Hello, welcome everybody to the Hopkins Public Schools Workshop of the school board for September 15th. And this evening we will be having discussion about the superintendent goals for the school year, as well as our school board goals. For those community members who follow closely our cadence of board meetings and how we do things will notice that this is different this year, the timing. But that is because we have a new superintendent, and thus wanted to make sure that we were trained in transition and then also working alongside in whatever capacity deemed appropriate. So with that, I will turn it over to Dr. Thomas to talk about superintendent goals and also perhaps a new template and process for the district. Thank you, Chair Andreassen, board members, good evening. Let me go ahead and get my screen share up here. Okay. I think I have some of the ceiling stuff. I'll make that bigger in just a second. A couple of weeks ago, we had a good session with Barb Dorn from MSBA, and we learned a little bit about what many school districts have utilized for their superintendent evaluation framework It's a framework that I began using after, I think, my second year as a superintendent here in Minnesota, and it really was very much aligned, I think I shared that evening, to what many of us have to go through in terms of our relationship process. So everything that we're doing aligns to state competencies and all the domains that we have to show our CEUs, et cetera. So we're always going to be working in that mindset, in that same vein. And so I have appreciated that framework. Additionally , when I came here, talking with the chair, and talking with Dr. Mirapuri Reed, looking at what historically has been done in terms of the Hopkins framework. Mm-hmm. And I also drew appreciation for the visualization of that and the organization, and it aligns to the three strategic areas of the Hopkins strat plan tied to Vision 2031. So my proposal to the chair was to find a way to kind of blend both models together. And so what I will share with you, I think, accomplishes that. And after you take a look at this, one of the things I would just offer to the board, for your own consideration, as you land on the goals and things of that for yourselves, that we would then take that and put that into that same framework for you all, so we're all working visually from the same kind of source document, if you will. And this becomes more of our standard practice that we just revisit and kind of re-up every single year, similar to what you've done, I think, in the Word document. And then this will now be something of visualization that might be more aligned to what we're trying to accomplish with a merger of a couple of templates. I'll start here. Let's see if I can zoom that in. All right. So when we met with Barb Dorn, we were going through, if you remember, the standards and the elements. And in the red is where we had a lot of alignment between all of us here at the dais. And what I tried to do was incorporate in some form or fashion, the language might not be exactly information for decision making, but we wanted to make sure that we were speaking to information and decision making in the goals that I was going to be putting together, for example. Or financial controls was another theme that came from the MSBA elements that you'll see show up in the goal areas. So I tried to capture, I think, the collective voice from those conversations, and Barb noted those in red. Okay? One that you won't see specifically called out, but we'll talk about it tonight, is transportation. One could say that's under the operational umbrella, but we didn't get really granular on the one thing within operations. We kept it more broad. But we'll give an update on that on the sup report tonight , later on this evening. So that's what I tried to do as a takeaway from our time together a couple of weeks ago. So just bringing you back to that conversation. And the result came into a document like this. And I want to thank Dr. Zumbusch and her visualization and analytics expertise. Thank you for helping bring this into a more coherent framework that I think blends everything that we've been trying to pull together. So what you're going to see here is I'm trying to honor the work of Vision 2031, our strategic plan, MSBA goals, and a standards-based evaluation framework that's also developed in a SMART goal format as well. So, I'm not going to read this to you. I'll certainly share this out with everybody. But in here, we have an executive overview for the first year. If you recall, Barb Dorn mentioned that first year's goals are going to be a lot of focus on that startup mindset. There's going to be some other deeper goal work that might come in subsequent years, two, three, and beyond. But this first year is going to be really focusing on that successful launch, that foundational experience, and what do we need to get some good wind behind our sails that first year. This probably looks a little bit more familiar to all of you because this is the Hopkins framework that you saw from Vision 2031 that historically has been carried over from previous Superintendent Eval systems. So we have the focus on academic excellence and learning as one of our strategic goal areas, community and partnerships and belonging, and then optimizing resources and infrastructure. And within that, we have two goals under academic excellence and learning, focusing on continuous improvement framework, and we'll have a glossary of terms for you as well because we love our acronyms in education. Our E12 curriculum mapping and academic returns on investments Looking at community partnerships and belonging, obviously there will be a lot that goes into the listening and learning tour and comprehensive community needs analysis that will be reflecting back to the board and back to our community for them giving of their time. We want to make sure that we're honoring that and saying, "We heard you, and here are some of the themes that are emerging from those engagement sessions" that will start to shape year two and beyond. And then under optimizing resources and the general infrastructure of the district is really focusing in on an annual budgeting process calendar and reconciliation and a redesign of our budgeting process and protocols in the district. That's where I'm really focusing in, in terms of my first-year goals that I think are really going to be consequential for everything else following in the years to come. As I stated, there's a couple of glossary terms here. But comprehensive needs assessment, CNA, if you ever hear me refer to that. Return on investment, ROI. I know you business folks understand that one. And then continuous improvement plan, CIP. And again, with our IDL team, Dr. Ertel, I know we might interchange language as I'm learning the Hopkins lingo too of what we've called our acronyms from different contexts, but know that we're going to be focusing in on that continuous improvement process. So those are some of those acronyms I want to make sure I carry forward so you understand that. So under the category of our strategic plan, learning and teaching. This here is really about building an improvement planning framework that's aligned to Vision 2031. And what I'm proposing to do is have a comprehensive needs assessment that will essentially standardize the process by which we will be tracking what does improvement look like in our organization, both from a building level and a central department level. And within that, we would look at the goals set aligned to Vision 2031, and then putting together key metrics for a variety of different aspects. And so there would be consistent metrics, milestone check-ins, as well as a common thread of evaluating for equity across all of our system. But right now, I think I shared with you all a couple of weeks ago, and many staff have been hearing me say this on my staffing rounds, PTO rounds, and our listening tours is, how do we operationalize Vision 2031? How are we reflecting back, either through dashboards or through our regular progress monitoring cadence to show how we are performing towards a greater goal? So similar to when you think about an MCA, which is a point-in-time summative kind of rear view mirror assessment, what are those mini assessments, formative measures, quarterly or even through the unit exams within an individual course that we can progress monitor along the way versus just waiting and saying, "How did we do?" Right? So there's going to be a large focus about that. I think many of you heard me talking about leading by design and not by chance at our back-to-school kickoff. There will be a lot of design work that goes into drafting a common template that all schools will use, a common template that all building or district-level departments can use, and then building in those feedback and refinement cycles, our PDSA cycles that you might have heard about, plan, do, study, act. Those are things that we'll be building into those frameworks so that we have a very regular process by which we can then come back to the board and present to you the performance within various aspects of our organization. Some examples of that is that comprehensive needs summary report that I'll be reflecting back to the board that will shape a lot of the design work behind the improvement frameworks, and then crosswalking all of our CNA priorities to Vision 2031. There would be the templates from early childhood all the way throughout serving kids through some of our special ed programming going up to age 22, and then incorporating some of the feedback that we are gathering from listening and learning tours, et cetera, that we can incorporate into some of those survey results. The rubric was another element of the MSBA model that I think really makes sense, and so we've developed that similar rating scale, and you heard Barb talk about not going to a five-point to not have people sit in the middle and be non-evaluative. So we're going in that same four-point Likert model, and we'll have descriptors here that are tied to the evidence that's above here to show, am I on track? Am I not on track? Where are there opportunities to tighten, or where there are things to celebrate, et cetera. So that's the general layout of each of these categories. So, Chair, do you want me to walk through all of these at once, or pause for each category and then open it up for discussion? I think pausing maybe right after, so that if we have questions, we can take care of that- Okay ... in the moment if that works for you. That sounds good. Great. So I'm going to pause here on learning and teaching, and I can read the SMART goal if it's just too far away for some folks. I'm mindful of that. Yeah, I did just have a request. Is it possible for us to get Yeah, let me- Access or have a shared ... let me see if I can do that right now. And it could be later. Yep. Yeah. So why don't I play with that a little bit while you all, if you have questions on maybe starting with the overall framework, and the visualization, and then maybe starting with the SMART goal. Great. Any feedback? Well, I first just want to say, I really appreciate the intentionality with which this was created. I see elements of how we've done this in the past, and really great infusion of new things from- Mm-hmm ... the transition workshop that we had with Barb. So, it feels exactly like it's hitting that hybrid- Mm-hmm ... goal. So, thank you for that. Any questions? Chair Andreason? Yes. Yes. Hi, Dr. Thomas. Appreciate the work on this. Could you help me understand what the CNA looks like? Is it asking the building leaders like, "Hey, what do you need?" Like, "What are your problems?" How do you kind of encapsulate the need and how you ask about it? Yeah. So a lot of this is going to be us combing through a lot of our data to getting a thorough assessment on overall performance within schools and departments. And so, it'll be combing through a variety of dashboards that we have internally that we are progress monitoring already, and culminating that into trend data that we can say, "Hey, we are seeing this theme emerge, and this is where we're going to start getting really granular in terms of setting goals around that." So whether it's our climate culture data, looking at how our operational systems, resource allocation, things of that nature are being executed. Those are some of the needs assessments that we'll do. Certainly, as I'm doing these listening and learning tours, and just a good reminder to those who are upcoming, whether it's a staff, or a PTO, or our community at large, bring your lived experiences to those conversations because I'm data mining in that whole process. I'm listening deeply, and in some cases, we have folks actually capturing notes. But that's also part of that comprehensive needs assessment, so that I can begin to pull that information in to start formulating a thematic response to saying, "Here's what I've heard, here's what we've reviewed." And that will then inform the next phase of that process. So, lots of data mining. Lots of data mining. Really quick question. Director Zumbusch, while we're having this conversation, would you mind, in that primary document, sharing that with the board? I don't have the access on this visualization for some reason. Could you just give access as we're going through this? Thank you. Chair Andreason? Yes. I also very much appreciate the formatting, and it's very intuitive, and this is my first setting goals. So, I don't know anything different, but I really appreciate the way this is being presented. The question I have is about the continuous improvement plan template for all schools and departments. Mm-hmm. I just want some clarification on whether that's an internal tool- Yep ... that will then use the CNA to build the CIP- There you go ... and then deploy the CIP internally, right? Is that right? You've just nailed that. Okay. So the comprehensive needs analysis will actually populate our continuous improvement plans for schools as well as departments. And obviously, there will be conversations, for example, as we see trend data that we're analyzing, and we are going to Meadowbrook, for example. Talking with Principal Natalie to say, "Hey, here's what we're seeing. Can you give us some context on this? Maybe we're missing the story behind the numbers." And reconciling that with her and her building instructional leadership team and saying, "Yes. Does this make sense?" And based upon that, do these growth metrics trend in the direction that we believe is realistic in that SMART format? So, that's exactly what we would do, and then eventually, this might be then in subsequent years, not in year one, when we then start to determine that cadence of reporting, then we can start building out a more public-facing dashboard for both schools and departments, depending on how we talk as a team of what we think would be important to visualize. I think I mentioned at our last board meeting, maybe it was our first board meeting, that I typically give a state of the district report, similar to the president does a State of the Union. And that's something that we will also be working towards in terms of our schools as well, at the local level, so that schools can give some commensurate experience to their local communities to say, "Here's the state of..." Again, I'm going to continue to use Meadowbrook. "Here's the state of Meadowbrook. Here's what our continuous improvement plan was for the year. Here were the strategic goals that we had set. Here are some of maybe the stakeholder feedback data points that we've incorporated that we really wanted to grow and improve. Here's where some areas that we are celebrating, and then here's where we're at to date." So that they have that common way of sharing with communities how a school is doing, and I have a common way of telling the entire district, "Here's how our district is doing," and there's vertical alignment to that. So I'm not saying something that's completely different than what maybe she's reporting at the local level, and there's coherence in those conversations. Sorry, I think I messed up my visualization here. Any other questions? Great. I think we can move on to the next one then. Okay. All right. Going down, still staying within category one of learning and teaching. This is our bread and butter, so this is why you're seeing a big emphasis on this, especially in year one. This is E12 curriculum resource mapping, and looking at the academic return of investment, type of internal audit, if you will. Audit review. I'll just share that we have a significant amount of resources within our schools. We have a significant amount of resources within our departments, and they're kind of tucked in every nook and cranny of our district experience. And what I'm trying to really emphasize this first year, and I've shared this with various stakeholder conversations, is I'm trying to rein in everything that we have pushed out into the district to get a thorough understanding of what do we all have, and does everybody understand what we all have. There might be incidents where one building is launching maybe an initiative while another has launched a parallel or perhaps a competing initiative and unbeknownst to one another, not connecting maybe centrally, and we've got a lot of bifurcated opportunities that are happening out in the community, in our schools. And then when questions or concerns or heck, even if we want to celebrate something, comes in, we have no understanding of all of what's happening. And again, there's going to be autonomy in our schools. We're not looking for a cookie cutter approach. But what I'm trying to gather is, are we putting out the resources in a fashion that are efficient, and are we maximizing the return on student outcome from making that investment in our schools? Whether it's a curricular resource or whether it's a grant program that we've adopted, or it's other decisions that we've made over the years. I'm trying to rein a lot of that in, thoroughly analyze and assess, is this something that we're going to continue moving forward or will we revise it, or is it something that we're going to retire or stop doing? One of the conversations I've been having with our stakeholder listening tours that I've been engaged in, kind of joking, saying, "Let's not forget the joy and happiness and love of bringing on a new superintendent, especially in the spring." Because we're going to be in budgeting season, and we're going to be talking about some tougher conversations that, again, are all rooted in the same love, joy, and happiness that we had in the fall. It is about doing our best for our students. And that might mean, real case example in another district I was in, we were spending $40,000 on a software tool that was accessed by about four staff members that was serving maybe 20 kids. $40,000. So again, not to say that they were doing anything that wasn't what they felt was a good thing to do. I have to ask the tough questions sometimes. Is that $40,000 investment getting the return that we can scale that so that we can say for $20,000, we might be able to get 200 kids? Or are those opportunities there? Principals all heard me share the same conversation here that I am not trying to take away the autonomy of leadership at the local level, but it will feel like we're going slow to go fast. And part of what we have to do through this audit then is coming back to the board to making some recommendations as we're building out our budget to say, "These are some of the things that we are showing promise or showing an impact on student outcome and achievement." And or, "Board, we know that we adopted this curricular resource. This is something that we believe is not having the value that we anticipated it would, and for that reason, we're going to retire that resource or no longer, but we're going to reallocate that to this over here that is demonstrating promise for our students." We can't do that until we essentially do an audit. Mm-hmm. And do a mapping of what do we even have in our warehouse. So that's kind of a high level goal 1B of what curriculum resource mapping and academic ROI audit would yield. And especially as we go into budget development proper I don't want to be responsible for working with teams to develop budgets and making decisions on things that I don't have a thorough data foundation to say, "This is the sound," or, "This is the best decision." It's like going grocery shopping without looking in your pantry. You're buying a whole bunch of cans of this, but you already have 10 of them at home. I do that all the time. I know. But we got a full pantry. We got a full pantry, and I just want to make sure we have the right items in our pantry to best support our students. So, Chair, board, directors, I open it up for questions, thoughts, comments that you have on that process of this goal. Thank you. Chair Andreassen? Yeah. Thank you. Dr. Thomas, thanks for this second offering up as a part of your goals for this next year. And first of all, I want to affirm and say thank you for engaging so deeply in this season as you're onboarding, to really listen and do an audit. And then to help us be really thoughtful about the way that we're stewarding public resources and ways that can best support our students. Mm-hmm. And the one thing I wanted to name as a kind of caution, just thoughtfulness that may already deeply be on your and the leadership team's mind is, as a person with a background in higher education who deeply values liberal arts- Mm-hmm ... and part of my love of public education is the way that public school systems ensure that all students across our community, sometimes who have a particular investment that the ROI-- Like we might be investing a lot of dollars in an area, and it's really important for us to do that. So I think about like- Mm-hmm ... with our ongoing work that we do in the district with our American Indian students- Mm-hmm ... and community. Mm-hmm. So just as we're thinking about that too, being able to have a narrative where we say, "Hey, yes, this software may not be helping in this way, but let's make sure that even if there's a deeper investment, that our values and our commitment to our diverse communities." I'm assuming that will be there. I just wanted to name that, because I noticed my own anxiety, even as I am very supportive of doing that deep evaluation. Yeah. So thank you. I appreciate the push, and I would just broaden that. That also applies very much around a lot of our special ed resource and investments. We know those are costly investments that by federal law we must make. And so I'm not saying we're going to not make those types of investments. There will be rationale, whether it's law or whether it's the priority of our community, that we are still going to maintain in this example, that 40,000 investment for these 20 students for this specific reason, because it's the value proposition of the community. Totally respect that and understand that. And I want to make sure that we are taking those kind of unique investments- Mm-hmm ... into context. I think I was speaking more so on just the broader kind of general allocation to make sure-- And I would just say, even with those unique investments- Mm-hmm ... can we demonstrate the impact? We still have to do that. And because if we received, not if, we do receive achievement in integration funds- Mm-hmm ... that services a portion of our students within Hopkins, okay? And we still have to report back to MDE that that investment from achievement in integration had this level of impact or didn't have this level of impact, and those are annual reviews that we do with MDE. So this would allow us to also be able to tell that story better, because that is not to supplant. We have to show how that has supplemented the general investment in accelerating the return for certain students who have been furthest from some of those opportunities in their academic careers. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Chair Andreassen? Yeah. Okay. Thank you so much, Dr. Thomas- Mm-hmm ... for all the work that you are doing. I agree with Sarah Wilhelm-Garbers, clerk Wilhelm-Garbers. WG on all the incredible things that you're doing around the district, especially with the listening sessions. As I'm looking into the goals, question about, so as we think about testing, like we're in testing season right now. Is there an intentional investment that will be made into the testing coordinators of our district through this plan? So I don't know if I would say that the intentional investment for the specificity of what you're asking would be reflected in this goal. This is going to be more broader. Okay. But I would say that, yes, to your question about testing coordinators and support for that, there is an investment of support for those roles- Okay ... that's separate from my evaluation goals or my growth goals. Okay. But that does exist for us. Okay. It does exist for us. Well, and I do see how in order to make these assessments and to get our progress indicators, we do have to make the investment in making sure that our data is actually reflecting what's happening in our schools. Mm-hmm. Which I think is maybe where- Absolutely. Yeah. Our data specialists, and so if I heard the question differently, but I thought it was about testing coordinators. But our data specialists, for sure, are instrumental in doing this level of data mining and analysis- Mm ... and working in partnership with all the department leads to develop that CNA for their respective school or for their respective department, to then look at their own resources within, to say, "Does this make sense or doesn't it make sense? Should we continue the investment or do we look at a divestment strategy or a reallocation strategy?" Well, thank you. And just to clarify my question, my wonderment was going around our key progress indicators and- Mm-hmm ... thinking about our curriculum and our testing coordinators. I know they lift a heavy weight by- Yeah ... administering and proctoring testing. Yeah. And I know that for me, for example, having to administer FastBridge testing for early math and learning- Mm-hmm ... that you get a two-hour training, then you're sent out to go- Yeah ... to administer these tests, and some coordinators don't even have that same level of instructional time as teachers do. Mm-hmm. And so I could see that the lack of training for those testing coordinators being detrimental to our testing. And so that's why I was wondering, is any of this going to be thinking or reimagining the training for testing coordinators? Because the impact it could have. Yeah. Yeah, because the impact it can have. Yeah. So that was the- I see. Yeah Yeah I see what you're saying now. Naturally, I'm going to say yes. Okay. We're going to ensure that the data that we are receiving is coming as a result of the structural supports that we have in place to ready our students to perform their best on standardized assessments, whatever it might be, FastGrades, MCAs, unit assessments, et cetera. So I would say yes. The specificity, though, of what does that look like would not be tied to me. Okay. That's going to be tied further into our other folks in the district. I'm just too far removed from that in my goal setting- Oh, yeah ... to be able to get to that level of detail. Okay. But certainly, I will tell you, I've not been in a district where we haven't had a structured protocol for giving ample time to train and support and develop our testing facilitators, proctors, et cetera, to ensure the integrity of the assessment environment and the outcomes that we then are going to be pulling from those stated assessments. Uh-huh. Thank you. Mm-hmm. So scrolling down, you'll see then the same rubric for 1B that you saw in 1A that align to the MSBA model as well of performance descriptors and evidence criteria rankings. Did that access come through by chance? Not yet? Okay. No, she shared it with me. Oh, it is shared. It's not in your folder. Okay. Well, it's just in the Google Docs. Here's one. So what do we search? Yeah, we didn't receive an email or any notification. Superintendent. It should be called this, Dr. Thomas_HPS Sup Goals. Ah, here we go. Okay. Yeah, I shared with you. Got it. Okay. So scrolling down to category two, which is school district and culture, now that you all have better eyes on that. Again, SMART goal highlighted there. And I'll just let you peruse that and stand ready for questions. One of the things... Oh, so I'll give you some time and I'll speak to something. Well, I see we've already ticked off, I hope, one key indicator. This is a big one. I'll be honest with you, I was going to speak to this. This is critically important in year one to ensure that you are building up those relationships. You, me, I am building up those relationships within our community, both internally within the district as well as in broader areas. And this is a very aggressive cadence, so we've done the framework in July. This was extended out a little bit. But I'm also mindful of trying to time that just-in-time data to start informing that budgeting season process. Mm-hmm. So it's a fine balance. So I would just share with the board that I believe we can have some initial conversation in November about some of the listening sessions, and there's more than 12. That 12 would cover the school stand-up meetings and the community meetings. But it's not taking into account the PTO meetings, the elected official meetings, the student meetings, and we'll probably do culturally specific, language specific engagements as well. But just know that there will be at least 12 that we'll be pulling data from, and And I will also share the first three stand-up meetings at staff. I forgot to pass around the sign-in roster. So we're just also trying to get a sense of numbers and employee group that are participating in these, so we can say we had X amount of paras that were there, or X amount of principals, or that kind of a thing. So you understand the perspective originations of ideas of where they're coming from. So January, for me, really launches into that budget development process in a very formal way. The operational calendar I'll talk about in category three really is predicated on January being launch. So that's registration's complete, so that staffing is completely allocated by mid-February. And if we're going to have any of this information to be able to guide some of that staffing conversation, this needs to be done by January. I may have to modify and adjust, and to give myself a little buffer, because these meetings, as you can imagine, get pretty connected, I'll say. People are very connected to their experiences here in Hopkins, and I'm trying to allow time for that. And even from those, for example, at the high school, I have three one-to-ones with staff as a follow-up from that conversation. Not to say that I have to take everything and put it into this analysis, but it just shows you people value being able to tell their story. And I want to honor that to the extent that I possibly can, and I know there's only so much time in a day. So just keep that in mind. This may move by a month, depending on how intense the sessions go. If I need more, so if we're not getting a cross-representation of who we support as a community, that's where I mentioned we might have to do those targeted invites. And back when I was a principal, we did Sunshine Saturdays going into apartment complex community rooms because nobody would come out from certain communities because the trust or the connection or the relationship. So I may have to add some intentional conversations to ensure all voice is heard, and that's that equity through line I was talking about to ensure I'm uniquely listening, not just broadly listening. So thoughts and perspectives on the SMART goal indicators or some of the examples of evidence that I may share as a portfolio? I think that's great. Uh-huh. I'm also being mindful of time. Okay. Okay. And then last category, operations and finance. Again, this is going to be-- As you know, we've done a lot of cleanup, and so I think we're at a good foundational space that we can set a 12-month cadence to how we do our budgeting that's going to be posted and accessible to our community so they know what to expect and when, what types of work operationally in our finances should they be expecting conversations. So if they want to show up and lend perspective to that through public comment or through other engagement opportunities, they will be able to see that year-long calendar. This will also begin to change how we do our forecasting models for the board, and so that will be some of the look fors if you take a peek in some of the examples of evidence. So I'll chair stand ready for open questions. Again, knowing the board, this comes back in two weeks for ultimate action. If you want to review a lot of this on your own and then give me a call or give me a coffee or something like that, and we can walk through it as well, out of respect for time, knowing this is the first time you're seeing it. A lot to digest. Any feedback? Chair Andresen? Yes. Yeah. I echo what other board members have said about, obviously, just a lot of great work has gone into this. I'm super impressed. Just a couple of comments as I sat here looking at this. First of all, I commend you for the choices of these four goals, and I can see how they fit to your comments as you set the stage about how this first year is kind of ramping up and onboarding, and so these fit perfectly with that. I can also see how all four of them fit with each other, getting good evidence and data from each of these. So those are my first comments. Other just quick thing is I love the time periods that you show on here, too. It's like, "By this date, going to do this." That's really helpful, too, for holding accountability. So I just think it looks really good. Thanks. So, Chair- I would say that again, offer that invitation to each of you individually. Please reach out if you want to walk through this a little bit more in depth before it comes back to you for action. And I've offered with the chair to the whole board, as you all discuss your goals, that wherever you land, that we would commit to putting it into this same format, so that you all now have a primary way of modifying, adjusting year over year, that then aligns to the superintendent. So trying to build that coherence from the boardroom to the classroom so that everybody can better track what's happening overall throughout the district. Chair Anderson? Yes. Our current September 15th board meeting agenda calls for us to approve '26, '27 board goals and superintendent goals and consent. Are we saying that we are going to put that off by- Shouldn't be mine ... a few weeks? Oh, just yours. It shouldn't have been mine to start with. Yeah. D and E are- Is it both- ... school board goals ... mine on there? Yes. Yeah, no, mine shouldn't have been approved tonight. That should've been for the 29th. Okay. I apologize about that. That's okay. Just clarifying. We may want to make a motion to take that off consent when we get to that point. Thank you- Okay ... Rachel, for pointing that out. I did just want to say, before we move on from this, that this goal area in particular, I appreciate the regular monthly reconciliation workflows, budget cycles- Mm-hmm ... and developing a fiscal calendar that is more transparent and in front of the board on a regular basis. That has been in my experience on other boards. And so I appreciate how this prepares not just us as board members, but the larger community- Mm-hmm ... for the big conversations we have starting in January and February as a community. So thank you for doing that, and I think it just gets all of us used to hearing this information and being able to ask questions. So I'm actually really excited about that goal in particular. And I think it will tie in nicely with goals that the school board has had historically in helping educate our community about the budget and school board finance and, well, school funding in the state of Minnesota. So thank you for that. Any other questions or comments, either on this goal specifically or the superintendent's goals at large? Great. Well, thank you so much. I appreciate the attention, also the feedback that was given. I don't know if you have any work to do after this, Dr. Thomas. I think people are pretty happy. So with that, we can move right into our work, which is to work on our goals as a board, and I thank you for providing this framework and also offering some assistance if the board decides that we want to use this for our board goals. I certainly agree that it helps with coherence and consistency if we are aligning our goal process with what the superintendent and our district leaders are doing, not only in content, but also in template and framework. So that's how I feel. It also has historically been the practice of the board to do so. But would like to get just some weigh-in from the rest of the board as to do you feel like this template is helpful and something that you would like us to incorporate in our board goals this evening? Anybody? No opinions? Chair Anderson, can you ask again one more time? I'm sorry. Just wondering if we want to use the framework and template that Dr. Thomas is using for his superintendent goals for our board goals. It is largely similar to what we have currently, which is three goal areas, and within that, we have goals that are aligned to those areas of practice. But I think there's key differences in that under each category, there's the goal, and then what I really liked, and this came out when we had the training with Barb Dorn from MSBA, of having key progress indicators. I think that's something new. We certainly have done that informally by our action items, and then mid-year we report are we doing those action items, correct? But these just feel more measurable, I guess. So wondering if we want to use this framework so that we are aligned with what the rest of the district is doing. Chair Andresen? Yes. I would urge us to utilize the same format and structure just for that very reason. I agree with you. And with that, I don't know that we can do it in a half hour, but we can sure try. I think what we can do is maybe rely on the expertise that's in the room and the offer that was made, that it can be put into this format based on where we land in our discussion. Great. And we're all feeling in alignment? Yes? Yeah. We like this? Yep. Awesome. Great. So then that then takes us to discussing our goals specifically. We do currently have them in three categories, so that's good. Do we want to follow these categories? I think they're largely similar, but we can borrow the names. So we'll have learning and teaching, then go to school and district culture, and then operations and finance. Mm-hmm. We feeling those are appropriate big buckets? I'm seeing nods, so that's good. And then we can go to our board goals, and it's literally just a flip of wording. So we have the intro. I think that those largely stay the same. We do want the school board to understand educational issues that will engage in individual and collective professional development throughout the school year. And so I think, do we want to craft a key indicators of success, which is where I think we could translate our key action items. Currently, we have that we will increase our understanding of restorative practices and personalized learning. We also wanted to gain more understanding of data sharing and metrics of student success. School board members will learn about best next practices, and then actively partner with elected officials across the state and nation to protect and defend our families' right to a public education, and then school board members will share their learning with the community during workshops and board member reports, linking their learning to district goals and Vision 2031. Chair Andresen? Yes. Yes. Yeah, I think one thing we may want to consider is, as the CNA and SIPs rollout, is to be at the governance layer there and kind of holding the system responsible for what are the needs and what are we going to do about it, right? Because there could be a world where we do all this work, and it sits on a shelf until we look at it another year. So could we have a goal that's like we really want to stay on top of it? When the report comes out, we actually have a session to really digest the items, and then whatever plans that we have as a system for continuous improvement, that we stay very involved and help drive it or at least shine a light on it and have the expectation that things will get better as we do these SIPs. I think that we can craft a governance-level goal on that, and I think that's a very appropriate thing for the board. So I would say that we could say that we will gain an understanding of next of district CNA, correct? Yep. And how those-- What? Will be acted upon? And then I think part of what was in there is... So does that feel like that captured that? Yeah. Great. Thank you. Chair Andresen? Yes. One other thing I heard Director Zhao say, and I appreciate that comment because I was kind of wrestling in my brain with how do we craft a board goal in this area particularly. And so it was nicely said. But also to his point of continuously checking in on it to just make sure it's not shelved, right? So maybe another bullet point on continue to monitor progress of the CNA gathering and the SIP rollouts or implementation. One of the things that I want to make sure we aren't doing is stepping on the superintendent's goals, because I feel like I remember that being in his goal, that he's giving the board regular presentations and continuous progress monitoring. So I don't want that to be our goal, because it would just be duplicating goals, but that perhaps we will provide the forum for those reports, receive them. That works. Or how about this? Create cadence and cycle for monitoring. What was that word that you used? Monitoring... I remember. I thought I said monitoring. Sorry. Implementation? Yeah. So it reads, "School board members will gain an understanding of district CNA and how those items will be acted upon and create cadence and cycle for monitoring review." Does that sound like what you were asking for, Z? You too? Yes. So to me, that means it will be built into our yearly calendar and our agendas, and we can be held accountable to that. That's one of the things that I feel like our board goals should be a public-facing document that our community can hold us accountable to, and they can say, "This is your goal. Have you done this?" And we hold ourselves accountable to it as well. So want to make sure these are things that we are doing. Great. Chair Andresen? Yes. Hi. Looking at this, and I have open before me both what you're working us through, which is our board goals, and then what was presented and just if we're seeking to have some connectivity, coherence, or symbiotic reflection. One of the things just noticing, so our goal area, it says teaching and learning, and then the piece of this, it says school board professional development. And so if I think about within your goals, Dr. Thomas, you both have the SMART goal statement and then the key progress indicators and some examples of evidence. So think about that in terms of school board professional development. So I know you've been editing it now, but for instance, you had the one around restorative practices. So that, for instance, could be one of our own professional... What? Oh, sorry. No, no. Go ahead. No, like KPIs or something. Yeah. Yeah. So that, or thinking about, for instance, one of the things here is if it's school board professional development, thinking of a key progress indicator, by December 2026, all board members will have completed our MSBA board workshops that we have according to year. Yeah. The ones of us who are new will have completed one and two by December. I don't know what's realistic there, but just I think that's one of the things I'm wondering about if it is connecting. We have the goal. Here's our SMART goal within a few things. We're going to focus on restorative practices, the important legislation that is on the ballot this fall that the- Permanent school funding ... the permanent school fund. Thank you kindly. And then our MSBA training. I'm just throwing three possible things out. To have those, and then what are dates whereby we would do a workshop, or we would commit to something so we can report back and I can say, "Yes, Chair Andresen, I did complete that. Here's a learning that I took from it that impacts how I have furthered my professional development such that I can hopefully lead with good governance practices." Does that make sense what I'm- Yes. Okay. Let me see if I can get that. Okay. And Chair Andreassen, while you're typing that, can I just kind of piggyback off of Clerk WG? Thank you so much for bringing up Clerk WG about the school board. Let's see. What was it? So, like a professional development. Is there a certain type of professional development that the board is expected? Maybe you just asked that question. I don't know if you did. Of what? Yeah. Yeah, like what specific professional development are we required? Not required, but what should we... Yeah, so do we want to focus more on inclusion or inclusive professional development opportunities? Chair Andreassen, or- Just go ahead. Vice Chair Roeber. Uh-huh. Yeah, so my understanding is that if this goal area one is teaching and learning, we should be looking at what falls under the teaching and learning umbrella, and then tying the school board professional development to teaching and learning specifically. So, I think one of these here is, or it was at some point, I think we've now edited it, understanding how restorative practices fits into the curriculum. Or meeting with Anne Ertl once a quarter to understand the cadence of, I don't know. But so varies of certain curriculum or- Mm-hmm ... getting reports from whatever committee regarding curriculum choices or curriculum review, more tied specifically to what falls under the teaching and learning. And I don't know exactly what. I'd have to go back and look at the- So they are on our website. Okay. If you want to review what they used to say. And are these umbrellas also on the website? Umbrellas? Like, teaching and learn, where are we pulling the goal areas from? Yeah. These are our goals as they are published on the website. Got it. Okay. So, what it used to say is, "School board members will increase their understanding of how restorative practices and personalized learning are being implemented and evaluated in the district through workshop presentations, data sharing, and metrics of student success." The next one was, "School board members will learn about best, next practices in innovative, equitable, and anti-racist educational practices locally and nationally, and how we can specifically apply these in Hopkins. An awareness of community needs is essential to be proactive instead of reactive." Mm-hmm. So maybe the school board, the new ones, right? Understanding of district CNA and how those items will be acted upon. Maybe that's a sub-goal within the teaching and learning. Like sub-goal A is school board professional development, and sub-goal B is the oversight suggestions that Z and Brooke were making. Mm-hmm. I guess I'm not sure what we're discussing. Did you want a different goal? I'm proposing that we have goal area one, teaching and learning. I'm proposing that the goal area 1.1, right? There can be multiple goals under the area- Mm-hmm. Yeah ... is what I'm saying. So, I think it makes sense to break apart the data oversight, understanding specifically the data that's being collected within our district and what we're going to do about that from the overall professional development, teaching and professional development, completing MSBA courses. So are those not... I mean, my understanding was that those were separate. Aren't they already pulled apart? I think she's elevating the review of the CNA to its own goal. So- Mm-hmm. Like calling that something like a- Like that's goal 1B. Mm-hmm. Similar to how Dr. Thomas does a goal 1A, the CNA, and then there's goal 1B, which is the curriculum audit or ROI audit. Okay. And then each would have their own indicators for success. Mm-hmm. Okay. And I guess I was just trying to see, maybe to clarify, so let's say, do we all take restorative practice? ... professional development, or are we breaking it up into different categories? Like, this person take this, or this person take that, so we can bring back different perspectives instead of all of us bringing back perspectives on restorative practices. So I guess that was maybe where my question was landing. Are we going to take categories and assignments on a topic and then bring it back? Yeah. That's a good question, and we have 10 minutes. Yes, we do. Yep. Feels like we may not get through this document. I think this is a tough area for teaching and learning. What's a good governance goal in teaching and learning when we don't really do that thing? And so I kind of like the idea of two separate goals, at least for now. I'm hearing us value both of those things. That we continue our own learning, and maybe we investigate a specific thing that impacts our district, but then also following closely this needs assessment and this plan, and us becoming versed in that, becoming fluent in that language and understanding what's happening in our district this year. One of the things that I was envisioning as we are doing our goals for this year is that I feel like this is a unique year, in that we are-- I think the board's main job this year is transitioning our district to a new superintendent. And so, I'm thinking that a lot of our goals will be around that. Mm-hmm. Whereas before we would be... I feel like we've already achieved one of our goals, which is going through the transition workshop with MSBA. That was professional development- Mm-hmm ... that we engaged in in order to make sure that we're having a successful transition with our new superintendent. So I think that board development is essential and really important, and yes, we need to know what's very specific things in the district that are happening that are working and/or not. But this year, I feel like the understanding of the work that Dr. Thomas is doing, which is very high level and district-wide, and maybe not being so granular, I think it will be a lot of work for us as a board to gain an understanding of the district CNA and how those items will be implemented, which I think would be taking the place of learning about restorative practices or equitable educational outcomes. I feel like that's probably enough for the board for the year. Yes. Chair Andreason. Yes. If I may, and board. So I just want to remind ourselves that as we discussed a couple of weeks ago with Barb Dorn, these are things that we're elevating to just monitor. There's tons of work that's happening beneath the waterline that will continue to happen that aren't even captured in mine or captured in yours. Like the restorative work that many of you are invested in, you're still going to do that work. It might not be the thing that's on the front burner that we're monitoring. And there seemed to be a coalescence around the framework that I'm proposing for the goal areas that I'll be focusing in on. My wondering, Chair, if that resonates with the board, would you want us to essentially take that framework and draft a governance level goal format that aligns them to that, so that you're not reinventing something new? Mm-hmm. And that we have coherence because very... And this could be something done in partnership with you and maybe some other representatives to mock that, use that as the starting point. Now, how do you ramp up? Because our SIP process will be then mocked from that into the schools and departments. I would just encourage the board to consider that because we could easily draft governance goals aligned already to the SUP goals, and then take that back for consideration and discussion in a couple of weeks, and then be ready for action subsequent that. And then take that time to work with you and anybody else that would be identified to workshop that separately from an efficiency standpoint. I like that. I would agree with that. What a way to operate. Efficiency is always good. I also think, Chair Andreason, that it would be helpful to see, and I don't know if Dr. Thomas has it or if you have it, also what rose to the top, right, in the Barb Dorn examples. Yeah. Yeah, and that is- That is your goals. So mine is- That is in titles ... incorporated- Yep ... the rise to the tops. There were five areas in red in her report that showed seven of us or eight of us or six of us. Mm-hmm. All of that was embedded into my- Yep ... goals for the year. Yep. So, and again, I thought that was shared with everybody, but that source document is what drove mine. Yep. Yeah, and I can make sure that's shared with all of you if you want that data It would be nice to see that. I would support, if you think it's something that you or your team can do, is draft a one-step-remove governance goal for your goals, because this just feels like it's a change to how we've thought about it. It's a somewhat substantial change to this document. I'm feeling some time pressure. I don't know that I'll feel real good about- Yeah ... the slapdash goals. Inter-Director Z's point about the format of having SMART goals, measureables, all of that, I think that's something that we can cascade up, that fits your governance purview. Again, not to say that some of this work that you've considered over the years isn't something that's still going to continue in some form or fashion of your daily experience as a board director. But what will be front-facing and what you'll progress-monitor and hold yourselves accountable to will be that consistent vertical alignment, again, from the boardroom to the classroom in that format. I like that, and I would also, just so we all have a sense of where this is heading, can I just get a quick temperature check for our '25, '26 goals? Are there any ones in particular that you feel either 100% this needs to stay, or are there ones that you are like, "Yeah, I'm okay if that's not a goal anymore?" So, just a quick temperature check. I'm sure you all reviewed this before tonight. So if you just have three things that you're like, "Nope, I want this to stay. This is important," or two that you're like, "No, that can go. We've been there, done that." Chair Andreassen? Yes. I would offer to take out goal area, well, not teaching and learning, but the school board professional development and the community presence as an overarching obligation, almost like an introductory, like, "We will always be working towards these goals." Kind of an overarching from year to year to year, these are just baseline expected of the board as an outward-facing statement to the community. And then specifically for this year. And then we can go into the goals that mirror Dr. Thomas's. So what I'm proposing would be pulling out community presence and school board professional development, and raising that up almost as a thesis or a- Preamble. A what? A preamble. A preamble, yeah. Like a mission. Yeah. Like a mission. Thank you, Rachel. Or Director- That's fine ... Hartland. It's workshop this time. Rachel's great. So then we- Chair Andreassen. Oh. Yeah, sorry. So just so I'm understanding this correctly, so then we don't have anything in school district and culture? Just have it mirror the superintendent's goals? Well, my understanding was that the board goals were going to be rewritten to match the superintendent's goals in which we're holding him accountable, but at a higher governance level. And so my understanding of your question was, are there any goals that are on this document from '25, '26 that we don't feel need to be continued into '26, '27 board goals? So what I was proposing is the specific goal of school board professional development and the specific goal of community presence could be raised up to an overarching long-term goal that's expected of all school board members, that we're always working towards those two areas of improvement. And then the goal area under teaching and learning will be whatever mirror Dr. Thomas'. And same with school district, and culture, and operations. And I think the operations one, fiscal transparency and understanding, already mirrors what Dr. Thomas's third... Or is that your third goal? Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. C. Goal C. So that one probably wouldn't change so much. Okay. Can I get any other input? Chair Andreassen? Yeah. As a response to your temperature check request, I think given what Treasurer Hartland also named, of that this is a new moment for getting to reimagine, so I would happily cede the time and creative energy that Dr. Thomas and others on the administrative team would be willing to offer up to help us then at this governance level. I'm really excited to see that, and I think it will help us to imagine in a new way, and particularly than have some actionables that we can track ourselves, to know where we're at and, hey, are we moving forward from the governance perspective and really supporting the work of the district and fulfilling our obligations and commitments ourselves? So temperature check, two thumbs up, and look forward to seeing a draft, personally. Awesome. So as far as did anyone else have anything that they want to make sure is in here or not? Great. So process then would be, we're going to pull both of our goals things from consent because we don't have them complete. When, Dr. Thomas, would your team perhaps have a draft for the board to review? I would want to talk with Dr. Zembuch, but I would imagine within a week we would have something to share with the board for review, and that could just be a subset to not have the full board convening a meeting on email and all that. So, if you want to delegate that to some members, we could certainly do that and share that, and then wordsmith things. But essentially, as Director Hyman and others have stated, what you would see is some type of executive overview like you see on mine. I think that gets to the point that you were sharing as your introduction as the board and the purpose of your evaluation. And then with those four content areas, we will mock the same smart format, KPIs, and evidence at a governance level so there's consistency, and then develop a rubric for the board for your consideration, because you all do a self-review as well. So we can take a look at that. And then if the two or three of you say, "Yes, this is great," then we'll bring that back to workshop on the 29th. And you'll see that on the 29th, and then that could be moved to ready for action on the 29th as well, along with mine. Great. So- So, are we looking for a team then to help review the draft and get it ready for the 29th? Yeah. Dr. Zembuch and I would work directly with you, and then you could delegate that out or ask for support of who would like to volunteer. But I would say no more than two to three of you. That would be the kind of sleeves rolled up team. Yep. And then putting eyes on things to ensure that it's reflecting the conversations that you've had, not just tonight, but historically that you have had as a board. She now has access to your sheet here. I'm only imagining she's already crafting structures as we've been talking, pulling all of your data that you've said were important to you as a board in the past, and seeing how that can be rolled into then the framing of moving forward that aligns to-- It aligns, we just need to bracket it appropriately, and then maybe wordsmith it to fit that same format. Great. Thank you. So can I have two volunteers? Kai and Z? Sure. Did I see a hand? No. Oh, no. He was scratching. I was scratching myself- Oh ... but sure. Okay. Volun-toe. Well, don't move. Yeah, it's like an auction. Okay, great. Okay. Thank you everybody. Just in time to get started with our rather short meeting. So thanks for the conversation. I appreciate all the input. I think it's important that we have these discussions. So it is 7:00 p.m., and I am thrilled that we have student board reps here at the table. Welcome back. I hope you all had great summers. And it is 7:00 p.m., and I will call to order this general meeting of the Hopkins School Board for Tuesday, September 15th, 2026. And our first item on our agenda is open agenda, where we host a public comment session for our community because we believe that hearing from our community members is crucial for implementing Vision 2031. If you wish to contact the board via email instead of publicly commenting at a meeting, please use the Contact the School Board link. And public comment will be received both in person and through voicemail. You can leave a voicemail that will be played aloud during one of our two public comment sessions. Do we have any voicemails? We do not have any voicemails. And the other way to be part of our public comments session is to fill out a public comment card located at the back of the boardroom. You get to come here and join us in person, and hand it to the board chair before the meeting begins. I do not believe we had any public comment cards for this evening, and so that concludes our public comment session. We really do like hearing from our community, so please do join us and comment if you have something you'd like to share with the board. And that takes us to our next session, which is our student board representative reports. Hi, my name is Eloise Bullan, and I'm a senior rep. The Hopkins Girls- Oh, wow. Oh. You're a senior. The Hopkins Girls' volleyball team is off to a great start for their season. They're playing their fifth game already tonight. Tonight's theme is Blue-out, and with their last game day's full program sweep of Edina, I'm excited to see how they're going to play against STMA tonight. Senior Sunrise was last Friday. It started at 6:30 and it went until 8:30. Seniors, including myself, got to go see the sunrise, enjoy a donut, and take pictures. Next Monday we have school off because of Yom Kippur. And then on Monday, October 5th, there's going to be a college night featuring many colleges for seniors to take a look at. The 5th is specifically catered towards seniors checking out the last colleges before college applications are due, but we'll have other college fairs later in the year catered towards the younger grade levels. And then lastly, I'd like to highlight Ms. Saterin. She teaches my AP Psychology class, and it may just be the most interesting class I've ever taken. Today we learned about the parts of the brain and their functions. We also reviewed a few case studies, one of which was a patient who had his corpus callosum, which is the part of the brain that connects the two sides, severed. We were shown how having essentially two independent brains affects things like speech recognition and motor control. Ms. Saterin never fails to find fun ways to teach us new topics. Thank you. Hi, everyone. I'm Iris, and I'm a junior board rep this year. Before I start on my report, I want to say I'm also in Ms. Saterin's AP Psych class, and it's so amazing. She's an incredible teacher, and it's a very interesting course. But to start off my board report, I wanted to talk about the APES field trip, which is AP Environmental Science. They will be going to Westwood Hills Nature Center and the U of M for bird watching and studying biodiversity and ecology. Most classes will be going tomorrow, and I know a lot of people who are taking this class and are super-duper excited. I think it'll be super interesting for all of them. Also, there's a really cool opportunity for students to be an election judge on November 3rd. They pay $15 an hour. There's also no school that day, so you wouldn't have to miss school if you did this. And there's online training provided. So, if there are any students watching or any parents who think that their students might be interested in this, it's definitely something to look into. On a similar note, we've got freshman applications open for student board reps. We need two more freshmen. We were at the open house and orientation, so most freshmen probably know. But we'll also be at the activity fair for anyone who still wants more info, and we'll have two new freshmen joining us pretty soon. Lastly, I wanted to quick talk about a couple concerts that are coming up. So they're not until early October, but there is going to be a choir, orchestra, and band concert respectively. The band concert is video game themed, and then the orchestra and the choir concert will both be Disney themed, and they're targeted for young audiences. So if you have a little one or little ones at home, definitely something to put in your calendars and go see. And then I just wanted to end with a spotlight. I'm going to spotlight Mr. UF. He's my AP Gov teacher. And everything that we're learning is really interesting, but also the way that he explains it is really incredible, and I feel like of all of my teachers that I've had, the way that he explains things just makes more sense than most people. And I feel like a lot of my peers agree with me that his class is not only really interesting, but also just very easy to follow. And he has a really great reputation for getting amazing scores on the AP test, and I'm really excited to do the rest of the course with him. Great. Hi, my name is Adena Togel, and I'm a sophomore rep. I want to start off with my teacher spotlight, KJ, who is my AP Biology honors chemistry teacher. She's an amazing teacher who works really hard to make sure her students understand everything that they're learning, and she always provides accommodations and checks up on everyone before class. Right now, we're learning about the periodic table and atoms, and it's really cool. The way she explains everything is super fun, and it makes it way more interesting to learn it. Next, I want to talk about Homecoming, which is coming up. The Homecoming football game is October 2nd, and we're playing against Roseville. The dance will be on October 3rd, and the theme for the dance has not been determined yet. Next, all fall sports like tennis today, who played against Eden Prairie, have officially started. Others like soccer, football, cross country, swim and dive, volleyball, and dance. So that's all very exciting. Lastly, there's an outdoor adventure biking field trip on September 19th where people in outdoor adventures class are able to bring along friends and go on a biking trip all day. Mm-hmm. And yeah, that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate the updates. Any feedback or questions? No, but I just want to just say happy start of the school for you all. I feel like I haven't seen you in so long, so I'm so excited to have you all back at the table. I have been seeing Eloise everywhere this summer. I was about to say, I saw you three times this summer. I know. And so, I'm so excited to hear all the things y'all could complete this year, and so thank you for providing some awesome board reports. I second that. Thank you so much. It makes our meetings much more interesting when you're here. And I also appreciate-- I don't know when the teacher spotlight started, but I love that because it gives us a taste for what's happening at the high school, and it's great stuff. So, thanks for that. Wondering, do you need any help with recruiting to get applicants for the first year? So Manuel put out a Google form, and I believe we have 10 or 11- Okay ... put in. We're only going to take probably 20, and we're only going to interview about 10 of them. Okay. So we've got plenty of- Okay ... interest already. Good. I just wanted to make sure. And then, I'm excited about the upcoming concerts, and I go to the Disney ones, so super excited about that. So yeah. Thanks so much, and welcome back. I hope the year is a great one. So that takes us then to our superintendent report. Dr. Thomas. Thank you, Chair Andreassen, and welcome students to your first board meeting of the year. I have to say, I love having grade-level reps. That's something unique in my experience. As superintendent, I've always had a board member rep or a student board member, but not a grade level, so that's really cool. And then we're just three weeks in, and you all are giving real specific examples of the skills and talents of your teachers in just three weeks. And I think that is a testament about the amazing staff that we have in all of our classrooms throughout the district, that in three weeks' time, you are already having an impact on our students. So thank you, Mrs. Saturn, Mr. UF, Ms. KJ, and all the hundreds of other staff in the district. You're making a difference, and it's noticed, not just by us, but by the folks who really matter. So thank you all for sharing that. And speaking of folks that matter, our littlest of littles started recently at preschool, and I just want to note that that was a really fun experience when you see these kids coming in. They're just little bitties, and they are just into their spaces, exploring, building friendships, learning how to share, all of that. It's just amazing. Colors and shapes and really love that experience and just want to, again, say welcome families, and thank you so much for choosing Hopkins. Just last week, you all probably heard that our education commissioner, Mr. Willie Jett, paid a visit to Hopkins High School, where he used to serve as a principal for many years. And it was fun to watch him come back. It was like a little homecoming. And a lot of staff flocked back to say hello to the commissioner, and I just want to say thank you to him and his team for coming out to Hopkins and recognizing a great kickoff for our school year here. So, thank you, Commissioner Jett. Also, just last week, we had US Representative Kelly Morrison come out. Congresswoman Morrison welcomed students back to school at Eisenhower in Jingjing. And just want to thank her and her team for having that presence. And she participated in a kindergarten read-aloud, visited a fifth-grade classroom, and engaged in a Q&A. And I love when our electeds really let that guard down and let kids ask those questions. Those are the tough ones, right? Those are the tough ones. Media, they're used to media. Kids, they bring it. So, I appreciate that. And then she was able to get a nice tour of the school, and hopefully, she's going back and sharing with her folks to like, "Yeah, come on out. Take a look at what's happening," and the magic is great. Just want to thank everyone for coming out to Minnesota Kids Rise at the fair last week. Again, that was a statewide, nonpartisan public education initiative launched and sponsored by MSBA to build trust, pride, and community, and understanding of the strength of public schools. And that kicked off on Kids Day at the fair. And I do have a T-shirt for all of you. I didn't bring them in with me tonight. Full disclosure, it was probably the hottest day of the fair. And how I drew that little straw to be there that day to represent Hopkins and in public schools, I don't know. But, I was in my sweats and in my smells, and I was holding these shirts all the time, and I was like, "I cannot deliver these shirts." So I had to wash them, and now I got to iron them. So, that's why they're not here tonight. They were too wrinkly, and I didn't get it done in time. So I'm not going to give you a wrinkled shirt. But that was great, and also want to share some information, and more will be coming in the coming weeks. Many of you may know about the permanent school fund constitutional amendment that's going to be on the ballot this November. Minnesota voters are going to see a proposed permanent school fund constitutional amendment. This amendment would modernize how proceeds from Minnesota's permanent school fund are distributed to schools. If it is approved by Minnesotans, the distribution rate would be 4.5% based on the three-year rolling average of the fund's value, compared to its current recent distribution averaging about 2.5% for schools. So for context, had the proposed formula been in place in fiscal year '25, Minnesota schools would have received approximately $33 more per student enrolled in their district. So do the math, and that's real supports for students here in Hopkins. The additional funding is not an increase. It is not an increase to property taxes, nor would it require funding from the state's general fund. And so that's really important. And also, I'll state that this amendment must receive a majority of all votes casted in the election, and I want to be really clear on this one. Leaving the question blank on your ballot has the same effect as voting no. So vote how you feel you need to vote. We cannot take a position on that. So all I'm saying is get out there and vote, and remember, leaving it blank is a no vote. So I just want you to be informed in that. So again, just be looking for that. We are working on some video informational series that we'll be pushing out through various mediums here in the district so that you are informed at the poll. And I also wanted to share with the board that I am honored to have been accepted into the AASA National Superintendent Certification Program, which is a selective two-year cohort of superintendents from around the country to come together, specifically focusing our professional development and growth on governance, instructional leadership, organizational improvement, school finance, communications to include crisis and political communications, given the day and age that we're in, and the evolving role of the superintendent. This cohort begins September 23rd and includes ongoing professional learning that I and others from around the country will be embedded in. We will also be assigned cohort mentors, so kind of longstanding practicing superintendents that will be our group mentors and really being able to workshop our leadership practices with our respective districts. I'm excited to bring Hopkins to a national level in terms of new learning and our story and be able to gain perspectives and practices that I can bring back and begin to take immediate action right here that aligns to Vision 2031 and aligns to some of the goals that we talked about earlier in my evaluation. So just informing the board, this is four times a year that I'll be traveling over the course of two years, twice a year, once in the fall, once in the spring, and one is the annual superintendents conference that naturally occurs, but there'll be special breakout sessions for the cohort fellows in that place. So wanted to share that exciting news, and I'm just honored to be able to, again, represent Hopkins and bring our voice to great conversation spaces across the country. That is exciting. Congratulations. Yeah. Thank you. I'm honored. And the last update I would like to share is around transportation. We have members from our team and members from Smitty & Sons that will... Dr. Lightfoot, is he here? And folks, if you want to bring all the folks up forward as I set the context for this. And Bill and others, I see you there as well. Thank you for coming forward. So I just want to publicly acknowledge that the start of the school year has included, no pun intended, some bumps in the road and some challenges that I know have deeply impacted some of our students and some of our families. And as I shared in a post after our first week, that's something that I take full responsibility for. And I offer my apology to our families and students that were impacted by this. And this is not a standard that we intend to uphold. It's one that I know our colleagues sitting with us this evening also are committed to ensuring that we rectify. And I just want to thank this team and others who are not here with us this evening for their tireless work, literally around the clock, to ensure that we are addressing the concerns that have been brought forward. I want to thank our families for your patience. I want to thank, again, all of our school and transportation teams for their continued work to address these concerns. We've been reviewing routes daily. Communication processes and operational issues with our transportation provider have also been a topic of discussion, and we're making just-in-time route-specific adjustments where it's needed. And our expectation remains explicitly clear. We are guaranteeing that we will provide safe, reliable, and timely transportation, coupled with accurate and timely communication with our families. And so tonight, our team and our transportation partners will provide an update on what we have learned to date, some of the actions that we've already taken, and all the work that has already gone underway to improve the services moving forward and are reestablishing a standing expectation for what transportation looks like in Hopkins Public Schools. And the volume, I'll just close with this and turn it over to Dr. Lightfoot to start. The volumes of emails of which some of you were copied on those and were pretty high. And I would say this week I've received two And so clearly our team have taken some significant efforts and they're taking this seriously, and I just, again, can't thank all of you enough for your hard work and dedication. So with that, Dr. Lightfoot, I'll turn it to you, and then allow for the conversation with the team to provide an update. Certainly. Good evening. Good to be with you. I think at this point, probably just some general parameters, some of the outlines of things that have been done over the past couple weeks, just to give you a little bit of outline and a couple of those components. So, Assistant Director Williams, I will turn it over to you. Good evening. First, I do want to make sure that we hear from our contractor, Schmitty and Sons, and we can talk about the collaboration between all that we've done to get everything together for startup, and then just challenges that we have worked through within the first couple weeks of school. First, majority of our routes have been on time. We just have and want to acknowledge that we have had some different routes for different reasons, I would say, that have been late. And so what we're doing right now is identifying each one, each cause, making sure that we execute our plan to look into what the issue is, why it's happening, and what we can do to change it. It could be a routing issue where we need to adjust or add more time. It could be traffic. It could be Cedar Lake Road for the first couple weeks. It could be construction, a train that we have to reroute around, different scenarios that we have run into. So what helps us is to be able to look at each one individually, make sure what that is, make a change, make sure that we are notifying families so that we're not making changes at the last minute. If we make a change for tomorrow, families don't have enough time to react. And then making sure our drivers have enough information as well. We have been working daily. Our teams are together for a part of the day just to make sure that we're going over each route individually that is one of our hot routes. We call it a hot route if it is late consecutive for whatever reason could be. If it's late today because of an accident on a highway, that day we notify families. But if it's late because of an accident every day, we obviously need to make sure that there's more time added in there, or if there's construction or whatnot. So we do address each one, identify, and work through together to figure out on the end of the contractor side what that could be, our side what that could be, whether it's rerouting or whatnot. I want to make sure I introduce Catherine Forbord and Bill Forbord. They've both been real hands-on with everything. Bill and I have a lot of time out at a lot of our school sites, seeing how things are at each site, making sure that we can see. We usually do this yearly, but it's a little different this year, and a new contractor, we want to make sure everybody gets to see exactly how the traffic flows. If we have parents in the bus loop and identify that so that we can make sure that we make adjustments or communicate with our building staff to see how much we can get support there. We pretty much watch what drivers could be doing. If there's something that is out of the ordinary, if there's unsafe walking for students so that we could address that with staff. Just different things that we make sure that we see from all of our perspectives. And then we connect with our school staff, make sure that we're all on the same page, and formulate a plan to make sure that not only are we doing things with our routes and routing, but we are working together to make sure that we are getting in and out of the schools on time and safe. So safe not only for our kids on the bus, but for pedestrians on the road, families, cars, parents, and everyone that is in or around our bus loop. Bill and Catherine, if you want to speak to some things that you've experienced or what we want to go over of how we work together, that would be great. Sure. Well, good evening, Chair Andreassen, members of the school board, and superintendent, as well as the rest of our leadership team and families and community members. As Ny'esha said, my name is Catherine Forbord. I'm the director of operations for Schmitty and Sons. I really do appreciate the opportunity to speak in front of all of you this evening to address the transportation challenges that we have experienced in the first few weeks of school. We have been working very closely with the transportation team. As Ny'esha said, we're meeting daily to review these. We are not taking these lightly, and we are making steps to make positive changes, and we have seen those changes week after week of improvements. One point that I feel very necessary to address is that for us, this was not a driver shortage issue as so much of what has been relayed in past few years in the media. Our team has worked tirelessly across the summer months to get our staffing in place. We've hired well over 100 school bus drivers and aides, and we really worked with the team here to ensure that they have the training on over 600 individual runs or tiers, if you want to call them, to make sure that the transportation system works smoothly. Obviously, we did have some unforeseen routing and timing challenges. It's a complex transportation system, and some of these, I know these challenges have been ongoing for years, but we are very dedicated to make sure that we are working together to address this because for our company and for the community, everybody deserves better. And as Ny'esha pointed out, the first week of school, particularly being that it was During the state fair, we had park and ride challenges. We had a power outage on day one or day two that was very significant that delayed all of our tiers. We had substantial construction projects, including by the high school, that has since all those pieces have wrapped up, which did really create or remove, I should say, some of the barriers that we were facing. I do want to address the communication. I know there was some concern about our office and our response. We take communication very seriously. We had a high volume of calls, obviously, in the first couple of days of school, and we always anticipate having that. But with some of the extreme delays, when you think of how that is compounded by, say, 50, 60 students on a bus and all those families, we couldn't have enough staff in place to try to answer all those phone calls. Especially because in our company, we all have our CDL license, and we will deploy our staff if a tier is running late to get that back on time, which takes people out of the office away from answering calls. So it's something difficult to navigate, but we have worked through that, and we do have systems in place for rollover calls and for after-hours, because it is our goal to have a live person that is there to answer families or after-hours if it's a coach trying to get ahold of their athletic team. We want to have that live interaction. But communication for us also extends beyond just the telephone. Since our initial proposal, we have remained committed to providing the Hopkins families with a student bus tracking application, which we have successfully completed a test pilot, and we're actively working with the district on the technical and routing components so that we can move towards a broader launch. We use this in other districts that we serve, and we think that it'll be a wonderful tool for families to be able to use. So just in closing, Schmidth and Sons, we've been transporting students for more than 75 years. We understand the amount of trust that families put in place with us every day as their child steps onto the bus. I'm a parent of a kindergartener that rode on the bus for their first time this year, and I can tell you firsthand, I want his experience to be positive and memorable, and I want the same thing for all families within the Hopkins community. So, these first couple of weeks are not an accurate reflection of our company, and we are going to, and we have been, working through with the district on all these routing and timing challenges. We don't personally do the routing, but we collaboratively are really, like Naisha said, we're drilling down on these, and we want to make long-term changes. We don't want to just make a band-aid change from moving one student from one route to the next without really systemically looking at what are the issues here and what can we do to improve this for the long term. So those are our goals, and we are dedicated to safe, reliable, and consistent transportation. So, we appreciate the partnership, and I'll turn it over to Bill if he has anything else to add. Well, you can see why I bring her along. If not, I'd like to say, if anybody has any questions, we're certainly willing to stand for it. We understand routing, and there's some new software the district's using, and they've worked tirelessly with us to try to make the changes because you're only really as good as the route you run. And progress is being made, and we won't stop until it't done right. And the student tracking app really does help families. I always say, well, if you have good service, you don't need the app. But especially when you're transitioning to where we want to get to, you get a notice on your phone when your bus is within the range you set it at, and you know your bus is coming, and particularly on cold and rainy days, it works great. But if anyone has any questions, we certainly stand for it, and we'll get this. This is not our style. Thank you. And I don't have anything else to add. I am open for questions as well, unless you have anything else to add, Dr. Lightfoot. No, open at this time. Thank you. Chair Anderson, just- Yes ... one thing I would just like to maybe-- Ouch. Oof. Doesn't pay to have long legs. No. Oh, wow, sorry. I just want to reiterate the app conversation, and I know that this is something-- Here Comes the Bus, is that what it's called, right? Here Comes the Bus app, and I know that Dr. Lightfoot and a few others sandboxed that last week just to kind of see how that worked, and yep, I think we have some of that functionality that is going to be really helpful, I think, to families. And yes, I agree, great customer service, might not need that app, but in the instances that after the normal cadence is established, that-- Thanks, students. The normal cadence that if there is a slowdown or an emergency happens that delays a bus, that automatic notification will be there, and you can actually literally track that. I also want to share with our community that the call log, the late log, is something that we are planning to sunset. This has been a practice that we have held that we believe the app will suffice, and so I just want to share that I think that has also been a source of consternation. And so, that late log will be something, once we know that that app is fully functional, we will be retiring that late log, that families now will shift to that understanding through Here Comes the Bus. So with that, I'll turn it over Chair Andreassen, if there's any questions or comments. Thank you, and thank you for being here this evening. I know it makes for a long day for all of you, so appreciate you being here and available for questions from the board. And with that, are there questions from my board colleagues? Chair Andreassen? Yes, Director Zhou. Hi, transportation team. So thanks for your long days. You talked a lot about the improvements, which I think sounds like the squeaky wheels are getting less squeaky. But how much of an improvement have we seen, right? Are we talking 50% less late buses from last week to this week? Or where is it actually looking? I heard a majority of our routes are on time, but how big is that majority, right? 51% is a majority. Is it that, or is it 90%? Where are we? I would say first, to answer two parts of your question, and especially from the media, I want to make sure that we know that there wasn't 100 late buses. So I think that's what I just want to clear up to make sure where we're sitting. The way the late bus log is, is every entry is added on there. So if there's a bus that is 10 minutes late, and it makes up time, and we put zero minutes late later or whatnot, each time there's an occurrence on the late bus log. So if you add up all the occurrences for each different bus for each different tier, I think at the time, it was 100 occurrences on there. But for the first week of school, we had about 35 big buses, and under 10 small buses and under 10 small vans for that first week. So not going into any other weeks but the first week. So for us, if you count all of our big bus routes, there's a total of 48. That was across the week, and each day there was a difference. So there was the day of the power outage where every high school bus was late, so we put every single bus on a late bus log because they all were late, or the whole entire week of the construction for the high school, every high school bus was late in and out. So 10 in and 10 out. We put every one of those on a late bus log for 10 minutes in and 10 minutes out. So it's hard to determine and let you know exactly the percentage without going through. But I will say from the first couple weeks of school until now, we are down to a few late buses, not even 10, I will say that. And a lot of them are due to construction. There's some routing changes that we can change. I can get percentages and get back to you just to make sure that you have that idea. I think the impact is large because we have 60 kids on one bus. You can potentially get 60 emails. So every family is impacted, but it isn't every bus impacted. And every school is separate as well. So it's a little hard to explain, and that's why we go through route by route, and by route, it's not bus by bus. Each school is its own route. So we have to go through each school for each single vehicle that attends there just to make sure if there's an issue. Is there construction that we didn't know about last week because it just happened today that now the bus is late, or is it not? Or is there something that we need to change because the directions are not correct? First couple days, there's new drivers. They're learning their route. So it's a little late, but when you add traffic and construction, we need to look at those routes differently and add time. So the system shows you that it's on time, but then as you go on, it won't be on time. We had one route that every kid is picked up on time, but they don't arrive at school on time. So we look at that route, and we add in time to get them to school on time from that last stop. So the percentages, if needed, we can get you numbers. Okay. It's just a big difference between now we're in that stabilization phase where we can see what the issue is. We don't have a big construction on one road that impacts at least 35 of our buses at one time because- Yeah ... there's about 35 buses at the high school. Okay. So now we're stabilizing each route and identifying most of those are on time because the construction is gone, but we have a few that we're still looking at to make sure that they're getting on time. Okay. So I heard you say maybe 10 are late out of 35. That's a third. That's not acceptable, frankly. I would say 10 late out of if you count three tiers on 48 buses, in the a.m. only. So you have three tiers on 48 buses, 10 total. So just because Eisenhower is maybe late for traffic, the second tier may not be late. So I'm thinking by route, and we have a few hundred routes. So I would have to get you the exact number of routes. We have 48 buses, but each one has three tiers in the a.m.- Okay ... some of them maybe two- Okay ... and three in the p.m. Okay. So that 10 number is way less, and I should have clarified that, just based off of each school- Okay ... and their bus. Okay. So closer to 10%, not 30. Mm-hmm. Which still gives me gray hairs. So thank you. Yep. Yes. So just so I'm understanding, you said we have 48 buses. Are those big buses? Big buses. Or does- I'm only thinking big buses now. So does this 10 include our small buses and our vans? No, I didn't include small buses in that, but I can give you-- And we had way less numbers in small vehicles than we did. We've had some issues with small vehicles just based on regular special services. You pull up to the stop, and if someone doesn't come out, you wait three minutes, and that changes every stop. So if you wait three minutes at every stop, you add and increase time. So those numbers are a little bit different in different circumstances. So right now, I'm just going off of the general ed, but I can get numbers and percentages if we need to. Just giving you an idea of how we look at everything and how we separate it, which I know that at one school you'll see A bus is late, but we separate it for each single school, and it just increases across the board for us. Yeah. I think I am interested because that was my first question, how many have been late? Yes. That's information I want to have. And also, can we quantify by number- Mm-hmm ... what is the improvement that we're experiencing? Mm-hmm. I think that that's really important information for all of us to have, and I would assume for all of you to have, correct? That you can be like, "Oh, okay, so this is incrementally getting better, and we know the exact increments." Yes. So that would be information I think everyone on the board is interested in having. Mm-hmm. Great. Can I have a clarifying question? Sure. With that information, if it's about 30 minutes late is when we send out the blast and the message to families, but we do have buses five, 10 minutes late. Are you thinking every late vehicle? Because there are some that are 5 minutes late or 10 minutes late, or is there a threshold that we should be looking at for you? No, I think we are interested in knowing how many buses are late- Yeah ... because that's instructional time that's being lost. Okay. And I certainly do not want to get another delivery from the high school of tardy slips that are given out to students, and they get those with five minutes. Mm-hmm. So it does have an impact, and it is important, and I think we want to know. Thank you. So thank you for clarifying. Any other questions? If I just might comment, there is a component that will be coming with Here Comes the Bus later on, where the district routing will go right to the bus, to a tablet, and you'll be able to see what the buses are doing. Great. Which will be very helpful for this. That was my question, if nobody else asked it, was when is the app coming, and who is responsible for deploying the app? So the app, currently we have been in the tester phase, and it has been working well. What we're working on right now is the communications piece. So we just want to make sure that all of the information of how to sign up, what to do, what it looks like, is going out. So we're working with MarCom to make sure. We're hoping to get that out by the end of the week, if not early next week, but it is still in that phase where we're making sure everything is right for our families before we just put it out there. But we are in the process of that communications piece. We have been working together to see what that looks like to get that out there to families, so that they are fully aware of what's coming and how to sign up. And then that is a Schmitty & Sons app through their, what do you call it, GPS or AVL? You know all those- Yeah. So Here Comes the Bus is the name of the application. They provide the communication that gets sent out directly to families and specific instructions on how to download the app. So we've provided that to the district so that they can include that in the communications pieces that are released. The app is integrated with the student ID, so they enter in their student ID and how the name is entered into Infinite Campus, and then that is how the app is downloaded, and it's synced with our GPS, so the drivers log in from their tablets, and that's how it syncs together. Okay. So this is not an app that you do. So this is a different company called Here Comes the Bus, but it is something that you have used in the past, correct? With other districts. Could you just give me a sense of how long and what's the typical rollout of that that you've seen from prior districts, from other districts? Sure. So we've been using this app for a number of years in a few of our different districts. Once it gets rolled out, really the only problems that our families experience is sometimes they have to restart the app. But really, we don't receive a call volume on the app. I use it myself for my son, and you can set a zone parameter so you can get a notification either by text or email once the vehicle enters your zone proximity that you set, and it's very user-friendly. Like I said, during our roll-outs, I will say our calls are less than a handful typically, and those are usually just a download-related issue that we can help them with. Right. Thank you. And then just one quick follow-up question about that. Is there a mechanism for people who may not be app people that they could call? Will there still be a phone line so that families can call and get in touch if, for some reason, the app isn't working for them, or they haven't downloaded it? Is there some way that they can get in touch? Absolutely. This is not going to replace any of our staff and our communications. Obviously, we provide the communication directly for the app. But we have experience and can help them through that. We can also provide information that we can look up from the district routing software, and if there's any questions on routing, we can obviously assist with that as well. Great. Thank you. Appreciate that. I think just another comment. We find once this starts to roll out, it really becomes organic with families where they parent to parent, and it's almost like All of a sudden everybody's got it with very little attention. Yeah, I can imagine there's a lot of... Well, do you have the app? That's exactly it. Yeah. Thank you. Chair Andresen? Yes. If I may, real quick. So there's no technical block, right? The ID and the name is linked, right? And it's on your infrastructure, so it's nothing. So what's the hold up? Besides MarCom. Is it just Hopkins holding it up? No. We didn't want to replace what we were already working on last year with our app before, with the new school year, without testing it. So we did test it. It has been tested. We're ready. There isn't a hold-up. We've signed up. We know that it's working. All we need now is just to send the information out to families. Let's do that sooner. Sorry, it's probably not my place to say that, but... I think, yeah, doing it as soon as possible would be great. I think it'll take a lot of stress off of all of you to have that app running. So thanks. Any other questions? Chair Andresen? Yes. Director Hyman. Thank you for being here tonight to answer some of our burning questions and questions that have been pending and bubbling up in the community. So my first question is with respect to the app, and the testing. Was the app not ready to go to be tested prior to the school year starting? Could we have not done that? There was some testing prior to the school year, but we are using a new software as well as integrating the software with Schmitty and Sons. So we have to link our Traversa software, which is where the student ID comes from, make sure that our Infinite Campus information is pulling into that correctly, and then we have to integrate that into the Here Comes the Bus through the GPS and things like that. So there's a few components in making sure that our systems are connecting and aligning, and then the final stage was for us to test it ourselves to see how it's working. We even have a couple artificial students that we have in there just to make sure that everything is working like it should, and then we're rolling out. What I worried about, I will say, is putting something out there that isn't operative yet, and families being upset because we're promising an app that isn't working. So at this point, we have tested it. We have worked through the process. We've had a couple things we worked out in the beginning of this week just to make sure that we are aligned, and we should be ready to go as long as we have our communications out there for families. Okay, and that is a good segue into my second question. This app sounds very helpful, and will, I understand, decrease the volume of calls and emails about late buses, but it's my understanding, based on what you're saying, that the app is only as good as the routes are, right? If the routes aren't done right, the app isn't going to fix the routes. So I understand you're going route by route, but I guess my question would be how are you working together to improve the routes? And for Schmitty and Sons, is the routing that we're using in our school district different than what you typically see? And can we lean on you more to help with the routing? I just think the issue is clearly the routing, not the app, right? The app is a great extra, but- Director Hyman, is the question how they can coordinate for routing in order to address whatever number of late buses we still have? The question is how can you coordinate with respect to the routing, and for Schmitty and Sons specifically, is this routing system that our district is utilizing unique in some way that is leading to these routing problems? Is what I want to hear. Thank you. I want to speak and then Schmitty, they can speak to what they've experienced in other districts, but I want to make sure that we're aware, because there's a lot of components into the routing. It isn't just a structure or a route issue due to bad routing. There are different components for different scenarios. It could be our bell times and not having enough time to get to another place. It could be there is a route that has the bus turning down the wrong road, and we need to change that. It could be construction just started today. So I want to make sure that I emphasize that the reason why we're going through route by route is to identify which scenario it is so that we can correct it. If there is a routing issue and a driver says, "You know what? I can't make this turn. Can you change that?" We work together to say, "Okay. We can make that change for you," and put that out there. If there is construction and they cannot go to that stop, we reroute the bus, and we call families and let them know that the bus can no longer go there, but it does change times. If there is no time to get from one school to the other, and even though the system looks like it, traffic just won't allow it, we add time in there. So there's different reasons why, and that's why it's important for us to work together to go through. We can look at it in a system and it looks good, but the drivers are on the road and they see something different. So I'll let Schmitty and Sons answer the second part of your question. Well, to answer your question about our experience with the routing software, we have had experience using Traversa, which is the routing software that's used. I think something that's different is certainly parameters of how it's set up unique for each community. Traffic plays a huge part of that, and timing that's allowed between tiers. I'll give an example today. I know we worked through a route where the route was arriving late to the school, and we went through the GPS, and we could see, okay, bus departed on time, it arrived at the first stop on time, and we go through each stop, and we can see, okay, where did this happen? So the delay happened, this was a route that was coming from Minneapolis to get to the school, and there was a significant delay because of that traffic. So we have to pull that apart and say, "Okay, we're going to reroute it this way," or we're going to build more time in that. And then that information, the district has been working through when there's a change made, how that's communicated to families, and then on our side, how we're getting that information to the drivers so that they can make sure that they can prepare accordingly too. So, it is a collaborative effort. And each route does have different parameters that can affect it. But our team has brought forth, I know some-- We're working together on, okay, let's make this adjustment, or we've created these different terms within the routing software, which has significantly helped how we're processing changes and our ability to do it faster. Which I think hopefully gives some families that sense of we don't need to wait, we want to get this done and we want to get it done now. So, that is occurring. Thank you. Any other? Yes. Yeah. Thanks, Chair Andreassen. Thank you all. I echo the gratitude for being here and just, I have no idea how many hours, but it sounds like a lot of hours have been spent working on this, and I appreciate that you're taking it seriously as well. And I do want to acknowledge a positive, which is an improvement this year over last, which was that we did get out the communication. That's one thing I think that was a positive thing. We were looking for that, and that was a really great start. And my hope is that we can build on that for this next year. And so I think getting some of that data for the late buses, I think what you've shared about the timing for the app and us getting that out as a way of helping communication with parents and guardians and families as quickly as possible. Dr. Thomas, I really appreciate going back even to our last board meeting. What I've told community members, I have deeply respected how you have acknowledged, apologized, and outlined action plans that we as a district and with our partners have been taking to ensure that we're safe, reliable, and timely. And I think for me then, the question that I'm not asking you to respond to tonight, but just as we look forward, I think as a board member and community member, as we look to next year and the evolving partnership and our internal work that we're doing, how does this not happen again? Mm-hmm. I do think that families understand that there's some level of issue. I can acknowledge that I have no idea the level of complexity, but it sounds really complex. And within that, what can we do so that we aren't in this situation and we can build in as much of this as possible for next year? And that's something in a longer term would love to just have updates as we're working on this over the next year, so that it's maybe there's a smattering, but we're in a really different place even first week next year. So, thank you. Thanks for being here and really appreciate it. Appreciate that. Any other questions or feedback? Chair Andreassen? Yes, Director Hyman. One more very quick question. How does the transportation department, if at all, work with the cities and counties with respect to construction schedules? Mm-hmm. Are we getting notices in advance that there's construction so we can preemptively, temporarily change the route timings or the route itself? And if we're not getting those, how can we establish that relationship and partnership so that we are getting those in advance? Mm-hmm. Because the construction projects don't just- Yeah ... appear. Thank you. Mm-hmm. We work with the cities and the counties, and we do receive the information. We reroute around construction to the best of our ability. There are some where there's a stop that we weren't aware of, and we also work across a lot of our cities, and so it does get to be a lot of there's construction here and it says it's going to clear up today. We don't want to change the route yet because we know that it could potentially last longer. It depends, but we do work with the cities. For those, part of what we try to do with the construction on the first, I would say, week of school in front of Cedar Lake Road, is we try to at least let our families know there was no way around it, but what we can do is try to tell our families ahead of time and try to let our third tiers know that there's no way around it. We would absolutely not be able to reroute every single bus for the first couple days of school. And since construction wasn't complete yet on the day that we thought it would, and the lights weren't working yet, we did want to make sure that our families were aware. That was what steps we took ahead of time. But we did reroute our buses through a lot of construction, and if we missed anything, sometimes drivers go and see their dry runs, or they drive their route and there's something there that wasn't there at first, and we go ahead and reroute off of that. What we can do is do better with working closer with our cities. We have a lot of cities across our Hopkins district, which is a little different from others, but we can just make sure we're working a little bit closer. I do have one on my team that works with the city already, but we can see if there's a place that we can do something better when it comes to knowing about a little bit more of our construction and then see how that works out for us and see if there's a better way to get on top of some of them. Part of the hard part is after we send routes out, sending them again after we're going through construction again. So, there's different struggles. There's things we can correct, but there's other pieces that we kind of get into the phase where we have to communicate more and let them know that we're working through it and try to make those the very first things that we change. Thank you. Mm-hmm. Any? Yes. Yeah, Chair Treasure Hartland. Thank you for being here. Related to communication, I have heard from a couple families that their times do change, and that, I think, is fairly expected and even accepted by family members. But I've heard that they don't get a notification and have to go and check with their own eyes and remembering to do so. Will our app or another system be sure to tell families that there's been a change so we can adapt? Yes. So we have a process now in place that is a little more cumbersome than we would like, where I'm looking into a couple different things with IT to see if there's a better way to notify our families, and faster. Right now, we do send out the weekly changes to families, and if anyone is missed, I would like to identify who that is and why, because they should be on our list to receive it. Sometimes it goes into spam, sometimes they're not on a list, and we need to figure out why and what exactly happened in that. I don't know for sure if the app has that ability. We talked through that, and I'm not sure that that has the ability to send that message out to families. But there are a couple things through our system that we already use that I'm looking into seeing if there's a better way for our families to get that notification. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that, and think, again, don't know if this is totally my place, but then a mass communication of that- Yes ... on our principals' letters that say, "Hey families, we did add this. If you didn't get it this Friday, please let us know." Yes. That kind of thing. I see. That'd be helpful. Yes. Director Hartland, if I may just share that we do have a communication ready. As a result, we were wanting to make sure that we had this conversation as an update to the board, but there will be something that will be sent to principals that we can then take a look and modify for the broader community. Thank you. And just a quick historical note, and not saying that you have to answer this question at all. But I know in the past, from personal experience, but also from talking with other community members, that there has been an issue with identifying the point of contact for family members, where somehow over the summer it gets reduced to just one parent, and usually not necessarily the primary parent. And so I know when students have dual households or things like that, that then someone can be missed. Mm-hmm. And so just making sure that that issue is being addressed when we're talking about sending out communications. Yes. We send it through the same way that the schools send it. So we just select the student, and who's in there should receive the information. Yeah, I think it's district-wide. So just making sure that we're- Yes ... aware that that's an issue. Yes. And I haven't been able to track down why it happens, and now I don't have to deal with it anymore because I don't have a kid, so. But just an awareness would be good, because that might be where some of the indications of parents not getting notification is coming from. Any other questions on this very hot topic? Well, I want to, again, express my gratitude. I also know that this is not as simple as just drawing a squiggly line on a map and kids get to school on time. So thank you for being here. And I also want to reiterate that not only does our superintendent and the people here presenting feel that this is a responsibility that we are accountable for. I speak for myself, but I hope the entire board, that we also feel responsible and will be held accountable for this happening and improving, and making sure that kids get to school on time and they get there safely. So thank you so much. We are also partners in this with you, and I hope that the tone and tenor of our questions did not communicate otherwise. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Great questions. Thank you. Is that all, Dr. Thomas? That is all, Chair. Did anyone have any questions for Dr. Thomas on any of his other updates? I just want to quickly say, again, congratulations on your cohort and two years of learning. And that there is also a video from MSBA about information on the permanent school fund that we can hopefully share out. And just quickly, I want to say, because I am in the schools, I have been delighted all week seeing the preschoolers in the building, holding onto their rings so that they're walking in their line. It's like the cutest thing ever. So anyway, thanks for calling that out. It's wonderful to have them be a part of our buildings. So with that, I would look for an approval of tonight's agenda. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and tonight's agenda is approved. And that takes us to the consent calendar. The purpose of these items is to provide the board with information considered to be more routine in nature. If the board deems an item to be necessary for additional discussion, a motion will be made to move the item to new business. We are going to remove items D and E, the 2026-27 school board goals and superintendent goals from the consent calendar tonight. If you are interested in why, you can watch our workshop that we held prior, where we felt like for the school board goals, we needed more work, and we're getting an assist from administration. And also want the board to be able to provide any feedback to the superintendent goals, since it is a new framework that we will be working under. So with that, I would look for a motion to approve tonight's consent calendar, less those two items. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and the consent calendar is approved. And that-- Do we have a treasurer's report this time? No. We will next meeting. And then- Last month ... thank you. And then that takes us to new business. So our policy's in first read. I will invite Assistant Superintendent Nick Lightfoot up to the table and turn it over to Vice Chair Roper. Okay. Just one second. I just lost my screen. All right. Thank you everyone for being here with us tonight. We are going to go over the policies that we have discussed in our policy committee. I would just like to start with a quick and brief update about weighted grades. And so we did receive a proposal from the high school, where Dr. Palmer and her administration did come up with some points in the proposal that we reviewed as a policy committee and decided that we just need just a little additional time to really propose a policy that works. And so we are still in a process of working on it. And so we are prepared to discuss that in more context at our September 29th meeting. And so just wanted to make that clear to the community that we are in the process of working on unweighted grades. And so if there are any questions, please reach out to the policy committee. We want to just make sure that we are being very transparent about the process. I know folks are anticipating what the policy will be. So just want to be clear that we are currently working on it. And I know Clerk VG had something to mention. Oh, yes. Vice Chair Roper? Mm-hmm. Yeah, thank you. So just to be clear, because I did receive a few communication messages from folks today, that there seems to be a community belief that there already is a weighted grade policy that has been implemented. So just to echo what you've said, that is not the case. Mm. How the monitoring committee works is exactly what you named. We will be coming with something. Then we have first read. Everyone at the board table has the opportunity to weigh in. We'll have an opportunity for the community to also then be able-- Well, they can send feedback, right? Mm-hmm. The community can- Yep ... comment or yeah, thank you, yes. I'm not saying that you can attend any of the superintendent's listening sessions, which I would highly encourage you to do so for any of that. So I just want to echo what you named and be very clear that there's nothing that has been implemented. Yes. Thank you so much. And yes, and to our community, just to let you know that we are working on it. So, we will bring that forth at our September 29th meeting. And if you do have any clarifying questions about what you are hearing or what you are not hearing, please reach out to us so then we're able to respond to you with accurate information, so we don't have misinformation out in the community. Because we are working on it. And so I want to just really thank Manuel, our school board rep. I know he's not here tonight, but he has been in our meetings and really helping us shape what that looks like. And so that's what I'm just so proud of the work that he is doing to advocate around this. So thank you, Manuel, if you are watching and listening. And can I just be a little bit geeky? Yes. We actually do have a weighted grades policy, and it is in effect. It was voted on last spring, so that I hope is being implemented at the high school, where it is applicable. However, we will be bringing a revision to the- Mm-hmm ... weighted grades policy on the 29th. So just- Mm-hmm ... yeah. Thank you. Little- Thank you, Chair Anderson ... geeky clarification there. And thank you, Chair Anderson. And yes, and for a further quick clarification, we are looking to adopt this policy so we can start weighting grades this quarter. So that's what we are looking to do. So just wanted to make that clear as well, that is our goal, so. So furthermore, we have a few policies tonight that we went through during our policy committee. Again, our policy committee, we meet every other Monday, and we go over our policies in the district that need to be revised. And one of the policies that we have looked at was the... Just one second. So it was the Policy 423, the Employee Student Relationships Policy, and I will turn it over to Dr. Lightfoot to further elaborate. Good evening. Good to be with you. Part of the work that we do is we go through, as we start with the Monitoring Committee, look for those policies that may be new, that MSBA has put together due to some work that has happened at the state legislature. One of those is in front of you, with 423. Anti-grooming legislation did go into effect, and part of that is also included in the model MSBA Policy 423. So what you have in front of you this evening is Hopkins' adoption of the model Policy 423, put into the Hopkins framework structure. And with that, the committee is recommending that the board adopt 423 in its entirety, as it was outlined, so that we are compliant with statute and are able to reflect that for the community, and have this be forward front-facing. So with that, if there are additional questions, happy to address those for 423. So for the board's information, I don't know if there are other members of the Monitoring Committee that want to weigh in. This is largely statute-driven. However, I think it is a really important policy to have in place. The Monitoring Committee did review it, and with particular attention to making sure that our most vulnerable students are protected. And so just sharing some additional context. And Chair Andreassen, as a member of the Monitoring Committee, who can speak accurately with words sometimes, I just want to acknowledge, and I think I may have said this before, a thanks to all the legislators who are clearly watching our school board meeting. But just to give a shout-out either to our legislators for this statute. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. All right. In addition, we did take a look at Policy 505. Policy 505, we are not recommending changes. That is the distribution of materials, non-curricular materials on school property by students and employees. We took a look at this as the beginning of the school year, as you've already identified. Comes with it the principal notifications, the electronic backpacks, all the information that we get to make sure that we pass along to families, and make sure that we keep people updated with additional sets of information that may be important for them to know and of interest to them. So with that, Policy 505, we did another review of that. You will see there are no recommended changes from MSBA. And it really is part of that annual review and cycle as we take a look at 505. So with that, if there are particular questions, I'm happy to address those. Otherwise, we would recommend the adoption of 505 with no change. I don't see any. I just wanted to make a quick note that this was adopted in 1974. Mm-hmm. Just to... Yeah. Very long overdue. Well, we've been reviewing it, but yeah. I just think that's just something that's been important for a very long time. Anyway. Mm-hmm. And with that, that concludes the two that we have for the board this evening. Wonderful. Thank you. I would then look for a motion that the board approves the above policies in first read. Further, the board directs the administration to prepare the policies with any suggested revisions for approval in second reading at the next meeting as part of consent. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye and policies have been approved. Thank you so much. Thank you. And that takes us to our board member reports. I made a note of who I started with. So Treasurer Hartland, would you like to go first this evening? Sure. Good evening. I am Rachel Hartland, currently serving as the treasurer. It is my fifth year on the board, and I have children in seventh, ninth, and eleventh grades, and I feel like I have hardly seen them since school started. The district provides so very many opportunities, and my children are doing all of them. And it's a good reminder that our buildings are actually busy from, you know Before 7:00 in the morning until 9:00 or 10:00 at night, I routinely see parents doing pickups. I see teachers and coaches in the building really late, assisting kids in growing and achieving all of the things that they want to do and need to do as they prepare to be citizens of the world. And so this is not like an 8:00 to 4:00 kind of operation that we're running, and so I'm really grateful to all of the professionals that give so very much of their time. I personally have had kind of a front row seat into band and orchestra getting up into full swing, and robotics, both at the middle and high school level, and also the cross country and swim and dive teams. And so there have been enormous amounts of time and talent and love given by these professionals into developing our students. And I am also truly grateful for the families that drive their students to all over the West Metro and beyond in order to get to these things. Additionally, I have been at a variety of back-to-school and orientation type events. I have had teachers already reaching out to say how the first couple weeks have gone and asking parents to partner, and so that is a place that I am really glad our teachers feel like they can and should ask for our partnership. The Legislative Action Coalition is beginning its work, and its work in this fall time before the legislative session begins in January or February, is to understand education issues that are facing our state and our students today, raise some awareness of those, discuss what is the group's top priorities to help advocate for and support, either on our own or in conjunction with other organizations already doing that important work. So that is a big lift. And let's see. I think I'll probably stop my rambling there, but it's a busy time. Thank you for everyone who's watching tonight, or even if you watch this at 2X speed tomorrow, your investment in trying to pay attention to what is happening at the district and why we make the decisions that we make is really valuable. Thank you. Do you want to say hi? Oh, I did mine before. Okay. Oh, sorry. I didn't realize. Usually you can- Hi. Dr. Michael Thomas. I'll just echo, it's been a great start of the school year, and one thing I'll just add is I've really enjoyed the opportunity to go out and do voluntary standup meetings at our schools. It's a way for me to build relationship with our teachers and our paras and every other staff who voluntarily comes after contract hours. And I'll tell you, it's packed. Media centers are packed, and they're wanting to lean in and ask some really pointed questions, as well as reminding me of what we can celebrate. And also want to thank a couple of PTOs that I've been speaking with. I'm doing PTO rounds as well, so if I'm not on your schedule, I'm coming to your meeting. It's on. And again, just wanting to make sure that I remind folks to take a look at the listening and learning calendar. There are various events throughout the communities, and I would love to have you out there and have your voice in that conversation. Thank you. Hi, everybody. My name is Shannon Andresen. I am currently the chair of the board, and also this is my seventh year on the board. And I also work as a paraprofessional at Gatewood Elementary and have a recent high school grad. So my board update is a lot of community things that are happening. I wanted to give a shout-out to a really big and important fundraiser for the Hopkins Education Foundation, the Rockin' Royal, which is happening on September 26th, which is a Saturday. It goes from 5:00 to 10:00 in the downtown park at Hopkins. It is a fun way for adults, it is a 21+ event, to gather from across the district and help raise money for our Spark Grants, which fund teachers' innovative ideas and classroom projects. So HEF is a great partner. They really are an engine for ingenuity here in Hopkins, and we are so lucky to have a community that supports them so that they can support us in the work that we do in classrooms. The new superintendent and high school principal will be there, and we'll have a meet and greet by the HEF table from 6:00 to 7:00 PM. So if you want to get another opportunity to hang out with Dr. Thomas, that is one of them. Also, there's live music, there's the ever-popular cornhole tournaments, and there is a childcare option that I believe is new this year. It's called Date Night Drop-Off with Mess Hall Arts, so something fun for the kids to do. Also, Resource West, the Winter Wear Drive just went live. You can get an appointment to show up at Resource West and shop for winter gear that you need. They are live today. You go to the Resource West website, and you can set up a time starting in October all the way through March. So the clothes are available throughout the winter months. We are also accepting donations, also gently used, which is new or newly purchased, or you can give gift cards so that the organization can purchase what they need and what families are requesting. And also, I just want to make sure that all the leaders at our schools know that schools can put in requests so that you have winter warm gear available for students who show up without what they need to be outside and have a lot of fun in the Minnesota winter. The Stages Theater opens a new show on September 16th called "Bowwow Powwow" by Brenda J. Child, and I believe that our American Indian education groups are going on field trips to see this. It's a really powerful and important production. Mm. I attended District 287. There was a lot of great updates about the first days of school and coming back, and we rounded out finishing up all of our policy work for the year, which felt really good. There are lots of new legislatively driven ones. And then, a big announcement that we just found out today, Treasurer Hartland also was part of that, is we have a new hire at the Legislative Action Coalition, the LAC. As some of you may know, Catherine, our long-serving liaison who basically herded all the cats and got us all where we needed to be, and people coming to us at appropriate times, retired. And we have somebody who we are really excited to announce will be taking her place, and incredibly grateful for all those who interviewed and put in applications for this position. And Beth Dierker will be starting right away, hopefully, because we've got some things coming down the pike at the LAC that we need a captain in charge of. So I'm excited about that. And with that, I will pass it on to Vice Chair Roper. Hello, everyone. My name is Brooke Roper. I have been serving on the school board for going into my fourth year. I have two incredible children in the district. Just a few brief announcements. First and foremost, I want to just say happy 2026 Minnesota School Board Recognition Month by MSBA. So- We get a whole month? Oh. Yes, we do. We don't need a whole month. We do need a whole month. Whole month. We actually need a whole year, okay? Yeah. Like, let's just start there. Month is too long. Because school board work is really big work, and I appreciate working with all of you, my Hopkins colleagues, because as imperfect as we are, we continue to make- Why were you looking at me? Well, I'm not looking at you. Looking at everyone. We continue to advance the district, and I think that all of you are incredible colleagues. I enjoy connecting with each of you, and just want to say thank you for your service to the board and to our students. And I believe that school boards are magical, and we do a lot of hard work, but the reward is being able to see the student outcomes from result of the services that we provide to the board. So I would like to say happy School Board Recognition Month, September. It's that from MSBA. Awesome. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And Kai is not here, so I just want to also recognize him too as an awesome colleague as well. And I would say that I had the opportunity to attend Open Streets West Broadway last week. It was an incredible event. I try my best to make it out to events across the city, especially where some of our students are from. I know that we have a lot of students who come over from North Minneapolis, and so just being able to be in their neighborhoods and just to be in the community, especially because I am from North Minneapolis, it felt really good just connecting with different leaders and organizations and seeing all the thriving businesses that was a part of the event. And just all of the kid entrepreneurs, and there's kids out there reading to each other, and it was just amazing. And so was very excited for that event. I did attend the LAC meeting last week that happened on the 11th, and so I'm excited for Beth to take over and to work within her leadership, so that's going to be awesome. And I do plan to attend the superintendent listening tour this Thursday that will be at the Minnetonka Community Center, or Minnetonka. We'll be in Minnetonka this Thursday. And so looking forward to connecting with community there. And then also, I will say that I will be going to the Heading Home Hennepin meeting that is coming up on the 24th. I am one of the representatives that represents the Hopkins on the Heading Home Hennepin executive committee. And so just looking forward to what they are brainstorming around unhoused youth and just all the things having to do with housing. I know that we do have some good stable home, stable housing ... programs out there that is continuously being utilized by some of our students and also just our community. And then also we'll be at the Hopkins Rockin' Royal. I've been volunteering and being a part of that event for five years now, even before I've been on the school board, so I'm just excited about that event. One year it rained, and we were all still out there rocking and rolling. So, it was fun, and I love that we just continue to do what we do despite the weather. And lastly, I will be attending the Xing Xing Academy's Autumn Festival that is going to be on the 27th. It's going to be in Golden Valley Park, I believe. Well, let me get the address. But it's going to be coming up- Wolf Park ... Wolf Park. Yeah. Thank you. St. Louis Park. Sorry, not Golden Valley. Wolf Park. And so I'm looking forward to just being a part of the event. I love and have a special place in my heart for Xing Xing Academy, and so just looking forward to that day and just being in the presence of community. So, that's all I have for today. Thank you. Hi, this is Zhiming Zhao. I have two kids in the district, in sixth grade, middle school, at West, and in Xing Xing on third grade. So, I'll also be at the HEF and also at the Autumn Festival. So, you get a two for one . So come say hi. I'll probably make some balloon animals. We'll see. Okay. As is my tradition. But yeah. So we are just experiencing this new school year along with everybody else. Most everybody on the board has a child in the district, so we're all in here with you. So that's all I had for my report. Good evening. My name is Johanna Hyman, and this is my first year on the board. I have two children in the school district. Both are at Meadowbrook. One is a first grader and one is a fourth grader, and that fourth grader is actually really enjoying doing his homework every night. Hmm. It's really shocking- Hmm ... that it actually gives some structure to coming home from school, having a snack, and having something to do that's not on a screen. So we're really enjoying that change of pace and the academic rigor as he moves up through elementary school. Mm-hmm. I want to mention that the 2026 Meadowbrook Carnival will be Saturday, September 26th, from 3:00 to 6:00 PM. That is right before the HEF event, the Rockin' Royal. So you can go straight from the fun carnival straight to the Rockin' Royal. This is one of the largest fundraisers that Meadowbrook PTO puts on. It's to fund a variety of PTO programs and to fund field trips and other costs that the PTO covers throughout the year. They still need over 100 volunteers to make sure the carnival goes off without a hitch. So if you are interested in volunteering, you can sign up with the Meadowbrook PTO on their Meadowbrook PTO website. Also wanted to remind everyone in the community that picture days are happening. I always forget about picture day and then have to send my kids to retakes. So be sure to check your school's schedule for picture day. ESAC meetings have been set for the upcoming year. That is the Educational Services Advisory Committee. It is a collaborative group that advises and supports the Hopkins School District's Innovation Design and Learning team in its continuous improvement efforts. Members provide an important caregiver and community perspective as we review current practices, explore areas for improvement, and develop recommendations. This fall's meeting will be about instructional technology use and will provide caregivers an opportunity to share perspectives and feedback on the role of technology use in teaching and learning, including the use of AI in classrooms. The meeting dates for your calendar are October 5th from 6:00 to 7:30, November 16th from 6:00 to 7:30, March 8th, 6:00 to 7:30, and April 19th, 6:00 to 7:30. If you're interested in participating, you can contact Anne Ertel and Andrew Whitworth, and they will make sure you get on a list and get invited. I've gotten emails from community members about Kids & Co, and there's still wait lists. So if you have any interest in working with children or know someone who's passionate about working with children and is looking to make a difference in our school community and support our families, please apply or pass along the information to someone who you may think is interested in applying. And finally, I want to wish a happy and sweet Rosh Hashanah to everyone in our Hopkins community who celebrates. The time between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur is a time for reflection, thinking about the year behind us and how we want the year ahead to be different. And I think that's a valuable exercise for all of us, whether you celebrate or not. So I invite everyone in our community to take a little time to reflect, reset, and think about the year we want to create together that's in front of us. Everyone is welcome and belongs in Hopkins. And just a reminder, there's no school next Monday, September 21st, in observance of Yom Kippur That concludes my board report. Thank you. Thank you. I'm Dr. Sarah Wilhelm-Garber, she/they. I serve as clerk in my first year here on the board. And in addition to having a wonderful dog, we have a human that we are raising named Josie, who is a new pre-K student, which has been delightful and connects with one of my school assignments for the year, which is Harley Hopkins Family Center, where both there is early childhood education and early child and family education, and all sorts of other beautiful community efforts. And I was able to be there for the first day of the youngest humans in our district start of preschool. And it was a delight to be able to, man, I feel emotional just to observe all the educators in the building, from social workers to the in-house food service director staff to Sarah Chauvin, who's the assistant director and leads the team there. It was a beautiful time. And so just thank you to all of our educators for the amazing kickoffs in all the ways, and it was lovely to see that. As you heard, we have been meeting as a monitoring committee. We've moved those meetings to every other Monday afternoon. I'm grateful for that, and you'll continue to hear more from us over the weeks and months ahead throughout the year. In terms of just some ways to have been able to be present and connect in the community, my spouse and I were able to attend the Team Tucker Family Foundation fundraiser, raising funds for families with kids who are living with cancer. And right as of the last posting I'm aware of, collectively, we raised $292,550, helped them reach their $300,000 goal. And I just want to say between that and Resource West and HEF, with everything that's been named, I will also be at the HEF table to do check-in in the earliest shift. So I'm very much looking forward to that. I've been really moved by how many organizations and businesses come alongside of our nonprofits to support our schools. And so just want to give a shout-out, pay attention to who those sponsors are, because that's a big deal. It's not easy for these local businesses to do that. And so just major respect to our businesses who consider doing that and the ones who do that and continue to show up to support our schools and our students and our community. It truly does take all of us to do that. I will also be at the Jing Jing Festival that has been named already, and looking forward to that. I will not be making balloon animals, however, which will be better for everyone. I could teach you. Thank you. I appreciate the offer- ... Director Zhao. I will trust it to your hands. Then I will also be at a few of the listening and learning tour stops, and I'm looking forward to those later in October. Also echo in this time of the Jewish high holiday season, Rosh Hashanah, and a Happy New Year, and may indeed we reflect. Thank you for that invitation. I'm grateful to serve as a board member, so thank you, Vice Chair Roper, for giving the shout-out in this board appreciation month. I feel appreciated, so thank you. And I also wanted to note that today kicks off the National Hispanic Heritage Month, and the theme for this year is Unidos Somos Mas, Together We Are More. And I invite any in our community to join our neighbors in Hopkins, which is where my family lives, on Sunday, September 20th, which is this upcoming Sunday somehow, from 2:00 to 6:00 PM in the downtown Hopkins Park for the Latinos cultural celebration that will be held there. I wanted to close by taking up the invitation that you, Superintendent, have issued to us to believe it and achieve it by naming that I believe that you can say so. I will say this as a person who's a community member and elected school board member, I believe that we can achieve a permanent school fund. And so that's my believe and achieve that I'm claiming for myself, and I hope that we continue to believe and achieve together. So thanks for that invitation, and with that, I'll conclude my report. Oh, yeah. Can I say one more thing real quick? I would just like to say I appreciate you both for always bringing up... I appreciate the diversity on the board of just thought, because bringing up the holidays is really important and I don't always pay attention, so thank you all for bringing it forth. And then I just realized as it is super, excuse me, school board appreciation month, we need a new picture with our new superintendent as a school board. We do. So we should arrange that. True that, Marcon. Yes. We'll put that on our to-do list- Oh, sure ... for the next meeting. Yes. Good call-out. I wouldn't have even thought of it. So that concludes our board member reports, and with that, I would look for a motion to adjourn. So moved. I have a motion. Is there a second? Second. I have a motion and a second. Any discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Aye. Any opposed? The chair votes aye. And this meeting of the Hopkins School Board is adjourned at 8:39 PM. Thank you all. Appreciate you being here tonight.