some won't but but that goes for our staff as well and and there were many middle school teachers who had great concerns about this and whether it's you know their personal lives or the programs that they participate in and I just I want us to acknowledge that at a minimum and make sure that we support them in their transition as they try to figure out their schedules as well all right all those in favor of approving the start end time schedule beginning in the 2018-19 year say aye aye all those opposed say nay motion carried right carry now you can go carry you get you could go now carry alright next thing I know the the agenda is the partial roof replacement at Cornelia an absolutely exciting topic so can I get a motion to approve the contract for the Cornelia reroofing Matt moved Eric Oh Erica Margo this is you have any quick comments we have worked with this vendor before and they do a great job and it's with well within budget and would ask for your approval all right any questions all those in favor of approving the contract for the Cornelia Marie roofing say aye aye any opposed motion carried I get a motion to approve the furniture package for Creek Valley Highland South you and Valley View I get a second second Margaux you're up again this is the final furniture package for the upcoming schools it's off of state contract and collectively all together they are within budget within the furniture and equipment budget funded by the construction funds any questions actually have a question so we've been buying furniture is this similar to what we bought already yes we're following the same product standards and protocols in terms of what types of furniture we put in the buildings and the learning spaces and world architect's has been a part of the entire process to make it to ensure that and then also work with the individual principals on what their needs are in the building and I know we've only had the furniture in for a year but are we satisfied with it I haven't had any complaints so that's always good because if by the time it gets to me it's usually not a good sign all right any other questions otherwise all those in favor of approving the furniture package for Creek Valley Oak Island south view and Valley View say aye aye any opposed motion carried and policy update has moved is there any leadership updates any announcements I'm here I saw you move forward that was just like a twitch everything to add alright we've completed the agenda are there any objections to a journey hearing none we are adjourned thank you everybody