Okay. Monday, April 7th, and I call to order this regular meeting of the Richfield School Board. Attending this meeting live and in the boardroom are director Tim Pollus I guess I name him director Rachel B Cupjo director Ken Lis director Kirk Spencer director Paul Cole and I and board chair Eric Carter we're joined here by student representatives all of them are in attendance tonight Cassini Lopez Vanessa Rosa Miguel and we're missing out there student so I will skip her tonight also at the table is superintendent And we have assistant superintendent Cassandra Qua. Other members of the district leadership singular are in attendance. I don't be participating through the meeting as well. I'm assuming we'll have other ones showing up to join us because it's going to be a big party. Uh Richville Public Schools mission statement is that we strive to inspire and empower each individual to learn, grow, and excel. And we will keep that focus at the center of our discussions this evening. Thank you all for joining here live and in the boardroom. We want to thank those of you streaming the meeting or watching it after the fact via YouTube. We appreciate when people bear witness to our meetings where we conduct the necessary official business of our district. Our first item of business tonight will be the approval of the agenda. As approval of the agenda is a routine business item, I'll briefly pause to see if there are any comments or questions related to the agenda. Hearing none, seeing none, is anybody prepared to move the agenda as presented? So moved. Wow. Second. That well played. I think uh Director Cole, you win anyways because I was looking at you. Director Spencer, you get the second. Good job. We have a motion. All in favor, please say I. I. I. All post. And the chair votes I. We have an approved agenda. We now move on to information proposals and action items section of the agenda. Um before we move on this evening, since this is not uh public speaking night, our next opportunity for public uh comment will be Monday, April 21st uh at 7 p.m. You can see the agenda online on the Richfield Public School site. Now over to Superintendent Udki for our first update. Yes, two items on the superintendent report. The second one will be our survey results. Um, but before then we are going to turn things over to Super Principal Statchel and her ML teachers and Rumble and Lorie Voit to talk about the spectacular things happening at Sheran Hills. Take it away, Principal Statchel. Thank you. Okay, thank you very much. Pleasure to be here tonight and to be joined by Annne Rumble and Lorie Vote, um, our MLL teachers. Uh Uni Sears, our outreach worker was going to be here as well, but she could not make it. Um and happy to just talk to you about how we serve our MLL students at Sheridan Hills. Want to share some data just about how we do it and share some data with you. Um and one of the big things as we get going and then I'm going to turn over to them is I think one of the things we do really well is we just have such a wraparound approach and we are always looking for ways to support. Um, and it's things like we have our Somali outreach worker for the district is at Sheridan one afternoon per week as a way to help to connect with our students. Um, I think about observing in classrooms and having teachers have their phones out with a translator app as they're trying to teach a math lesson to kids with some of our um, newer language learners at the carpet with that teacher. Um, so those are some of the just quick things and we'll talk about more about how we do that wraparound, but we want to start out by just telling you about who are our students and how we first engage them. Uh, we have approximately 93 ML students in our program right now. 14 of those students are newcomers, meaning brand new to the country this year or were brand new at some point um during last school year. And when we counted recently, we counted 20 different languages represented in our MLL population. And if you look outside of our MLL students, uh so students who either didn't qualify for our program or are no longer in our program, it was more like 24 or 25 different languages and a new one starting Wednesday. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yes. And these are um just some of the pictures. One thing that we do is that we have um groups and we get them together and you can see the smelly outreach worker facilitated one and we um have those be for school once a year and the students um come and they bring anything from home that they like to share from their culture and we talk a little bit about their culture and they share you know words in their language and foods they like and just anything that if they visited their country born there. So we have um on the first page is um groups from South America and then Somalia and um just our fifth grade girls from Mexico and Puerto Rico and then um another age level there of um people from Mexico and we have you say probably you know 15 different groups. So the kids look forward to it and really enjoy it and so do the parents. It's a fun way to get everybody connected to start out the year and um you'll watch kids stop by and point at the pictures when they see each other and recognize each other. And that's just a few of the pictures that are up. So the next thing just to share a little bit of data with you and the data I pulled is from the Minnesota report card. So it's the Northstar report and it's specifically looking at access data. And so what happens when our MLL students take the access test is that they are given a score, a growth score that they should reach the following year. Um, and so this is the average progress toward target. And so the state average is about 47% and it shared in our average is closer to 77% this last year almost um 78%. So in terms of just those students progressing towards growth on a measure that actually measures how their language development is happening. And then the next chart actually shows the percent who met target. And once again the state average is about 28% and Sheridan average is about 51% on that. So feeling pretty good about how we're doing in terms of students making growth on the access test. Now, of course, that said, as I bring up that data, I also share that when you look at the MCA or you look at FastBridge where you're looking at achievement, grade level achievement, we continue to have a persistent gap with our Hispanic students between our Hispanic and our white students. Um, and and all kinds of people would give you different reasons for why that is, but in terms of looking at what's the test that is actually designed to measure our MLL students language growth, we do pretty well on that one. Um, and some of that, if you want to go to the next slide, we've got a consistent schoolwide approach to language de development that goes beyond our MLL teachers. Um, several years ago when I had gotten to Sheridan, it was a push-in model. And with a push-in model, when you have three classes at every grade level and only two ML students, it's extremely difficult to meet the specific needs of each kid. Um, and so a lot of the push-in model ended up being focused on helping work completion of the core curriculum. And what we switched to was more of a pullout model where we pull students across the grade level and Ann and Lori focus their instruction on what the WEDA rubric says that the students need. We really focus on the output, speaking, listening, writing, um, reading of course, but the other things that we do, um, we've had several PD sessions over several years. We don't change it up every time. We keep going deeper with the same things. Um, so the elevation program and the strategies that we've done, we've had Monica Pinto Mo come out and do professional development for us. And then we've had follow-up professional development and staff meetings where Ann and Lori um are meeting with teachers and serving as resources talking about how is it going implementing those strategies and what are the lessons learned. Um, we make sure that we have consistency across the building in terms of instructional supports like sentence stems and visuals. Um, again, we're aligned with the core instruction, but focused on the Weedert standards. So, let's say third grade is working on non-fiction writing orformational text, they will be working onformational text as well, but within what's the specific with the WEDA rubric and those standards and what needs to be addressed. And then we design our support to really meet the student needs. And that's everything from class placement. So, we just had two new students come to us from Afghanistan. Um, PashTO is a hard language to find, right? And so, we were lucky enough that they happened to be in the same grade level as two other students that we already had. So, we made sure that we placed those students in the same classrooms for support. um our outreach worker if she was here she collaborates with Ann and Lori and she'll do small group work as well with students again helping to just further the work that Ann and Lori are doing with the students and then that helps in terms of communicating with parents what is happening as well and then we have a master schedule that supports effective instructional practices so we have that wind time where teachers pull the students across the grade level and so the other thing within that schedule. We build in some flex time for them so they're able to meet the needs of our newcomer students and also our center-based program students because we have special education students in our centerbased program that also are ELLL or MLL students. So they're able to do that by the way we've designed our master schedule and then of course it goes beyond academics and I'll let these guys jump in and talk about some of the other things that we do. Sure. Uh we like to start the year with some sort of cultural connection for students celebrating their countries and their flags. This year students decorated a hand uh with a flag from the country or countries that were special to them and then wrote the languages that they can speak on their hands as well as their their names. And those are on display in our classroom. That's a picture of our classroom. Well, both of those are our classroom intervention ELLL space. And as new students move in, they make their flags and they become part of our display. And students are really proud even now in April, they will find their flag, their hand and have to look at it before we start groups. Yes. And also we try and um just encourage them to really feel good about their cultures and I think that helps them, you know, be better learners across the curriculum. And some ways that we do that are um we encourage literacy in their um L1 in their first language and we have a book check out and Miss Garca would talk about that if she were here, but she makes them do a book report and she has a lot of books that you got a grant from, right? Or use money. And then we have a little one in our room too. So we send books home in Spanish and we have some books like in Russian and Pashto and um just a couple other areas. We have a lunch bunch too where the fifth graders come during their lunch once a week and there we also practice reading and writing and some cultural games and it's myself and Miss Garca who runs it. That's for the Spanish speakers. Then there's also an afterchool Spanish class where um it's fourth and fifth graders that work on um again Spanish literacy and cultural areas. So, and I think part of that Spanish language class, too, is to help our students um test even though we're not the dual language program, but to help help our Spanish speaking students um qualify so that they can go into the middle school in the dual language um program. And so, we've had success with that with students testing and being able to go into the dual language program in the middle school. In the book checkout program, we really we have books from a variety of languages and really work to try to again that homeschool connection with the parents and reading with their students. We also just recently added um a bunch of games, some in English, some in Spanish, you know, again to that kids can check out to practice their language skills at home with family and and the the you know, writing the languages they speak on their hands. I think one of the important things for that is just to celebrate. I mean, my gosh, some of these kids speak three or four languages and we should be telling them how proud they should be of that and celebrating that um rather than just pushing you have to learn to speak English. So, really celebrating the skills that they bring to the table and hoping that they feel proud of that um and helping them to see that and celebrate that. We have one more slide with a few more pictures. Go ahead. Oh, I was gonna say research also shows if you have a strong first language, then your second language or subsequent languages are stronger as well. So, we try and work on that. And the first picture is um the Spanish lunch bunch. They're eating lunch there and practicing. And the second one is some of the book checkout that we do. Uh the third little guy in the corner, that is our display of photos from all of the different language and culture groups that we hold at the beginning of the year. And those photos are up outside of our classroom. And he finds himself and his brother every time before we can start our groups. That is our our little ritual. And there are many students that we notice outside of our door both within the MLL program and students who are not and finding themselves or finding their friends. Um we've had students come tell us that they have another language at home and they're proud of it and we take their picture and we add them to our display. So it really has become a a really fun way to celebrate language and culture. Parents too stop by. Yeah. Yeah. And then we have little friends finding their flags there and their c their special countries. Any questions? Thank you for the update. Always great to hear schools coming in and sharing what you guys do. Open up to the floor. Thank you. I have a couple questions. I want to say that uh the the culturally responsive approach uh I I think is very positive. I think it's it's very hard to come from a different country and then join a school that's very different to your own. And so definitely those uh connections with home uh definitely make the the environment for learning safer and and also fun. Uh my question uh when you do when you do the when the the pull out model what is the uh approach to which classes are there not participating from the main curriculum and what kind of collaboration if any is there between the teachers the home room teachers and the MLL teachers uh because keeping up with the grade level content is so important as well. So I'm curious to know like how that that chess arrangement works at Cheran. It is it's a it's called win time. So, it's actually they're not missing any of the core curriculum because it's the time we set aside for our MLL teachers to pull, our intervention teachers to pull, our talent development, and I'll let you guys talk about how you collaborate with the teachers on content. Sure. We have um Tuesday morning collaboration meetings. So, we know that all of our grade level teachers meet are meeting before school starts on Tuesday mornings. Um because Lori and I both work with K through five, we've split it up. So, I check in with the K through two teachers and Lori checks in with the third through fifth grade teachers and that way we're able to touch base on students, touch base on what's happening with curriculum and it's worked out pretty well. We found it was really difficult to try to meet like when you have three classes. You know, we're able to pull group kids on two different levels and to really then be better in meeting their needs. Um versus if one teacher goes into a class and has kids from a wide range, it's harder to serve. We noticed a a big jump in terms of the number of kids we were exiting from ELLL when we switched to that model. I think pull out can work. Um my my philosophy is it good for kids? Uh there's always something that even when I was a teacher here, I didn't understand like what took so long uh to learn and and then thinking well when I learned the English between the ages of 16 and 18 that's I went to a school four hours a week to do that. I didn't have to worry about content and I was already a a a high school graduate. So the the the connection that you are making with the home language and seeing it as a strength I think is very positive because it's true like reading comprehension is reading comprehension and math is math and science is science uh and so on and so forth. So, uh, but I'm I'm glad to hear that they do go out, uh, that they still get to participate in those core courses. Um, and I think that if you are, you know, intentionally being taught the language, I think it definitely can move them faster. That's all I have. Thank you. I have a couple of things. one, it's really I sub I sub around the district and in other districts as well. And I grew up in a lot of these countries where these kids come from. And then when they're like, you know, they tell me, "Oh, so Venezuelan, I'm a Venezuelan." I'm like, "Oh, yeah. I used to live in Venezuela." Then when I tell them when, they said, "Were you there with the dinosaurs?" So that's pretty funny. I wonder do you guys you don't concentrate the newcomers into one class, do you? Because this is what I find in some of these schools is that when all the newcomers are together and they don't speak English, they kind of concentrate and it's hard to get them in. Um, in fact, I speak Spanish. I'm able to help the Spanish speakers, but I I don't do Pashta. I don't do Dari. I don't do Somali. And it's it's how do you how do you get them to get away from their little same language speakers, friends, and it's hard. I mean, I remember this when I was a kid in Venezuela learning Spanish. It was hard to not talk to my little English- speakaking pals. When we're doing class list, we try to usually place so that they've got at least another student like that speaks the language. So, there's somebody else to help with, but no, we don't group newcomers together, you know, and part of that is the way we serve them, we don't need them all grouped together, right? So, that helps us with that. But there's certain things like PashTO I mean there's a lot when you're coming from Afghanistan to here that beyond the language. No, there's culture. So having those students be able to be together in the classroom and just prayer, you know, just little things like that. Um in terms of being able to share and understand here's how we do it here, how do we help you with that? Some of that kind of stuff. So it it often goes beyond the language too. Oh yeah. Okay. I loved seeing and hearing about the pride that was instilled in the children about where they come from and you know the the language that they speak and languages which what a gift to be multilingual. Um, and I was reminded of the children's book, The Invisible, um, you. I don't know if you're familiar with that one. Justice Allen Paige writes children's books. That's one of his books that he wrote with his daughter, Cammy. Um, kind of about the parts of us that people can't see and how we relate to one another. And, and I think that activity really does allow kids to show a part of themselves that way and share that. And I think it's good because it it allows for those curious learners to learn about other people from other places and other languages. Um but then it also allows, you know, those learners to um have that, you know, that community, that sense of community with others that they're maybe not aware of that that share that as well. So I think there's so many benefits to to doing that. So, um, it's awesome. So, thank you for sharing that. Thank you. Um, yeah, really great presentation. I've got a just a couple questions. Um, I presume that wind time, was it something adopted after the high school started? Wind time or did you guys start that on your own? Is it what I need time? Yeah. When did you start it and then it moved to the high school? Um, I don't know when the high school started it. I was I've this is my ninth year at Sheridan and and we went the first year doing it the old way and then by second year we put in wind time. Yeah. So maybe it was first. That's exciting. Do you know if the other elementary schools are doing a similar model and uh they are doing wind time. There are slightly different permutations um but all built under the same context. Yes. And it's been here in some capacity since before me. Yep. Good. Um I had a question about the um uh supports that you have for students to be able to move into the dual language program. Um just maybe a few more um details on that. Do other schools are other schools doing that as well? Um I I think Centennial is this year. We had a teacher that was with us and so he started this year doing that and they have like a little breakfast group instead um or just in the mornings and yeah they are working on again Spanish literacy and kind of practicing writing for the exam that like you know Monica and loose have a exam and they give it to all the schools so every elementary has a chance to you know test a few students that they think are interested that want to or that could pass. So, I love the idea of more on-ramps for any of those kind of programs. And I I think there always are at least a few from each of the nonDLI um elementaryaries that do end up then in the DLI program in sixth grade. Okay, great. I know that there's um once they get to um high school, there's opportunities for students to be um uh bilingual certification seal of biliteracy. Is that some like are are you supporting other languages in that same way? At the elementary school, it's got to be a lot harder because there is more Spanish. I say at conferences and sometimes enrollment center. I've handed out um flyers for the bilingual field just to tell the parents. You know, I know it's a long ways away, but you know, keep working on your language at home. Yeah. Excited to see that. And they're like, "Oh, I didn't know." So, that's great. Good. Thank you. I don't have questions. I just appreciate everything that you've done and you've explained to the others. Um, I I do like I I very much support and and I'm happy to hear that you're you're supporting the kids and in instilling in them pride like who they are and who they come to us is a strength to build on is is is a great foundation already and so to to make sure that they know that they're great as they are and we can build on that is is important. So, thank you. Just one quick one for me. um the the books in the different languages. You said you have a bunch like like all 20 languages represented. You know what? No, because it's hard to find some. Yeah. Um and Spanish is obviously the easiest. And and the other thing to think about and I think about coming from St. Paul like if I could have bought a bunch of Mong language books but so many of the kids couldn't read monk, you know. So that's the other piece is like we bought um we've got Somali books, but not all of our kids can read in Somali. So I think that comes into play too on some of that. Um, we do as much as we can and go out to find as much as we can. And I've used title one funds for some of that. And, um, if Miss Garza was here, she's got a whole bookshelf just filled out. And then she's got the book reports that the kids have to do on each. And she's got a bunch of sample ones that have been completed by kids posted on her doors. And she's got a whole program where she's keeping track of how many of the books kids read and then prizes that they get. and is in constant connection with the parents around that too. So we try to do as much as we can. That's awesome. And then do you guys ever share across schools? Um a little I mean I think I mean not this the Spanish books do you mean? Or the books in other languages? The books in other languages. Yeah. I I ours are in pretty high demand so we don't we don't have the capacity to do that so much. But we do have multilingual books at all of the schools. So, um, Rachel Jensen's in cooperation with Dr. Will Height and the principles, um, got together talking about books to supplement the benchmark curriculum and also culturally appropriate and linguistically appropriate books. And so, we do have them across all of our elementarymentaries. Well, and that was going to be my other question just like, you know, I hear always you guys come in and it's like, and the problem is we don't get like back to back to back. So, it's or do we like all the elementary schools? um they they present different things. Well, touch and maybe that's why it's like this comes up and I feel like it's unique. But the question I feel like I'm always asking is like I hear such great things from different schools. It's like how are we sharing knowledge across schools of like here's a cool idea. It's like oh well that sounds like really neat idea like you hope more families know about this and that it's an option to like kind of ease them into the school and uh into learning. Well, and aren't the ELLL teachers all in a PLC? Centennial Centennial Centennial. Yeah. But we we have department meetings and things where we share, you know, what we're doing, too. So, we do get to hear about the good things happening at all the schools. That's awesome. Yeah. And as part of the overall system and role of leadership to make sure that those are cross-pollinating or spreading across sites and the best practices are being utilized and shared and then expected and supported. Awesome. Thank you. Any more questions? Can't really question anything, but I just really Oh, I'm sorry. I just really want to say how like I I never realized how important it was to create like an environment for people who often feel very alienated in our society. And I I can't personally speak to that, but I I I was raised by a family very culturally rooted here in America. So, it always felt odd going to school and it being completely different and not really seeing myself anywhere in that. And just seeing that these kids have the ability to not only see that, but be proud of it and have opportunities to showcase it. It just I I don't think I've ever really seen that anywhere. I just wanted to say how amazing that was. Thank you. Okay. All I have to say is like I'm really proud of how our community is like I guess adapting to like different cultural changes as well. Um I guess no growing up I was I don't know it was a good mixture I would say but now I feel like it's becoming more common where like I think it's like becoming more normal normalized which I like. Um I had a question like out of the 20 languages how many uh languages do you have printed out in books? Just um do we have we have well Lauria is excellent at finding books in other languages online or I've gone to the library like for example last year and this year we have two literate Russian speakers so I found some Russian books but it's kind of by year sometimes we have French speakers and then of course they go to sixth grade but um yeah we trying to find books if they're literate online from the library title one fun. So yeah, if the students you know are literate then definitely we want to do that and we always encourage the other ones to have their parents teach them at home and then is it like do you buy books or like look for books every year or is it Yeah, you know I Yeah, I personally just go to like you know Savers or ARC and half price books and then um yeah, title one money is with we use a lot of title one money for Spanish for because that's the largest population and so then as the different populations come in then that's kind of okay now we got to go find that you know and it does change from year to year um three years ago we did not have any literate Russian speakers in the building so and our libraries have a lot of Spanish books and other multilingual books as Well, so this is in addition to what our libraries and schools have. This is a our own additional collection or library that we loan out to kids. Okay. Nice. Good to know. Thank you. You know, I was at a school in St. Paul and they actually won a grant to build an MLL library. I mean, it was a grant to build an MLL library. And if you want me to, I'll look into that and send you the information. It was a It was amazing. The EL kids would come in, take out a book, and they had to sign it out and everything. And there's a beautiful little library, and they get boxes of these books. So, it's worth a try, right? If you're a good grant writer, don't ask me. So, any more questions, comments? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, I appreciate the participation and leadership and support from our team from Sheridan Hills. So, thank you all and have a wonderful evening. Uh we will move on to conversation about our 2425 annual survey for parents, guardians, um our community, and our staff. And so, just a couple of systemic reminders as we jump into this. Uh we do an annual survey that is aligned to our strategic plan. Um they are anonymous which allows them to complete sections which are only relevant to their roles. Um at the board's suggestion and within my evaluative goals, we pushed for participation. Um and so we set individual site goals and district goals wanting to come in with over a thousand surveys, which would already be an all-time high, and 500 from staff. Uh we came away with 1,335 parent, guardian, community surveys. um 630 or nearly double um what we have previously had as a high um and 613 staff which is 144 more than the previous amount. So I just want to acknowledge um the work of our outreach workers of our office staff of our team members and our leaders who really put effort into that. Um and it's something that we showed as a pretty significant commitment and then put our time and effort behind. Um, I also want the board to hear that we then stopped most other outreach activities during that window um and really made that a focus and so that is something that we will need to think about um in terms of prioritization long term. Um do we always want to put this level of effort? Um we know that when we do we can get this amount of outcome. Um we're going to be very pleased when we see the numbers. Um, and it's just something to acknowledge that that does require us to get to to get this level of participation requires us to really cut back on the other services that those folks are doing during the same time window. Um, and so with that, let us start with our staff survey. Uh, we gave staff members 12 uh days to complete the survey. Overall, we had 91% of our staff participating. Um, well, you do see some variation by site. Um there are some sites uh particularly these smaller ones um who have expressed that it doesn't feel anonymous when there are only 10 or 11 of us and so some of them will not say what building they're in. Um then there are also district folks who are assigned to multiple buildings or people who are assigned to a district and those sometimes come in as uh did not specify buildings. Um and so overall 91% I wouldn't take the low numbers at the couple of sites and low is really a stretch anyways um when we're talking about such a high number of participation. Um we believe that there actually was very significant close to 90% of the bus garage district office um RHS SEC um that we did have that high level of participation across all sites because otherwise we would not have gotten to 91%. um overall um and how it works is you're going to see multiple years um shared out um you'll see back to 2122 and the four years of us doing the survey aligned to this particular strategic plan and so you have seen consistent growth in the question I'd recommend my schooler program to parents seeking a place for their child um five and a half point jump over this survey uh we asked a couple of new questions I would recommend RPS is a place for those who are working also match that same number at 35%. Um, and then we also asked how valuable is this survey and uh from slightly valuable to valuable ended up around 92%. Uh those that thinking it is very valuable are valuable in the 80% range. And so people feeling like this does have some input. Um and that input has some value. And what we'll do at the end is we'll talk about uh what we do with that and also report back uh staff survey results in regard to school administration as a whole. and you will see um people feeling very positively and very strongly about the overall um leadership in our buildings. Um we're also going to see a pattern that starts here where we pop out the um highest and lowest and lowest can be and highest can be very relative because they're in a very tight uh number window at times. Um so our lowest score um 87% um agree or strongly agree that we align our support um in buildings to the needs of the building. um at the higher number, 98% of staff are agreeing that they promote the district in the in a positive manner. And you can see the rest of the numbers. Again, every single one of them up since um last year and with 91% of our staff responding um shows a very overwhelming support for the work of of school administration. Uh teachers um sharing perspectives about each other. Um and what you do if you look longitudinally you can see back in our administrators um back in 2122 things were significantly lower and have had a pattern of significant growth each year. Um this is a group that has had relatively high significant rankings about um each other and this is asking teachers about other staff. Um and so that has been a a similar pattern over the years with a spread of only 91 to 97% from the lowest um to the highest. Um and so teachers feeling highly positively about each other and the work that they're doing. Uh business team um couple of scores in the or responses in the mid to low 80s but in all three of those categories very significant steps forward um in the perspective of the performance of the business ops team um agreeing that um again similarly promoting in a positive manner. Um and then um 81% agreeing or strongly agree that they foster a culture of financial accountability and transparency. So one of the things for us to look at in regard to communication while at the same time 83% or 81% um pretty significantly positive from an overall perspective. Uh operations team operations team similar to how uh staff uh looked at teachers. Um they have consistently seen the operations team and this breaks down to facilities, transportation, safe routes to schools and nutrition services um anywhere from 90% positive commentary um all the way up to 96% positive commentary. Um again very overwhelmingly positive and historically has also consistently been overwhelmingly positive. Another area of consistent overwhelming positive responses in communications and our communication team and department. Um and so uh following that same pattern of continuing to move up and move forward in in terms of people's perspectives um positive responses in the 95 to 98% um in agreement. Then in terms of teaching and learning um teaching and learning follows a pattern relatively similar to building administration um highest perspectives in regard to uh promoting us in a positive manner. Um the area to continue uh focusing on despite consistent and ongoing growth and perspective is aligning support to the need of the building and making sure that we are across all of our leadership supporting staff and supporting the teams as as they would hope to be supported. Uh special programs um similar again that pattern of growth um that pattern of growth cons consistent in all groups and in all categories. Um again promoting in a positive manner being an area of strength across all teams. Um and continuing to establish that environment of teamwork and collaboration. Um while that is an area of growth 87% um is still in positive support of how well that is going. Um and so all of those are relative. Looking at technology and this is the first area where we did have some things to really focus on. Um it's interesting because it and technology separate out into we'll call it the supports and we'll call it the technology itself. Um high levels of positive response to the levels of support. So our IT team is doing a very good job and the perception is that it's going very well from support um in regard to technology and the use of technology as access to quality training our learning hardware and then also specifically our data tools. Um, and I'm not actually surprised by this result. Um, we have, as we have worked on an initiative across all of our buildings and progress monitoring, analyzing data and using it to support, um, our tech team has done a great job of improving the data system, the data warehouse. Um, but as we rely on that, the fact that it has not been as successful and effective as needed, um, has really come come under a lot of scrutiny. Um, and so we have workarounds that are working effectively in most areas. and most people are are well aware that we are utilizing workarounds as we continue to approve our data systems. And then um the area that will also be part of my evaluation um as we look to later this spring uh responses in regard to superintendent performance um similar to the other pattern improved in every area um 94% responding um that I lead to accomplish uh strategic plan goals effectively communicate to promote a positive uh image in the 94th percentile uh lowest um would be effectively supporting keeping high performing and diverse educators in the district. Um recognizing that in 22 23 that was perspective of 59% has moved all the way up to 78% and that each of those categories continue to grow um and continue to move forward from a survey perspective. Uh last part of the staff survey um before I will take a brief pause and I think last year we decided to check in to see if there are questions or comments connected to staff survey prior to moving on to parent. Um but here is a summary or synthesis of the final comments section from the staff survey just sort of summarizing and synthesizing um some of the things that are there. Um as a reminder to board members after the presentation and tomorrow we'll be sharing out um the in-depth data um and access to uh the data system for you all to to walk through and examine things um in depth yourselves. So, with that, I will pause and see if there are any questions or things um in regard to the staff survey um before we move on to community survey. And we could also wait until the end depending on what people want to do. Well, we want to ask questions. Okay. But I don't know who wants to go first. I'll jump in. I mean, I I appreciate that that so many people responded and thank you to to all of them for doing it. Uh it is invaluable information and and and it's important that we collect it. The news is there's a lot of very good news here, but but there there's a clear area of of focus that we need to improve on, right? And that that's the when you mentioned the technology and the stuff, right? There's the humans who help deliver the technology and support with technology and then there's the stuff that we're delivering and there seems to be a clear out um need for better stuff or better, you know, better instruction on how to use it or access it, right? Yes. Yes. the data system, who knew it, I would say, is the most likely focal point of this. Um, in downloading data from our Synergy system, from our FastBridge system, and from our Schoolagy system into Who Knew It, um, our new director of technology, Justin Seal, has repeatedly had to work with Who Knew It on uh, rewriting their programming to support all of our needs um, and to ensure that the data was accurate. Essentially our leaders historically um have been and I used the term earlier I'll use it again workarounds. Uh so they have been using other methodologies rather than the data system tools themselves. And as we um as you think about the initiatives that we are focused on as we continue to increase the expectation of our leaders and our team members to utilize the data effectively. they are then holding us in re return accountable to yes and then we also need a data system that actually works for what what it is used for and then we shouldn't be using workarounds so and that data reflects that that that's great okay thank you I don't have any other questions or comments no one else I mean I was gonna say ditto there's not much else I mean I I'm curious curious about um the data set and is it some sometimes in surveys like this specifically around data tools it's it could be a teacher just wants to spend time teaching and not actually having to go query databases right it could be I I don't want to go ask the questions or it could be the tools are so complex that I don't have time to do both teach and um spend time in who knew it. So I'm just curious if there's an opportunity I think there is an opportunity for us to just go a little bit deeper as to what the gaps are within that software and if there's workaround I think you addressed that by the way I'm not asking you to readress it. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah we as we work on that because that will be um one of our focal points as we continue on forward. I mean I I will say we have heard overwhelming feedback that our data and I'm specifically calling out who knew it because that is the one um we ask our our folks to utilize it and it is both cumbersome but repeatedly inaccurate um and so the level to which Justin Seal has had to work with them uh to get accurate uploads of the data and then write user friendly systems. So, so as you were indicating um it is also cumbersome and so we have had to do a lot of work to make that a functional system for us. Okay. Thank you. Then I guess I'll go with two quick questions. Um, and I guess it'll probably be for both, but um, when we talk about anonymity of the surveys, the we're not using Google Sheets, Google Forms to go ahead and create the surveys. No, it is a Qualrixbased survey. Um, it does not track um, any of that additional data or information. So really the only question then is is like when people are being asked what department is like, can they get dialed in from that, which is why some people get a little skittish on it. Yes. So the of the 35 people who did not identify, if you think about at SEC or at RP, there are less than a dozen staff members. And so there are those that feel um that that is concerning. Um we have a pretty clear um communication pattern with all of our unions that that that's not tracked. Um that we have heard both positive and negative commentary about our performance repeatedly. We actually acknowledge it at a school board meeting. um and that that isn't something that we are looking to punish that is something we are looking to learn from. Um and so we try to create an environment um and yet there are those that are not fully comfortable. And I guess a quick logistics question is is are we asking the department at the beginning or the end of the survey? Uh it is at the beginning of the survey. The reason why I ask is that if I'm a person who doesn't put any feedback in, then there's no real anything that identifies it as me. So then why not put my department information in? But if I put it in at the top and I don't think about it, right? And just food for thought. I mean, it's just it's a little nuance, but it might get more department responses. So, I'll start with 91% is pretty crazy high. Um, so having I've I've walked through this with um so one of my thought partners with Ed Richfield and and over the years we've talked through what that is. Um, if you are concerned that you are logged into a computer or your home has an IP address or that somebody can theoretically and has the time and interest to track down literally which computer and who it's registered to or whose home it is and whose address IP that it was connected to, uh, then you are not going to put in your department. We have bigger problems if that was I I understand. It might be like that. I'm worried about the department head, but I mean I get what you're saying, right? It's like I'm just throwing out just as I'm talking through it. It's like just again and then the question is going to go for the the parent survey as well, but it's like is there some way to like maybe diffuse it because you're putting at the end? Food for thought. Doesn't need an answer. I is data aggregated um at sub departments like the math department of the high school. No. Okay. So, no. And there is no nothing to say I am a math teacher at the high school. It is what site do you work at? Yeah. So, just as a um maybe a comparison to industry, um when we do staff surveys, as a as a manager, I only get to see the score of my department if there's more than five people that directly report to me or to my reports. And I only get to see comments if that population is over 10 or 12. I I forget what the number is, but all of these, with very few exceptions, are significantly higher than that number at the building site. Um, so I guess I would encourage folks to fill this out because it is randomized enough um to be able to um I guess hide some of those. I' I'd like for them to be to feel like they can be honest in here. Well, and and I think people are invariably honest in here. Um I think there are 35 people that put did not like did not put in their building. we don't follow up or know who those 35 people are, right? So, and that that is not of significance. It makes it harder to connect their feedback to their buildings specifically um in terms of numerical scores, but I mean if you look if you look at the overall scores, they're overwhelmingly positive. Um and so um it it has probably a minimal statistical impact on the overall numbers and has a very I would say probably very low statistical input on each site. Um so yeah, and to the last comment on slide 16, um I am looking forward to reading all of the comments when we're able to log in tomorrow. So they will be actually read and considered I think by many of us. Absolutely. Uh and then one more question because full of them. Um I just like my my question was more of a what are we doing to show show diverse educators, right? It's um and I just look at the comment just thinking it's like the questions being asked or the the kind of feedback saying it's like we're not doing a good job, which again as high as the numbers are, it's not saying that we're not doing a good job, but we could do a better job. And then I I scroll back up. um just in our board packet looking at student diversity. Would it make sense to do the same thing with educators? And I don't know if that's anymore. I'm not sure I understand the question. Yeah, I'm sorry. Can you just point of clarification? What are you referring to? So, um I was actually telling somebody else this is like having this um the the demographic data at the beginning of our board packet, right? Um would it be worthwhile to do the same thing with like our teacher spread? So, and it might be too frequent. It's like, but I also don't know how often we're updating it. I like it because it's nice to be able to go back and look. I mean, we certainly can. I got to be honest. I look at if I just look at the superintendent slide. Mhm. And you look at effectively recruits high performing and diverse educators, it's 86%. Um, this this is going to match our actual factual data. Effectively supports keeping high performing and diverse educators in the district, 78%. So, what that is suggesting is we do a very good job of recruiting people and sometimes they leave. Our data suggests that we increase in diverse educators year-over-year every single year. Um that I've been here, I think we've gone up, we might have had one year with a small drop, but I don't think so. Um and it's uh we don't always keep everybody and so it it's a yes and you know we have staff who leave our district every year. sometimes our choice, sometimes their choice um for a wide range of reasons. Um and we continue to recruit more. Um and so I think both of those can be accurate. Um for me, I I look at 59% 71% 78% and think okay the perception is changing very significantly. Um and then if you look at recruiting you go 63 72 828 86 that continues to grow um in that category also. And so and my question is more um it is not reflecting on how we're doing from a numbers perspective. It's more how are we self-promoting if you will. Sure. Right. And like if there's I mean when we talk as a group about how from a state perspective, right, it's like we're above like the the state averages from a recruiting retention, right? It's like so if we're talking about diversity, correct? Yep. Correct. The perspective of most staff is their partners and team members are high performing. So there's two components there. High performing and diverse educators. Okay. So we do share data. We do share diversity data. Um the perspective of most people is their colleagues, their friends, their partners are high performing. Yeah, we may have a different perspective. Um we may decide they're not and they leave or they may decide to go to a different place even if they are high performing and leave. Mhm. Um and so I I think that is a function of teacher turnover or staff turnover um more than it is understanding the level of diversity which is I think our staff are aware that we continue to increase I think and I I if you're not sure that's what so again this is this is not intended to be defensive or like right this is more just a should we reflect on this of like like I look at the numbers I'm like I think the numbers are good you see that they're increasing and is it partformational to just share to people that's like we we're doing a pretty good job, right? It's like so who is it like in in what capacity are you wanting it to be shared and with whom? Like as like Yep. Agreed. Right. It's like it's No, I I'm I'm actually asking cuz like is it something that we like tout like on our our website like or in board packet in like in what capacity? Like so I'm just trying to understand the context of like what it is that you're talking about and I guess that's my point. Not sure like if people are saying um so so the question is is from a safer perspective do I feel like people are moving in and out and maybe it's also because it's high performers and diversity at the same time right and it's like are we retaining enough but then how um metrics right when I think of like HR of like like attrition right it's like I'll throw it and say like 14% attrition at this company or 25% attrition this company and is that something that we talk about or don't talk about right I happen to be in IT so I tend to see more of like how much attrition is going on at a company. So I don't know or it means more work for us. But it's not necessarily something that we communicate out as a company and share that. And then when you ask a question like this, I'm more just curious what are we doing saying again I think it's pretty cool that it's like we're above state standards when it comes to diversity. Now how do you track and say we're you know all of our people are high performers maybe a little more challenging to report on but just and I look to our experts like JV like how would we share this information? I'm not answering. Sure. And I mean, and I I get that on some level. I mean, being an HR professional, right? Like that's the thing is that, you know, attrition is like an ongoing thing. And like Steve said, like we always have people coming and going. That's just the nature of the business, right? And I mean, and I think it was, was it last year, two years ago when we decided through labor negotiations to make that raise for kind of that middle like group of people because we were recognizing, hey, we're losing a lot of that like midprofessional like, you know, level like teachers and we wanted to make sure that we're keeping them. So, you know, what is it really that we're trying to focus on? because you know I mean I think you know there is a general awareness that yeah we've increased exponentially since Steve's been here with the number of teachers of color and it's it's been great what is it that we're actually like trying to say with it though I I don't sure couple of things I can think about that we do and I can work with Jennifer and reflect on on this one we do talk to our new staff and in our new teacher orientation we talk about teacher diversity we talk about our valuing of it and we share some of our data um in our vision vision cards, we do talk about attrition and staff turnover and so we do have one of those as a vision core data point which is attracting and retaining staff. Um so that is something that we talk about. Um and then staff demographics and some of that overall component is in our staff report which is on a yearly basis. Um I don't think we do a broader communications but our communication department does um set up a set of other diverse components that they work on. So something for us to think about. So, more questions or comments before we go to that section. All right, let's run into the 1,335 parents and guardians with 68% of them identifying as bipac and so that is representative of our school. Um, we have relatively high percentage uh participation by all of our schools and by all of our sites. Um, if we think about 1335 individual parents and guardians, that's somewhere around a third of the overall population of families of our district. Uh, very high participation rate. Something for us to be pleased and proud about. Um, one unique component. Um, while the state requires people to check only one box in regard to race, ethnicity, we allow people to check as many as they choose. Um and so uh we uh use the specific report and so for example 14 a.5% well we have um in the overall number uh 31.4% um white respondents 14.5% of those responded um with more than one race ethnicity category. So in the state categorization that would be um biracial um most likely. Um, but we wanted to report the numbers in each category that came back. So, uh, we just wanted to make sure that we hear that. So, this is a little bit different, um, than one might hear in other numbers. Sorry, can I ask a quick question on that? It says 14.5% of white response. Is it of the white responses? 14.5% of the white respondents. So 85% solely white but 14 and a half responded as white and um all right so let's take a look overall um and similar to the staff pattern um when we gather more voice um it would appear that we hear um a very positive message um and as as you may recall one of the things as we disagregated previously is um our BIPO families had a very different perspective um than the solely white families. We did not see a pattern in this particular set of numbers. Um and so we saw um basically representation that was similar um and improvements in almost every single category and in every single reporting area. Um and so uh RPS overall 97% agreeing or strongly agreeing that we provide the tech resources and um provide a warm and welcoming environment. Um, our lowest area was actually 87% where they agree that we provide healthy and nutritious meals. Um, and in all of those areas, um, I believe every single category up, um, somewhere in the 1 to 57% um, from previous survey results. Another area where we saw very significant gains, I would recommend my school um, to a parent seeking a school for their child. Um and you will see um consistent pattern um consistent pattern and actually let's go back one because that also connects to reputation in the community something that we have been working on in 2122 you saw the low and it was significantly the low um was communication with parents but also has a positive reputation in the community going from 69% all the way up to 91% and so it reputation of Richfield schools in the community very significant growth um very significant gains and very significant improve improvement in communication which then is also seen in our next slide um which is parents reporting that they would recommend that school for uh parents seeking a school for their child. Um with uh our secondaries at 89 and 90% um both up um almost double digits from previous um pointing out specifically the middle school going from 67% in 2122 to 89% um in this past year. Very very large gains on one of our areas of focus. um and um our schools only going up from there and so a great perspective um as we see from our parents. Um transitions between schools and that had been something that we had been working on. Um we also saw a seven point a very significant gain in the perspective of the transitions that we created that your child has experienced. Um a very high percentage suggesting that was excellent or good. Um and a very small percent saying only fair or poor. um our area to work at similar to activities and or similar to it is actually within activities. Um and so what as we increased the diverse representation in our survey, we saw drops in are our parents and family members aware of opportunities for reduced fees and are those fees a barrier. And so that is an area um where the only area where our results are in a actually below the 70s um in the 60s for our families and it basically looks at something we need to look at from a communication perspective which is how do we u make sure our families are aware of opportunities. How do we commute that communicate that and how do we make sure that those fees are not a barrier to participation in extracurricular activities. And so that's something that clearly needs to be a focal point for next year as approximately one-third of our families um almost up to 40% are suggesting that um they aren't aware of scholarships and yet nonetheless it it creates a barrier um is the fees. And then similar to staff um which is also part of my evaluation scores going from 90% um support um to 93% support um agreeing um that I strongly manage assets utilize resources financial stability and offer innovative programs um and lead us to accomplish strategic plan goals and 90% um saying um the area of opportunity that we keep high performing diverse educators and that our services go beyond um what other similar sized districts offer. But again, 90 to 93% in all areas. Um, continuing growth in every single category. Um, going anywhere from looks like, uh, 5% up to 11% up in terms of the perspective perspective of the community. Um and then in parent guardian survey results um you have a synthesized group of the commentary um both summarized and then a set of those comments. Um and again we'll be providing full access to all of the comments and the data through Qualrix to our board members um to review and examine in depth after. Um so then last slide is really our next steps. Um, and I've said it a couple times, but you all will be given access to Qualrix, so you can view the dashboard of all the survey information, all of the comments, um, including those about my performance, um, but then also about district level questions. Also, then, uh, district leaders, um, have already been viewing the survey results specific to their building, their department, um, to incorporate their feedback as part of their annual evaluation. And then each leader is expected to both report back to their team um and then each leader is also expected to report back out to the community. So be that as part of their newsletter, be that as part of a parent meeting, but making sure that they are sharing what they heard and what their next steps in regard to uh the survey are. We'll be sending out a communication on behalf of the district to all parents and guardians and staff to thank them for their participation and also talk about the things that we heard and that we'll be focusing on overall. Um and then as you know this will come back um the components or those couple of slides about my annual evaluation. Um and um we'll also collect additional information from specifically direct reports and feedback um from board members. Um and then um already pointed out the obvious area within there. We really need to examine our scholarship information and communication and determine ways uh to improve communication with BIPAC families specifically uh because we believe that um with the much higher percentage and number of our diverse families responding um this is an indicator of an area where we clearly need to focus and improve removing those barriers and ensuring communication around scholarships. So with that I will pause for any questions on the parent community survey. Are we going to see these data broken down by schools? So you are going to get access to Qualrix and you will get all of the data. Um will will it be broken down by schools? Um you'll be able to use a filter to look at the and what you will see is an overwhelmingly supportive and positive perspective across all of our sites. Okay. You know, it's interesting this our lowest numbers are in the um scholarships and all that. I've talked to a number of high school kids. It's a specific population, I'm sure, but they have told me that they see their perception of RHS is that it's like, let's get them the heck out of here. Let's get them graduated. That's our job. And I don't believe that, but this is a perception. And if this perception goes over, you know, filters up to the parents and guardians, you're going to get low scores. So, let's let's be clear what this feedback is about. This is specific to activities. So, for activities, so that's sports and this is arts. Um, we're talking about um, and I will acknowledge we do not have the most effective communication method proactively about people's ability to have a scholarship related to participating in sports. So, what we currently do and what we have historically done um, is when we communicate out about participation, those that are already interested receive information about scholarships. So if you are a family who thinks I can't pay the fee, you might not investigate. So we do not then communicate to every single family in the district um or every single family for example at the high school for football here is what football would cost and oh by the way here are the scholarship opportunities to make sure that the fees are not a barrier. So we are now hearing back that the methodology is only working for about twothirds of our families. Um which means we need to significantly improve that communication method. Um and then they're also telling us that that is a barrier. And so there's a whole set of people we are not hearing from um because they are assuming or or we are not doing our role effectively in terms of communication. So it's not about graduation at least that's not how I interpret it. It is we need to do a better job sharing with all of our students that fees will not be a barrier to participation in activities and we have scholarships for any and all families to make sure that that's the case. And this also I think speaks to because that's exactly what I was thinking when I saw the number of the people that are interested in activities versus the number of people that were aware of scholarship stuff. So, I mean, yes, there was definitely a disparity there, but I think this speaks to [Music] um the number of families that are just not engaging with the district for a number of reasons. And we don't need to go into that whole discussion again, but it's the families that are not um you know attending sports things that are not you know going to or you know volunteering with PTO that are not you know um attending conferences things like that. Um, so those are the people that we are still not reaching and I think those are still the people that we are not getting to fill out surveys and you know I know in a prior meeting I had asked about the language in the surveys. I still never got anything about that like who writes these questions because language is so pervasive and that does prevent people from participating in things. So someone could see the first question and be like forget it. I'm done. I'm not even going to do this. So, I mean, everything has to be like so intentional and you know, so I I mean I'm asking who writes the questions like h how is this process even done? So, the questions were created by a team. Um, okay. when we they were in the year after the strategic plan was implemented and they were written in alignment to help us measure um our strategic plan. Okay. Um and so we're going to have an opportunity to fully rewrite um and recreate a whole new set of questions um because we'll do some updating of our strategic plan. Um that'll be one of the processes we start in January of next year. Um, and then we'll be looking forward to helping to create a whole brand new survey because I think that if there weren't any people of color in that room looking at that or if there weren't any social worker type people in the room reviewing those questions, there are going to be problems with that because without those lenses, yeah, we're not going to reach the people that we need to reach. Sure. So, absolutely. because the scores I don't think are accurate for what it is that we are actually trying to find out. I think the numbers are um what do I want to say? The numbers are they look great, but I don't think that they are an accurate reflection of um of if everybody were randomly pulled, if we did random polling by calling homes and were to take um get questions answered that way, I think our scores would look very different. That's likely true. I mean, right, there's a there's a percentage that didn't respond. Um, which is fair. You know, we we shouldn't assume the worst for all of them. No, and I'm not saying that. No, I I and I know you're not, but it's it's it's also the case that we shouldn't assume the best of them, that they are exactly the same as those for whom this survey spoke to them. Um, we should always try to keep reaching more and more and more, right? Uh but there are limits to what we can do, right? Yeah. So, but that's what I'm saying though is that that's why something as simple as the language, right? Like the fact that like something like that like has continued to be overlooked like when I've even like brought it up or is that something that's been set in motion all of this time and was not something that could have been changed before this survey went out? Um, so we added a question or two based on board input and that was in the staff survey we reported back on. But since we have if we change the survey questions um then we don't have data to compare to anymore. Okay. Um that's why I so the challenge yeah the challenge of changing it in the fifth year of the strategic plan. I think the big opportunity is um in the next strategic plan or the when we update is to really focus then on what are the questions we want feedback for and if we want a shortened survey um or or a different survey or um written in a different way I think that is the time sort of in the um so we will do our strategic plan work next spring probably from January to June of 26 and then prior to the survey being launched in the 26th 27th school year, creating a whole new survey um and making sure that that would then carry for the four or five years after that. And I understand the need to have the psychometrician type people, you know, there to ensure that the you know data points and everything are going to be um what are the words that I'm looking for? um that everything can be um defended or you know I'm sorry I just I my head is so like is it a valid survey or not? Yes. Yes. Yes. Um but I think that given that we talk about the you know diversity, equity and inclusion lens and everything going through it. we are severely limiting ourselves um and missing a huge opportunity by not ensuring that the language in our surveys does not go through that filter also I mean it seems so basic so that's my point and I think it does it it does affect the outcome and it seems really obvious to me based upon these numbers it may not seem obvious to everyone else but did you go through the the survey and look at it from that lens. And I'm just more curious. I haven't I no I don't even know what the questions I've asked for this repeatedly and I have not received it. So the questions are right here in the survey. So Richfield Public Schools communicates effectively with parents. Richfield Public Schools ensures students are seeing value. I wasn't sure if it was like that is literally the No, this is literally the language coming out of the survey pasted in here. Um and so that is that is the actual language. Um Okay. And and the reason why I ask is that um my suggestion would be is I like hearing what you're saying is is go through the questions and get that feedback because I hear what you're saying Steve too on the whole um we want a consistency in questions so that we have a consistent set of data and responses to and I didn't understand before that it had been it it had to be done along with the strategic right it's now that I understand that like yes like that makes sense to me having been a part of a process like that before. I get that. I get that. I just think that how we talk about things and how we are rooted in the values of, you know, DEI and putting everything through that lens, I don't understand why we wouldn't do that for something as important as this. That doesn't make sense to me. Well, and where I was going with it is that if if [Music] you're there's a difference between rewriting the questions and maybe making some word changes or like moving some words around, it does change it can change the meaning of a question. So, I get I'm not asking for the questions at this point too. I had just initially asked just to see them so that I could understand like potentially what was potentially could have been, you know, off-putting to people and m potentially why some people may not have participated or, you know, I mean, for me, information is helps create context for me. You know, I'd rather have more of it and like let me decide what I don't need. Um, but the more of it the better. Okay. It's just when I don't like understand, you know, when I don't have that information, I can't like understand why something is the way it is. But now understanding that those questions were developed around the strategic plan and can't be changed for a period of time. Makes sense to me. Got that. Got it. Can't recall I don't have an answer at this point who was in the room or who worked on the questions or who were the participants. Do you remember, Dr. L? There was it went through multiple drafts where we gathered input. This was a while ago because this is the second strategic plan that the first time is when the um partway through the strategic plan is when we developed this survey. doc um our director of student support services Christina Gonzalez different people it was administrators I don't what I don't remember is how much family input if we got I know it went you know safe and supportive schools maybe students and families at that point but it was administrators and it was very much driven off of the strategic plan and how we were going to measure have metrics to look at um student or staff and family input on that. But administrators um I actually think Christina was one of the ones that okay kind of began but we can always improve like that was one of the things that well just even knowing that it had gone through safe and supportive schools because then that would have you know there's the parent component of that too. So yeah, it and that's all. As a matter of fact, I do vividly remember that because we were in the old district office and we had all sorts of paper on the table and we had um a variety of perspectives at the table and language was one of the things that came up as part of that. Um one of our parents who had been on safe and supportive for many years just went off about a year ago. So we did have perspective but there's it doesn't mean that it can't be improved upon also as we update our strategic plan and look at our goals. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Great. No, that's very helpful information. Thank you. Thank you. More feedback, questions, comments. Um maybe a couple things. First of all, um I know that it was a lot of work for our outreach staff to do this and and it was at um giving up some of the the other tasks that they were that they were working on. So I think going forward, you know, I think we should evaluate how much of a herculean task is um is the right level for something like this. Um but just want to appreciate the staff that that they put a lot of work in calling and spending time with um families in front of computers at different events. Um last year I was very skeptical of the numbers because it was such a low number of students that were represented here. Um and I think that we've definitely taken that in the right direction. Um I I don't know if less than 1300 is a good number um because that's about 30% um of our families. But I also would like to better understand kind of what did we not do um in order to support the survey because I think the survey is really important. I think it's much more rep it is much more representative of what it's been in the past. Um but at the detriment of what sure I would say every other outreach to family contact call partnership or support that they would have done um they spent multiple days just on the phone um translated and participating and sharing surveys um back and forth. And then one point I would just like to say out loud these results actually match our BIPAC results of the past. Mhm. Uh number for number pretty darn close. And so while they are not um what happened um previously um is we had a much lower percentage of bipac and we had disagregated right and the numbers of supporter positive perspective from our bipac students and families was in the 90th percent and then the over representation of white families that had a different perspective brought that down. Yep. Um and so this then shows that taken to scale while 90% of 130 or 1335 means 10% or 135 people are having a negative response to each of these categories give or take. Um that means a,200 or are sharing something positive or having a highly positive perspective. So yeah, nice question. Thank you. Just a a quick followup. Um do we have um number of families? I mean because it's 1335 parents, but that doesn't necessarily mean that like two parents of the same family didn't submit, right? It's anonymous. We would not have that information. Correct. And there's no way to really get that without it spoiling anonymity. Yeah. Agree. Right. It's entirely possible that it's or spending a lot of money on a third party to do that for us. That's you. Yeah. Or wasn't sure if there's like we gather like family member or students attending. I don't Yeah. I was just more curious just to make sure more questions. There might be a way to determine from the data that we get tomorrow how many parents represented multiple students. But you wouldn't know if you and your wife both filled out the form that it's the same students. We wouldn't know. Yes, we wouldn't know. You would know, right? You'd at least know yours, correct? Uh, I'll guess make a comment. I have a comment too then. So, you want me to speak before you or I'll wait? No, I want to go first. Okay. I um I I do I want to say that I think the numbers and I think although we dive into details quickly on the board, I think one of the things I'd say is the numbers are great as a whole. Um you know, it's sitting here and and I'll speak for myself, right? It's like um looking at and I'll specifically call out the middle school because I think it's important to highlight the great numbers, right? 67, 77, 76 to 89. They look great and I know that there's been scrutiny in the middle school and I know that they feel it. Um, I think it's a job well done. So, I I'd like to again say kudos on the mic. Um, that said, I also then back before we dive into things, you know, I do remember talking about our scholarships and how we communicate last year this and I was like thinking go, wow, it's like it'd be interesting to go back and look and see the discussion we had at the same time because I know this came up and being on that committee. So, it's near and dear for me of like how are we sharing this information? And I think for me it's like how do we how do we get that attention to this group and get the numbers to change, right? I mean I think this is a big area of like my concerns always been is that if the parents think that there's no opportunity for scholarship then they're not even going to try or dig into the program, right? It's like because they're concerned about it, right? So how do we make sure that we're overly communicating and it's not just one coach going around. It needs to be across the board. So I will start with the middle school and say uh you have made it a focus of mine to ensure that things are improving at the middle school and you have seen outcomes. Um so what I would say to you Eric is as we discuss goals for me from an evaluative perspective if that is an area that the board would like me to focus on and make sure is successful um I'll take care of it. Um it would then be something that would be my responsibility to with with to report back to you uh the things that we were doing. Um we would be monitoring and then we would use our success criteria as the respondents to the survey. Um to to that and we would create a set of strategies um and again you set the vision and the overall um and then as the administrator I oversee then a plan to make sure that that number changes quite significantly. So that's that's what we would do. Um, and my comment is I just want to say it and I'm going to say it multiple times and I'm probably going to know you by doing it. I'm incredibly proud of these outcomes. Um, we asked for a high level of participation and we went over 700 between staff and community members responding more than had ever historically done it. Um, positive outcomes are overwhelmingly growing and overwhelmingly got better. Um, and I think one of the things, and I'm just going to push the board because we often talk about middle school and middle school results, is we need to take a moment with that and not talk about anything else other than everybody's survey data went up and more people responded to the survey. We heard voice and people are doing a better job or the perception as a whole is it is going better than it is previously. We often talk about and will never walk away from the fact that we can always do better and that we can continue to improve. But we need to take those moments to to also acknowledge, holy cow, I mean just looking at people who would strongly recommend their school. Everybody continues to get better. Everybody continues to grow in the perception of their families. And so as we focus on the jobs that people are doing, we need to acknowledge and I'll say it again. I am proud. I thank our team members. I thank our team members for their efforts consistently. This is not one-time effort that makes this happen. This is ongoing work to continue improving and to continue improving perception and I'm proud. And so these these results show that for me and then later on we'll move on to what to do better. So thanks for giving me the time. I I want to I'm I'm not feeling super awesome. So, I've been very quiet. Uh, I do think that it's important to to celebrate the wins and also to uh celebrate the the staff as a whole because we also all need a little bit of encouragement and like, you know, we want to feel notice and appreciate it. So, I do want to say thank you to uh everyone from board members down to everybody uh especially with this middle school. Um I think that investing time in getting more answers, I think that was the right goal because I know that in nine years there's always that doubt about you know what are what are these families thinking about? So then we then we can feel a little bit like well the results stay even. So because surveys are supposed to to give you that sample uh that is supposed to be representative. So we got more of that. Um and I'm I'm very happy with uh with these results and I also know that there's always you know ways to improve like there are things on my mind related to academics um and I'm and we'll continue to talk about these things but this is this especially at the middle school level after the the rough few years that that we have I I like to think that things are going on the way up and we'll continue to to improve. So, thank you. Any more comments, questions? I'll just say one thing. In my other jobs around the districts, RPS has a pretty good reputation is what people are telling me. I've had people ask me, "Do you think I can get a job there?" or even want to send their kids to our district. That's all. If nothing else, then we'll we're good on accommodations. All right. So, we got a couple of them. Uh we'd like to commend central teacher Angie Zalinski and Jenna Simuju as well as other staff members who serve our preschool and kindergarten uh students. uh received the following email that a family who moved to Richfield a year ago attended Central Preschool and is in kindergarten at Centennial uh had a spectacular experience um talking about Miss Angie who has a heart of gold and is endly endlessly patient and kind and then their son has Miss Simuju for kindergarten and that she um has helped their son uh love school and the teacher and so this particular parent um wanted to specifically reach out to us to share acknowledgement ment of two teachers, Angie Zalinski at Central, Jenna Samuju at Centennial, and the work um that we're doing. So, we want to publicly appreciate them, acknowledge them, and thank our parent for their input. Uh then employee appreciation days, April 7th to 11th is National Assistant Principles Week. And so, we just uh want to make sure at our board we also recognize our assistant principles and deans. Uh they work tirelessly uh to support our community. Additionally, April 8th or tomorrow is National Library Workers Day. So, uh we want to thank our media specialist, media paras who work hard to foster that love of reading and support um that media space. So, we appreciate all those team members and thank you. You make us proud. Thank you. Thank you. Next on our agenda is approval of the consent agenda. um agenda agenda uh which contains a collection of routine or fairly routine business items that we consent to pass in bulk without individual discussion. I'll pause for a moment to see if there are any questions or requests before we proceed hearing and seeing none. Is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. Second. We have a motion to approve the consent agenda by director Pollus and a second by director Cole. Any final discussion? All in favor, please say I. I. I. All post, please say nay. Chair votes I. And the consent agenda is approved. This brings us to old business. And we have policy 582, staff notification of violent behavior by students in administrative guideline 582.1. Our third read. All right. And so this is third hopefully for a um passage tonight. the updates to policy 582 and guideline 580 uh 582.1 not having significant changes since our last um meeting. Um so just reviewing the um branding type and consistency um work that goes in there. Um clarifying um that we had already clarified uh incidences of violence that I am a part of that conversation along with administration. Um and there is a definition of what that meets um but making sure that we have multiple lenses on that um and then making sure that that is done in an appropriate and legal way. So with that um without any other um major changes um since our last board meeting I have that for you for recommended passage tonight discussion or a motion I'll move the policy and guideline that's presented I'll second that we have a motion by director Paul and a second by director Liss is there any discussion on this really quiet now that we're past our deep presentations. All right, we'll bring it to a vote. All in favor, please say I. I. All post, please say nay. Chair votes I. And we have approved policy 582 and guideline 582.1, which brings us to policy 610, selection and reevaluation of instructional resources and administrative guidelines 610. our second read. All right. And so this has been revised in alignment with um new statutory expectations um and so and along with branding. And so this just lays out the process by which um curriculum instructional materials are selected um and um processes uh there was multiple areas of repetition in here. So those were removed. Um, and then also processes that are in there in regard to materials in media centers and materials that we all have access to. Um, and then processes for examining those. And so those are in here. Um, there used to be one for elementary and secondary that actually is combined because it was very significantly repetitive. Um, and so we did get some initial feedback in there, but the changes are um, updated based on statute even though there are a lot in there. Um and so we would suggest board members take a read um as um as they review all of those things that are now expected. Just have a question within some of the updates and consolidations and things. Some of it's in response to statute, but do we take the time to have this compared to or or have a our attorney's review? Yes. Prior to Yes. specific with the processes of selection and ensuring the materials making sure that those are correctly done. Thank you. Absolutely. Any other questions or comments on this one? That moves us to policy 612, curriculum development and administrative guidelines 612.1. All right. And so this also is a second read. Um we do have some updates um again based on statute um and you'll see the statutory recommendations in there in regard to how the curriculum advisory um follows and supports and partners in the curriculum development and guidelines around those. Um there are um also components removed and again those are all based on updated statutes. Um, similar to to to pre-answer the other question, um, yes, we will also have this one double checked by attorney as we we move this forward also. Um, but we're not looking for a recommendation today. Just another, um, opportunity for folks to review. Any other questions? Since we had the implied question on this one, has DACK already reviewed this? There's a meeting this week. I don't know if they're um, I reviewing it in that meeting. That is a great question. I will double check with uh Alex Ward who will be overseeing and facilitating that meeting. And the expectation is when it's reviewed by committee is that it's brought to the committee for review versus just sent to them. Um I think it depends on the level of importance of the policy. I would say this is this actually talks about the functioning of DACA. Um, and so that would be something that should be probably sent or um, and conversation. Um, who makes a determination of how important the policy is? Yeah, you open the door on that. Um, yeah. Yeah. I'd like to hear voice from DACA on this. Maybe that's a better way of saying it. Well, I just the reason why I think he was asking related to activity based and we don't have a system. And coincidentally enough, I happen to get a policy email from another committee that I'm on and they were like, "Hey, please review this." And I'm like, I'm always curious like I think it's great when you send it, but people are inclined to respond back to the person and not necessarily reply all, which then you miss that engaging back and forth, right? And so, um, I hear what you're saying about important policies and if they're not important, why are they a policy? So there are those be surprised by this answer but there's a lot of statutes and other things that we are required to have in document you know to document that we have a policy that says whatever like our annual vote that we're following laws. True. Thank you for that. Yeah. There are some that are just straight out of policy language for which the input isn't as significant or important. This as Mr. Spencer was pointing out this actually has to do with decaying role and responsibility um which some got redefined by statute but we want to make sure that they are aware of this and and have voice and input to that. So I did just uh Mr. Ward director of secondary is facilitating that meeting. I just informed him and I actually added 610 to that also. Um so DACA will see 610 and 612 um in their upcoming meeting this week. Fantastic. And I will look at uh the system by which we gather input because I do feel social awkward uncomfortable in in my response to that saying that it it really depends. Um which brought to light that I don't feel like we have as clean of a system of committee review that I would like. So or I'm not aware of it as well as I should be. So I will have a better answer next time you ask that question. Thank you. Any more comments or questions on our old business? If not brings us to new business and our first item is resolution of support for community partners grant for safe school. Yes. Um, and as you know, these are things that require us uh to have either past resolutions or past motions in relation to so we're asking the board to affirm their support um to accept our partnership with the city of Bloomington um and a grant to purchase an adaptive bike and equipment library for safe routes to schools um which would then allow us to partner in a grant equip uh grant partnership agreement um with the city of Bloomington. would allow us to um become closer to 100% participation in bike education for students in our DAPE and our PE classes. Um so that is it is basically a no downside positive opportunity for us to partner with Bloomington and receive a grant to support our kids. I think my only question on this this is specifically with the city of Bloomington, not Bloomington schools. This is correct. City of Bloomington Community Partners Grant is what it's called. Yep. Thank you. And do we have an amount on the grant? Um I believe it is to provide I'm not 100% sure of the dollar figure, but it allows us to purchase um in partnership um both that adaptive bike and the equipment library. Um and so sometimes what these grants are is up to whatever cost it is to purchase that. Got it. Um, more questions, comments. If not, we'll look for a I move that we pass the resolution as presented. Second. You're jumping at this one. We have a motion to approve the the resolution by director Paul and a second by director Cole. Any further discussion? If not, this is my favorite thing in the planet is a resolution which means it's a roll call vote and I'll start to my left with director Cole I. Director Spencer I. Director Liss I. Director Banks Cupro I. Director Paulus I. And the chair votes I. And we have a motion for a resolution approved for support of community partners grant for safe rest to school. Next item is our first read of policy 502 resident and non-resident student enrollment and administrative guideline 502.1 and two and three. Um but those are additional attachments. And so uh this is the policy about resident and non- studentent resident en or non-resident student enrollment and the processes and appendices and forms um that we utilize and currently our communication marketing and enrollment team are reviewing them. Um it walks through the methodologies by which um students are able to enroll. Um it talks about um how non-resident students are able to enroll um based on state law. Um and then if there are methodologies by which we pause, which we did this year, or other ways that open enrollment or enrollment occur um that is laid out here. Um then we also have the forms, the things that are expected um and the processes um that occur there. So you'll see some updates as we move forward in some of these forms and some of the components. Um, but this is a first read and so just as a reminder that's to familiarize all of us um or refamiliarize us um as we go through the policy review process. Any questions? Initial questions. Don't need them. If not, that brings us to donations. All right, so we have three tonight. RHS girls basketball team received a donation of $3,8646 from the Spartan Foundation for warm-up uniforms. So, thank you to the Spartan Foundation. Uh the RHS Spartan food shelf received a donation of $3,700 from the Empty Bowl student art show. So, thank you for the team putting on empty bowls and to our generous uh participants. And then Richfield Middle School received a donation of a TV valued at $200 for the Beacons Network. So, thank you to the Beacons Network, our partners. Move that we accept the donations with gratitude. A second. We have a motion by director Palace and a second by Director Spencer to accept the donations with gratitude. All in favor say I. I. I. I. All post please say nay. The chair votes I. And we accept the aforementioned donations with gratitude. Next brings us to advanced planning. And our first item is legislative update. Um so we are um looking at multiple proposals for ed omnibus bills. Um one in the legislature, one in the senate, and one from the governor. Um in the next couple of weeks, those will really get narrowed down as to what is most likely. Uh the positive thing we do know um 2.74 was determined to be the percent of inflationary increase of the general fund formula. Um and so that is a positive. Um and so that was determined. Um but that could be chipped away at through reductions in other areas. Um we don't know yet what will be the list of mandates or the list of other things that are funded. Um and so we'll just continue to monitor. We should have a good picture in the coming few weeks and certainly by the end of May. Um but the state is not required to have a balanced budget until I believe July 1st um or the end of the session whenever that would be. Um and so um we will monitor and keep an eye on the impact on us. Uh the other thing uh the state of Minnesota received um notification um and I'm only sharing this because the commissioner did already respond um that states are expected to share their compliance um with federal civil rights laws. um that has been publicized in the news as something related to DEI. Um but the communication suggested that um states and schools are required to share that they are complying with civil rights laws. Um and so in a letter shared by Commissioner Jet just this evening, um he and MDE have responded to the federal government that they have always complied with civil rights laws, um that they have been following federal laws and federal guidelines and will of course continue to do so. Um and so um just wanted to make you aware of that um because there is a lot of that banding about back and forth in the news. You want to comment about the day at the capital? That was super exciting. That's go. Oh, you're leaving that. I don't sure. Uh, but yeah. I mean, multiple people went since our Was that since our last meeting? No, you guys have gone before, right? Okay. Yeah, you had gone before the last meeting. I went on March then. So did Mr. Liss. Yes. So then go for it. I I don't have much to share. I was more just you talk better on mic. Steve and I and Craig, good words, went to the Capitol and met with a couple legislators. Uh, also listened to just some legislators talk, which was actually just interesting to hear and kind of just talk to kind of other school boards. And I think it's great to from my perspective to catch up and talk to the other boards to understand even how they operate and kind of issues that they're facing um, and just kind of how they operate. So, it's for me, I look it as a good networking opportunity. And my suggestion too would be if you guys ever get an opportunity to network with other schoolboard members from other districts, by all means take that opportunity. Would you like agree with that? I would agree with that. The um MSBA coffee and conversations or other MSBA meetings where they're talking about negotiations or other things, whatever the topic is, you get a good mix of folks um and and good conversation. You find out how they do it. Um, and sometimes we feel great leaving those meetings. Every now and then we we learn something that maybe we could do better. Uh, no more legislative updates. We'll move to information and questions from the board, suggested future agenda items. Just move right along. Future meeting dates which I did not write down but is in our agenda is April 21st. Uh we are lucky enough to have a board study session that evening. Correct. Um we had talked about um following up with Christine Robleski talking about um our ongoing partnership and teamwork as a board. Um and then also looking at uh board strategic planning dialogue about how do we set goals and how do we uh strategically move ourselves forward. So that'll be the focus of the study session um coming up in two weeks and then we will have an opportunity for public comment if anybody's interested and then our following meeting will be May 5th, right? Which is crazy that we're in May already. That brings us to item number seven, which is close session as law for 13 DO3 labor negotiation strategies. But we do not have a need for close session tonight. As such, I would entertain a motion to strike close session from the agenda. So moved. Second. We get everybody to jump on that one. We have a motion by Director Cole and a second by Director Paulus to amend the agenda, which we should have done earlier. My bad. Uh, but we're doing it now to cancel the close session. I figure you don't want to discuss that. All in favor, please say I. I. I. All post, please say nay. The chair votes I. And we will amend the agenda to cancel our closed session. And actually, I should have clarified and cancel the reopening of the meeting, which you're good with that. No, you're good. Okay, I'm good. Okay. Uh, that brings us to the final item of business on the agenda is to adjourn. It's so rare that we've done this just straight up that I don't even know how to handle this, but it does not require a board vote. I will officially adjure the meeting at 8:51. What just happened?