It is 700 PM on Monday, February 2nd, 2026. And I call to order this regular meeting of the Richfield School Board. Attending this meeting's board attending this evening's board meeting live and in the boardroom are board members Cali Dennis, Haley Tomkins, not in order here uh Ken Liss Kirk Spencer and I'm board chair Eric Carter. We're joined by our student representatives Vanessa Rosa Miguel and Tenia Breenidge. Also at the table we have Superintendent Stevenski and assistant to the superintendent Cassandra Quam. Other members of the district leadership were in attendance um and may be participating throughout the meeting as well. Richfield Public Schools mission is to inspire and empower each individual to learn, grow, and excel. And we aim to keep that focus at the heart of our discussions this evening. Thanks to all of you joining us live here and in the boardroom. We also 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 business of the district. Our first item of business this evening is to approve the agenda before us. As approved, the agenda is a routine business item. I'll briefly pause to see if there are any comments or questions regarding the agenda. >> Hearing and seeing none, is anybody prepared to move the agenda as presented? >> So move. >> Second. >> Thank you. We have a motion by director Dennis, a second by director Spencer. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> All post please say nay. The chair votes I and the agenda is approved. Uh we now move to the information and proposals non-action item section of the agenda. Uh as tonight is a non-public comment night. Um I will remind people that the next opportunity for public comment will be on Tuesday, February 17th at our next meeting. Uh if people have public comment with that, we uh move over to Superintendent Yanowski for our superintendent update. >> All right. Three things on the superintendent report. And before I get into a really, really exciting conversation about our vision cards and our district data and my evaluative goals and my overall performance, we're going to start with something even more exciting, which is Principal Mahoney and the Centennial team talking about specialist classes and some of the amazing things going on. So, let's turn it over. Pop those little microphone buttons to green so we can hear you. And you are on the microphone and take it away. >> Thank you. Good evening, everyone. I'm Colleen Mahoney, the principal at Centennial, and it's great to be here. And as I was considering what will I share with you tonight, I know I've come in and talked about literacy and talked about um math, and we've talked about in other years um um all kinds of academics. And so, one thing that we're focusing on at Centennial every year, but we're pushing it a little harder this year, is our specialist classes. and how do they support the math and the literacy goals of the classrooms? And so I have some helpers from the student council here tonight to help us with that. And they're going to read some things for you as we get going. So So I just wanted to quickly share that the typical school schedule in our elementary schools uh is 60 minutes of reading and 60 minutes of math. And you can see that and it's a full day and students get 60 minutes of specialist time. K1 and two and three get two halfhour specialists a day and the uh fourth and fifth graders get a full hour of each one. And so it's it's a busy day. It's a it's a jam-packed day and we try to work together and um support each other through all of this. So each of our specialist classes plans according to the Minnesota state standards for that specialist class. And so an hour of specialist a day in music, art, PE, and media or library. So I'm gonna turn it over over to Vivie to get us started with how do specialist classes support literacy and math skills for students. Let's get this nice and close. >> Thanks. >> Hello, my name is Vivie and I am in fifth grade at Centennial Elementary School. In our daily school schedule, we have one hour of specialist classes each day. The specialist classes are art, music, gym, and media. We know that media or library supports literacy. In the library, we share books. Check out books to take home and learn about authors and illustrators. February is I love to read month, so we will be doing lots of fun reading activities in our classrooms and in the library. But tonight, we are going to share with you how other specialist classes support both both literacy and math. >> Thank you, Evie. Brianna, you can you can grab her chair. Okay. Yeah. And we go to the next slide. This is Brianna. She's going to talk to you a little bit about art. >> Hello, my name is Brianna. Hello, my name is Briana and I am in fifth grade at Centennial Elementary School. I'd like to tell you a little about art class at Centennial. In art class, we do many activities related to literacy and math. For example, we learn new vocabulary words such as collage, sculpture, and form. We read about famous artists and their works. We also read books that are related to projects we are working on. For example, for math and art class, we use measurements, shapes, and patterns to create our own works of art. This includes using tools like rulers for measuring and stencils for creating shapes and patterns. Thank you, Brianna. You can go back. And as you can see, I just shared some pictures of what goes on in the art room while she was reading. So, we can go to the next slide. This is Jerlin, and she's going to talk with us about music class. Real, you have to step real close. There you go. Okay. Hello, my name is Julian and I am in fifth grade at Centennial Elementary School. I'd like to tell you a little I' like to tell you a little about music class in Centennial. In music class, a lot of our lessons are directly related to literacy and math. We read books based on music lyrics and music history. We learn about compound >> composers >> composers and music instruments. We read lyrics as we learn songs and make many of the songs we use in math. No, music class are connected to the literacy units we do in our home room classes. Connecting music class to math is easy. We use fractions to learn about notes values. We count and add when filling measures and according time to time signatures. We do many activities with patterns such as repeated parts of so songs, music beats and clapping or other hand movements. >> Thank you. And now Jenna >> and Jenna is going to talk to you about FIAD class physical education. >> Hello, my name is Jenna and I am in fifth grade at Centennial Elementary School. I'd like to tell you a little about gym class at Centennial. Literacy and math are important skills for physical education classes. We have a vocabulary word while in the gym and Mr. Chris refers to it when we discuss terms like intensity, endurance, and leadership. When we learn a new skill, it often comes with new words, too. For our bowling unit, we learn meanings of the words as they related to bowling, such as lane, split, and spare. Also, during our bowling unit, we learn how bowling is scored, which takes mental math skills. We use math in many ways during PE class. For example, to figure out how many laps it takes around the gym to make a mile, we first have to measure the perimeter of the gym in feet. We search how many feet are in a mile and do the math. And we came up with 26.4 trips around the gym to equal one mile. >> Thank you, Jenna. So, that's kind of our whole school approach to uh literacy and math. We know that there's a responsibility on all of the staff to get our kids to our reading and math goals. Not just the home room teachers, but all different departments working together and talking together. And so the last picture is our um meeting that we had on January 26, our professional development day. Centennial did a data dig and that meant all of the teachers from every every teacher in the building and our school social worker were all in the library together working together looking at the data from our latest uh winter screeners and deciding where we were going to go from there and how we were going to meet everybody's needs. So that's it for our centennial program. Thank you very much for having us tonight and I thank the girls for helping me out. First start off by saying thank you children. We appreciate you guys coming in. Great job. I'll start off the clapping. Right. We should clap for each one of you, but I thought about doing a standing ovation. Might be a bit much. Great job. Questions from the board. I have something. >> Ladies, it is so good to see you. I used to teach at Centennial and I've known them since probably second grade. So now you're in fifth grade and you're headed to to middle school. Good to see you, too. Um, Cullie, did you know that when you're in middle school, and for Jenna, I have a challenge for you. Find out how many laps it'll take to get around the gym to do a nautical mile. Okay, it's not that hard. It's actually easier. Um, but next year when you guys are in middle school, you can actually get involved with policym here on the board. We have um sessions once a quarter where we allow students in the middle school and I know we've had sixth graders in there um to come in and and have a voice in how we how we do policy. And it'll be policies that really affect you guys. So again, it's great to see you. You're all grown up. So thank you. So yes, thank you all for coming. Was it Eevee? Is that who spoke first? >> Vivv. Okay. I'm loving your Centennial shirt and I'm sealing Eric's Thunder because he often asks for shirts. But if you guys have a fundraiser and you're selling shirts to parents, make sure you send us an email, too, because a lot of times we'll buy a shirt. And then my other question is, Jenna, you said that you learned what lying laying is in bowling. I don't know what that is. Can you tell me what laying is in bowling? >> Got it. Oh, lane. L A N E. what lane you're in. I thought it was like a bowling pin laying out in front of the other ones blocking it. I understand now. Thank you. Thanks for coming. >> I'd like to say thank you also ladies for coming. You represent ladies very well and I'm just so amazed at, you know, what strategies students are using to learn these days and um especially the vocabulary. I'm just so amazed and I think you guys are doing a wonderful job over there. Thank you, Callie. >> Yeah, and I'll just say I thank you all so much for being here. I know it takes guts to show up and speak in a microphone and I'm sure you all have been preparing and I see family in the back too. Shout out to families for making this happen. Um, so but yeah, just um, thank you all and it's really always exciting for us to see and hear from you all obviously, but I think also just to see how what happens when a school is working really on purpose to weave everything together. Um, and that learning doesn't happen just in one. You're not only learning math in math class, right? We learn math doing all sorts of things. I like to say at my house, we learn math by baking cookies. um you know so right you never we never stop learning right and so shout out to you all for reminding us of that and showing us the way that happens on purpose inside your school >> okay sorry okay I was going to say yeah thank you for coming uh I went to Centennial growing up so I stand by the fact that specialists uh do support literacy and math skills actually through Miss Hansen's class that I was able to learn all the 50 states with the 50 Nifty songs. So, yeah, I think Centennial does do a great job. It was one of my favorite parts of my day growing up, too. So, thank you for coming. >> Well, I was kind of hoping that the kids would sing as a result of like their presentation. They didn't, but I mean, do you want to sing us a 50 song? >> Oh, I'm just kidding. >> Yeah, maybe some other time. >> Yeah, you're going to think about that and get back to us. I don't put you on the spot. >> Yeah, >> you had to take it, man. >> Do it. Yeah. more questions or comments. Again, thank you guys. Appreciate you guys coming in. I see this is a new tactic of the different leaders of the schools to bring kids in so I don't ask hard a question. So, good job for both of you. Thank you again. Oh, one more clap. Great job, guys. >> That's quite all right. I mean, again, Steve's comment is we've got super exciting stuff coming up next. So, >> no, I think I said exciting stuff next. Super exciting with Centennial. >> Oh, yeah. Sorry, my bad. >> All right, so we thank our team at Centennial for a spectacular presentation. Um, appreciate them and appreciate their work they're doing in uh art, music, physical education, >> and media. Thank you. Thank you. I'm sorry. I was slightly distracted by director Tomkkins math lesson. And I was hoping that that the cookies come in as the result of the math. >> If I'm allowed to bring cookies, I I bake when I'm stressed out. So, there's a lot of baked goods at my house. So, if it's appropriate for me to bring cookies, I will do it. >> I'm seeing acknowledgement from the board chair and smiles from the other board members. So, um >> very much allowed. >> Yeah, very much allowed. All right, we are going to transition into vision cards. Um, and so this is a relatively dense two presentations coming back to back. Uh, vision cards are um the way that we report publicly on our progress related to our strategic plan. And so this is the final uh midyear update of our of our vision cards prior to a new strategic plan and us developing new uh vision cards. It's a public accountability system and it's a way that as we look at this data uh we remain focused on our top priorities. Uh each of our vision cards um covers one of our strategic plan strategies. So in each of the vision cards uh one will talk about academics, one will talk about activities, one will talk about business and operations, one about climate and culture and one about communication and marketing. Each of those comes with a summary statement that describes um but then there are specific goals and areas within each of those areas. Uh each of them has three pages. So I am not presenting everything but in the packet today you will see spreadsheets that share with you progress, spreadsheets that share with you where we're not making the progress we would want. You also see a list of all of the key actions that we are taking. Each card itself has three pages. um an overview of where we're at, which is our progress report, a list of those key actions. So, if you're thinking, hm, how do we do some of these things that we're trying to accomplish, you'll see a list of the actions that are being taken, and then you'll also see that rubric for assessing how are we doing overall. So, in the packet has the vision cards in their entirety. Uh the way to take a look at them and read them, uh the key is now really focusing on colors and focusing on that little band with the R in the middle. um areas that have specific update data, you're going to see the text in red. And so data that is in the traditional text data of black um are things that we don't have new measures for or new data at this time. Um which is why we present a couple times a year because there is summary data that is presented that will come at the end. Uh so we might not have updates. So updates are in red. And then as we started our plan, we set our baseline to level zero where that cute little R is in the center. When we are making progress in a positive direction, you'll see it moving towards the one and two. If our progress isn't going the direction we want it to, um it will go to the negative one and -2. Um and so we move that line as we move towards vision or towards areas that we have significant concern. So, as we look at vision card one and we're thinking about academics, um the areas in red for us to focus, we're really looking at increasing our enrollment in college credit classes and we do have some data on that. And we also have data around the demographics increasing the number of students proficient on the fifth grade fastbridge CBM reading and um reducing the gap and ensuring that our demographics are being supported by our programming and then increasing the number of eighth grade students scoring proficient on the A-reading assessment in FastBridge and also making sure that those align to our demographics. Also, um on vision card one, class sizes. Um oh, and you'll see um let's go back one card. I'm sorry, MissWam. You'll notice um that for the diagram, we did u move our progress forward a little bit, and you'll see the supporting data in a second. Um there are other goal areas. So, there are five areas in here. Um in academics, maintaining class size averages at 25 elementary, 28 middle, and 30 in high school. Um you'll see that we have new on jumping number three because there isn't new data. Uh we do have data on number four the number of students receiving the biiteracy seal. And then finally uh students learning about post-secary options and ensuring that FAFSA and dream applications grow um and match our demographics. So those are the red areas. Note that you'll see a number of additional areas like increasing the graduates enrolled in postsecary. those remain in black text because we don't have new data to share tonight. Um so going down you're going to see some of the details of that progress enrollment in college credit classes. Um and we are comparing versus the first year of our strategic plan. Uh one of the things that we've heard as feedback from our board members is we also want to in our next strategic plan and our next reporting compare also yeartoyear as we move ourselves forward. Um so we did um decrease slightly and you'll notice in the text uh we decreased slightly from uh 62% of our students or 702 back at the start of our plan down to 682 or 59% but uh it is important to note that it was an increase from last year and so we are measuring that to the extent that we can. Unfortunately, we did also note that our our gap between um white students and BIPO students uh increased and so we're really focusing on that engagement and enrollment for our second semester. Proficiency at FastBridge. Um not only did our proficiency increase um from 47%, you'll notice 223 on that, that's because that was the first year we implemented FastBridge, up to 53% um this year in the winter. Um and so you'll see those gains. Uh gaps for BIPO students also decreased 16% to 13%. Similarly, proficiency on fastbridge A-reading um increased also from 39% in winter to 56% this year. Uh gap for BIPO students decreased from 23% down to 12%. Now I'm going to pause for a second and share that when I saw this data, I started jumping up and down and was super excited and then I stopped. And then what I realized is because this is going to come back in my goals about 20% of our students are not currently enrolled in our in-person classes. Uh they are virtual. We are not able to assess all of our students with FastBridge online. And when we do, it is not necessarily as valid as being in front of us. So, I want us to caution both in this and in my goals to taking any of our assessment scores and actually making full uh decisions based on them because we just don't think they're fully valid at this time. >> So, what you're saying is the assessments were taken after the surge. >> The winter assessment window opened in January. Yeah. >> And so, our fast bridge assessments were in January. We do not have 100% engagement. and you'll actually one of my goals which we're going to judge me on but I'll ask for a little leeway from the board um is engagement and completing assessment in the assessment window our assessment completion is much lower than typical because of our students who aren't able to be present uh that also as you can guess um and I'll just play it out um impacts our assessment scores if you think about students who are newer to our country or newer to English they don't tend to score on our assessments as high um and So our scores might be artificially inflated. There is also a number of BIPOC students and more BIPO students are in virtual online and so that also might have artificially shrunken our gap. And so I want us to really caution making any conclusions from this. So while this is spectacular data, I don't think we want to really celebrate this until we have a bigger picture of our entire student population. >> Probably also then need that same asterk next year when we're looking at this data. On the positive side, yes, we're going to be jumping to a new baseline next year. So, yes, we will actually see as we look at this particular and especially winter, fall, we have belief in the validity of our fall data, we because we were able to assess all of our students. We are hopeful that by spring it will be all of our students again. In winter, we are not. So, we will have to absolutely keep that in mind. Class size averages have been great. Uh we are averaging 22 elementary, 23 middle, and 25 at high school. So, we've been able to continue that focus um and continue to do really well there. Um and we were up to 99 students receiving the seal of biiteracy. Um that baseline was 35 and 99 we just continue to uh do better. Um and similarly with FAFSA uh we are up to 63% of the seniors of class of 2025 completed it or a dream act application an increase of 53.9%. Um and that gap did remain the same. So that is the backup data on each of those from academics. I'm going to do the same for business and operations um and then I will take larger questions um in regard to our business and operations card and again reminding us that fonts in color other than uh traditional black text are the ones we have updated data. So increasing the percentage of RPS staff hires who are black, indigenous or people of color. You'll see that continues to grow. um maintaining number three, district energy performance remained flat um and increasing the number of students participating in meals per month. That did as of this measurement move up and as we now know from our new um report from our study session, we are taking a precipitous drop in the number of meals um going to our students. Uh we wanted to focus on our auditive practices to eliminate negative findings. Uh you'll notice that that moved also in a positive direction and the backup data on page or slide 12. Uh BIPOC staff hires and you're noticing as we get into the 20s for overall um BIPO staff our new hires were 2% greater than the overall of our staff members but those numbers are starting to narrow. Um and those are things that we have to continue focusing on. Uh we continue to receive a similar uh benchmark score from um district energy performance. Um and so that has stayed about the same. Um it did increase at times um but that is currently at the same baseline. Participation in meals we did um participate and here's that asterisk from November 9 uh 2019 um increased from 49 to 51% and then lunch from 65 to 80%. Although again those numbers are down and you'll notice our November 25 uh that is reported since before the surge. Um and then uh we had had two minor findings previously in our 2020 or in our 2023 audit. Our 24 audit showed one minor finding uh which is a decrease from that previous year and so that moved in a positive direction. Um, all right. Then I'm going to take a pause and see if there are questions before I jump into any of the other cards because I've noticed historically it can be a lot um to run through all of this at the same time. Um, and we do separate it out in the spring when we're doing our final um, but we're presenting um, to the extent that we can in the midterm. I'll just take a 10-second pause and if anybody jumps in, otherwise I can All right, then we're going to keep on moving and we will go to climate and culture on slide 13. Um, we do have new data on decreasing the number of office referrals and as I shared earlier, we continue to see um overall engagement increasing um overall behavior incidents is decreasing, increasing the number of staff members whose main role it is to support social emotional learning. Um, and we do have a new measure on that. Um and then on the next page in the middle on page 14 um area five um increasing the num percentage of student conferences completed per semester and that isn't an area uh where we had the data go the direction we would like. Uh office referrals overall um we continue to have that as a drop. So semester 1920 we decreased from 729 office referrals which was.18 per student to 241.06 06 per student. Um and our gap is slightly smaller. It's 9% uh versus an 11% gap from the baseline year. And historically it has just consistently dropped dropped dropped um since we have come out of CO. Um goal two staff members supporting social emotional learning. And as you know um we continue to engage in that. Um our behavior is showing and and our engagement continues to show strong numbers. We did increase from 38 to 39 this year. I will forewarn the board. I do not anticipate that number to stay at that um longer term. And as we begin to look at um continuing to wind down some of those COVID funded positions, those are some of the supports that we had that were funded that way. Those are some of the things that I do not anticipate we will be able to have all of those for such an extended period of time. Um and then this is one of those asterric types of ones. Um, elementary conferences which always remains the same remained at 93% um to the baseline level of 94%. Uh, secondary conferences and as a reminder that was sort of a significant high uh during COVID was at 63% uh was 51% this year uh which was actually a significant jump from semester 2 of last year. And fall conferences always show um more engagement at the secondary um than they than they do in the spring. Um two more uh one more area to jump into in our final vision card in regard to communication marketing in just one area or one point. Uh increasing RPS market share percentage. You'll also see that slight drop um enrollment overall uh we decreased um from the market share of 65% back in 2021 down to a 62%. market share means the number of students living within the city of Richfield or Richfield public schools uh who attend and engage in Richfield public schools. So that is our final vision card measure. And so with that, um, I'm just going to remind you before I open up for questions. In the board packet, um, if you continue on right after, you will see, um, basically you'll see the card itself, you will see the key actions. Um, and I strongly encourage board members to review um, all of those things that we are doing. And so if you look at, for example, our academics on um in our board packet, you'll see all of the things that we've done in creating learning walks, professional learning communities, equity trainings, fastbridge training, um all the things that we're doing um to try to achieve those goals. And then you will see the specific spreadsheet that shows how are we measuring, how are we measuring progress, what are those lines. Um and those were drawn up um at the start of this plan. We will be switching over to new ones with new measures and new new targets as we move to a new strategic plan in the future. I'll stop talking. >> I have a quick question for the um the social emotional learning positions. What are some of those positions in the schools currently? >> Got it. So, we have social workers um and we have significantly expanded the number of social workers at each of our schools. We have counselors in both of our secondaries and we are up a couple of counselors also. Uh we have added uh social emotional staff um into each of our buildings and some buildings have more than one. Uh their main job is supporting um students in the class or outside of the class. Ideally they push them back in um from a social emotional perspective. If they're struggling um they'd work to deescalate, coach, discuss and bring them back into class. And so that would that would be a quicky rundown of most. >> Perfect. Thank you. >> I got two questions. One, 51% upper secondary school conferences. That doesn't seem that seems about normal across the board, but are we doing anything to try to increase them? Do we do them online if they want? >> Uh we do offer blended. Uh there are conferences in person and conference opportunity to do those online. M >> um we do a significant amount of outreach and communication to engage in conferences. Um and then uh one of the things that just from a social emotional perspective is different at middle and high than is different at elementary. In elementary you have one teacher for the most part. >> Middle and high school you have seven. Um and so it causes a much more connected relationship between parent, family and teacher at elementary. Um whereas we do a very good job of doing that at secondary we see more a my child my student is doing well in school I don't need to go to conferences um and so it changes some of that dynamic changes um over that period of time >> second question market share are we that much different from any other district >> so if you were to analyze what you find is is more diverse districts or d uh districts with more student and family diversity have lower market share. Um in my doctoral dissertation essentially there's a concept called white flight um which is families who are white sometimes move um to a district with a higher white population. Um it is an impact of systemic racism. It is an impact of the open enrollment law in the state of Minnesota. Um, and so if you were to go to Minneapolis, St. Paul, first ring suburbs, many of them have very similar data to us. Um, the other thing that happens is you will find that, um, charter schools tend to open in very specific areas, um, with very specific goals in those areas. Um, and so we tend to have a very significant number of charter schools um, in our city. they don't tend to open as many uh three four suburbs out. Uh they tend to open in the metro and so those are kind of the factors that impact that. >> Okay. Thanks. >> Um back to the question on student conferences. I'm curious how that's measured because I think that there are two sessions of conferences at the high school in the fall and two in the spring. Is that counting total number of students that show up or is it just one of those nights? >> Um, it was it's combined >> combined. So if so if a student showed up to one that counts. Good. Okay. That's how I'd want to do it. Um, and then as we look to these vision cards in in the in the future and we redo our district's um strategic review, um, I'd like to to um see some of the the academic um metrics look a little bit more longitudinal. What I mean by that is let's let's say we have a student that comes to this country for the first time. They don't speak English. That first year they're not going to perform well on that particular test, but their second year or their third year, we might see an increase, right? And so I think that one of the ways that we can measure success within our district is um seeing that increase over a three-year period of time. >> So it's it's and I don't want to say we're not counting the kids that are only here the first year if you and if they leave, but I think that there's there's credit that is within these numbers. I hope um and I can't see that says we over time we are really impacting these kids because I think we can use that as a we could probably use it as marketing. We could probably say stay in the district for three plus years and you're going to see your kid blossom, right? It also might change the way that we look at those kids the first year. we might discover some things about kids coming into our district the very first year that we could do differently, right? Um and so just looking at kind of I don't know what the window is whether it's two years or four years or three years. Um but to to look at that so that's all I had. >> Sounds good. >> Other questions comments? Uh so I'm gonna go back. Sorry, Steve. It's there's a lot like you said. >> Um for the college bearing credits. >> Yes. >> Um a couple questions on that. So when when do we check their enrollment status? >> Um Miss Colum, do we know when we gathered the data on credit bearing classes? >> Perfect. Got it. So I'm just checking to see is like is it towards the end? So it's like close to the end of the semester versus like at the beginning where they're >> certainly well beyond the drop period. >> Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Thank you. Um just curious kind of like how many stay and then do do we also so um we're tracking but we're not necessarily worried about grades do we if someone says pass fail and they fail or FS are we tracking that? And I just more like are kids getting kind of in over their heads as well like it's great that this stat that we're pushing for but we don't just want to push for pushing. Yes. So, we the high school when they put together their work um usually share the it's called the value statement, the CIS value statement. Um and >> we usually share that with the board and what it generally shows is around 2,000 credits and somewhere in the $1.2 million saved in tuition range. Um, we don't at present pull a specific I don't think we have a report that pulls specific course pass rate in that versus other classes. Um, but as we think about um as we think about as as Mr. Spencer shared as we think about future vision cards or measures that the board would like us to focus on how the strategic plan works happens is we are gathering that input. We will have a draft. Um we will have the areas of focus and then I assume we then have a board study session probably this summer um where we talk about um what are some of the things from a measures perspective that we think as a board that you all would like to see um that reflect some of these things uh to make sure that as we're drafting the next vision cards uh board members are engaged at the table to talk about what do I want to see reported on a regular basis over the next five or so years. Okay. And then uh I guess as we want to see just total numbers always good unfortunate to see a little bit of decline not huge. Then the question is is any reason why that gap's growing? And I feel like I've asked that question before from a trending perspective. I'm kind of curious. Has it gotten worse? I guess I don't necessarily need an answer now because you don't necessarily know, >> but um from 5 to 11% seems to be pretty big. Um >> yeah, the challenge of so there are year-to-year fluctuations that happen. Um that hasn't been the pattern. Um one of the things that we are working our way through. So college in the schools is very rigid in who they allow to teach certain classes and the classes that we are allowed to offer. Um, and so I will need to gather more information, but I am pretty sure um, from talking to Mr. Harris, um, who is one of our CIS connects that one of our classes that has typically engaged a significant diverse population was ended by the U of M. Um, which really changed some of the demographics of our participation um, and was out of our control. Um, and then there are other classes we are working to add in, but but those are some of the factors that can be hard. The U OFM can decide we can't offer certain classes anymore. And I can I'll have that information for the board um by the time I write my Friday letter to share with you, but that is one of the things that has impacted us. >> Do do we have any sway in what they do for what they offer for CS classes? >> We do not. We are well, I shouldn't say we have none. Uh, there is a CIS advisory group. We have we go to that regularly. Um but they are the ones who ultimately end up making the decisions regardless of what voice may be. Um >> and we have shared with them some of the things that um are different. So we are far and away the most diverse participant. Um we have the most students of color percentage- wise engaged in college in the schools classes across the entire state. Um and so they love having us in classes. um we are very good for their data as they're talking about racial equity at the University of Minnesota. Um at the same time, we will push them with very challenging things like you have a ceiling on this class of 25 students. Um our classes have to have 30 students. So, um that's not an equitable practice. Um and so they're challenged by that and will then push back to say, well, the college class can only have this many students in it because that's what's the best practice. and we'll say yes, the high school class should have 10 fewer students in it, too, but we can't fund that. >> Um, and so they set certain rules that we certainly can push on. Um, and we work very well together and ultimately they decide. Uh and then my la last question um ju just on the culture and the office visits um you laugh at me because I don't remember dates apparently that that's a precoid number right >> the 1920 >> so um 1920 we saw 729 >> yep >> for officer ferals seems pretty high I mean were we well I mean arbitrary like if I'm just looking at numbers so I I don't know, right? There's no context kind of before or after. Was that like a spike year or was that >> No, we believe so. We didn't have the same gathered data prior to this. Um but that was much more common numbers >> was 700, 800, 900. >> Uh it spiked way up after CO. Um then a couple years later got back down there and then dropped significantly and dropped significantly again. >> Okay. Um and so it has continued to improve >> um as we've continued to improve our culture and climate. >> Great. So then we can expect this going forward. Thank you. >> Hopefully >> uh we believe and I hope it's not a strategy. Uh these are our current numbers. We believe we will continue on with these numbers. Yes. >> Okay. Any more questions or comments? I had a question about the uh number of students participating in school meals. Is it does it have anything or maybe you can tell me what are some of the reasons why that number has decreased? Is it because there were changes made to the school lunches or not as many students? >> Um going >> goal number four. >> Back up. Yep. I am taking a look. Goal number four. And so we have more students that have participated, but since the co s or since the ice surge uh we've we've dropped down 560 meals a day uh for lunch similar for breakfast and that is because we have 800 students not attending um who are attending at home. Um overall um overall our nutrition services program has actually significantly improved if you go back. So I'm looking at goal for so students participating in breakfast went from 49% to 51% so a small gain um students participating in lunch went from 65% to 80% so a significant gain and now if we were to measure today because this was from November um it would be way down from there um and again that is solely because we have kids who aren't able to come to school >> no question do we maybe send breakfast to them or is there how are doing without >> we are unable to from a legal perspective have people eat food off our site. Um and so we are not able to take our school lunch or our school breakfast and feed people who aren't able to come here. Um at the same time we have hundreds of food drops a day going on at this point. Um, and so if you walk out, I'm not sure if there are gigantic amounts of bags of groceries as you walked in today or if those were already fully distributed, but each day we are receiving um a incredible amount of bags that come into our our area up here. They are then taken to the food shelf. They are then bagged and reallocated and then we have a huge amount of community volunteers in partnership with our school that are delivering on a daily basis. Um, and so that's what we're doing for those families. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. Any more questions? Then it looks like we're on to more fun. >> All right, more fun superintendent goals and my midyear evaluation. Um and so as a reminder, um at there's an evaluation process that goes through um it ends in July, Juneish. Um we then set my goals, which we did, uh prior to the new board members joining. um then I will report now um and then we will move forward. It is based uh similar to Q comp or teacher evaluation uh 35% is related to student achievement. Uh 35% are around process goals and what those are are my leadership of strategic plan activities. Um and then the board um will have a closed session most likely in June um leading to my evaluation and then continuing that process. And so individual performance is also part of that. Um and so as we look at um what those measures are um and I'm going to do a little bit more information because we do have two members who have joined since we did these um increasing the number of students scoring proficient on fifth grade fastbridge CBM. So some of these are going to match our vision cards, some of them are not. some of the process goals will align and most of them will but they will also be the actions that take to lead towards that. Um and so you can see the 24 25 data um in comparison to the 25 26 data um so fifth grade proficiency um students entered in fifth grade reading um at a score similar um with a larger gap than they had last year. we did make those gains um and gap decrease, but I also want to remind us um we really want to look at fall because we're very much questioning what that winter data looks like and how valid our winter data is. So, we started this year with similar achievement in fifth grade and a larger gap and we'll see where we are at the end of the year. Uh similarly, um on a positive note, we started the year in 8th grade at a much higher proficiency level. We had started last year at 41, we started this year at 54. Um and um we had a smaller gap to start this year than we had seen the year before. And so we have very hopeful data as we started our year. Um again, I'm going to show that we have made progress in both of those and reduce gaps. Um and I'm acknowledging that that is not 100% of our students taking the winter data. And so we're not sure of how valid it is. So we want to be excited and not overly excited because we're just not sure. Uh then common assessment and gap closure. Um we're looking at so there are two ways fast bridge measures. One is versus proficiency and the other is growth. And so the first one is proficiency. This one is about growth. And so here um we are looking at fall to spring growth. And we're looking at for students making um typical to aggressive growth. Uh so last year um we uh had 48% um in third grade um and 46% in 8th grade. we do not have mid-year data available and so we're just going to be looking at that um as we continue to move forward. So we're looking for gains uh with no gap um achievement measure math uh math and reading standardized tests and we're really looking at uh both third grade and eighth grade and then also looking at 3 to five reading and six to eight reading and really focusing on that because reading has been the read act and is one of the significant focal points of our system. So we just have baseline data um and comparison for where we are and where our gap is in comparison to the state. So we'll be updating those right before my evaluation as numbers are released. But these are the numbers where we were at the start of the year looking for 3% gains and decreasing of the gap. Um and then finally this one usually shows up in the next couple of months. Um and so this is graduation rap rate. We do not currently have the 2025 rate uh but you will see historic trends uh for the four-year graduation rate and grad rate by demographics. We also post the 5-year and seven-year rate at now it'll be eight-year rate at different points in time. Um but uh this is the one specific to my evaluation and so this number will come out in the next couple of months. So those are the achievement measures um which is making up approximately one-third of my overall evaluation. uh process goals are the things that we do um to try to lead to that. So for example uh we believe that if our administrators are better at using data in guiding their decisions or as student achievement will follow. Um we want to be able to use the fast bridge more effectively and progress monitor more effectively. We want to communicate more about activity fees and scholarships and that was one of the goals that the board shared after our survey from last year. uh we want to maintain representation in our feedback that shows demographic representation across all of our communities and then uh leading the district through phases one and two of redact and then also leading the strategic plan process so we can continue to move into the future. Uh so updates on those goals. Um so as we think about data analysis, we did train our administrators and teacher leaders participating on the 4th of August. Uh we then reviewed school improvement plans. Um and then we have been training our team members on a new dyslexia screener. So for students who aren't proficient, uh we're also um adding the CAPY um assessment and we're teaching our team to do that. Um and then we're also looking at a new data warehouse. And so one of the things that we have learned is is that we need more effective access to our data and more accurate access to our data. And so we're looking at updating our data warehouse to support with that. And so that's what we're doing in data leadership and the steps we've taken. Um here's one where I'm probably not going to meet our goals because of what has occurred. We want 95% of our students to be screened within the appropriate windows and progress monitoring which is supposed to occur twice a month um for our students who need significant intervention. So we have assessments completed at all of our schools but our winter rates and this shows um as we posted up we have about 75% of our students in school every day. Um, we were able to complete 82% of the winter assessments, meaning 18% of our students weren't able to complete it, and most of those are due to ice. Uh, we were in the fall, as you see, we got to 93% and 91% and so we were very close. Um, and we will anticipate if this changes, um, we are hopeful that we can get into a better space for spring. But that's one where I I think we're going to be challenged. It's one of the additional negative impacts of ICE. And and as we think about this impact, if our teachers are able to monitor where our students are at, they're able to change their instruction based on the students needs. So without having that knowledge and having that information, teachers are sort of teaching blind. They're doing their best practices, but they don't know what the student really needs because we didn't have the opportunity to assess them because they aren't able to be in school. So that makes it extra hard. On a positive note, going a couple years back, we were much lower than that 90%. And so, we had made great progress from where we were. Um, and we have been making great progress in that area. Um, and this this new incursion has has made some negative changes there. Um, survey data, uh, we don't have our survey data yet and so I won't have an update on this. Um but we did put in the baseline 62% of our parents uh shared that they are aware of the opportunities for scholarships and there was also a number that said that they uh 68% said they are not an actual barrier but that does mean for 32% of our parents um the fees are a barrier. Um and so we are looking at how do we how do we take away that barrier and then we also had a question from board members to disagregate data. Uh so there is not a large difference um between secondary students and elementary students and their awareness um and or um having that be a barrier. Our survey will come out um in yeah in about a month and a half. Yeah. And so as we are doing this and all of our other work um we continue to uh push forward with our regular business and that survey does come out end of March um which is that next goal which um is to maintain um participation um both in our survey but also in our strategic plan. So, we are continuing on with our regular business and strategic plan. And then we also have baseline data in regard to uh our survey um so we can use that to monitor um for the survey data that we're gathering for next year. We're going to be continuing on with our strategic plan meetings all the way through uh the end of March also. Um and so we're going to keep on moving. Uh some of those things have slowed down. We're trying to maintain our strategic plan work. We're trying to make sure that we have enough engagement. If we don't, we might have to extend the window. Um, but we're going to keep on pushing to do, as one of our staff members asked me today, how do you do your regular work when all of these other things are coming your way? And you have to figure out those priorities. Um, and so we want to make sure that we are handling the here and now and then doing as much of our long-term work as we possibly can. Uh, Reed Act, I'm excited to say we continue to move forward with letters training. Um we have our memorandum agreement with Education Richfield and we are currently in negotiations for we'll sayou number two um for phase 2. Uh that should be happening in the next couple of weeks. Uh we do have 62% who have completed the asynchronous component and 36% that are in progress. So yes I can do that math. That means 2% of our staff have not begun that process and there is some attention being given there. 86% have done units one through four um of the synchronous or live online work. Uh it's important to note that 15 of our newer staff had no training when they came in and so we're working on that with them. Um and we have 40 of them that are already fully complete. Um and so that of those that are still working on completing uh twothirds of them are fully on track to be done by the school year and then the others have decided to try to make things up over the summer uh which we do have supports to do that or in the cohort of our new teachers who are beginning at the start and so we're very pleased with our progress and are continuing to push. Um, and this is a great example of this is was our work that we're continuing to do all at the same time while planning dual virtual online instruction and implementing instruction in per uh in person. Finally, uh last but not least, um strategic planning process, which is to have our plan published by the end of summer 2026 so we can do that work. Um and then there will be a study session after where we begin to craft vision cards. Uh we did share at the board our timeline, our process, our strategic planning input sessions are currently occurring. Uh feedback can be submitted through this entire window online. Um that does look like a staff meeting held at each site. That does look like a community meeting um being connected to each site. That does look like advisories. So for example, I'll be hosting the Spartan Foundation advisory meeting here on Thursday. I will be gathering input from the Spartan Foundation um on Thursday of this week. And so those things continue to move themselves forward. So that is again a lot of information. Uh that is the midyear update on my evaluation process. Um so that is where we are at present. Um all of those things that don't have mid-year data, we will have full data at the end of the year. Um we will also then add data from the parent and staff surveys. those happen in March. Um feedback from direct reports and board members. And so when we get to May June, you will be sent a survey that will be coordinated by chair and vice chair. Uh they will gather information from you all about my performance. They will also gather information from my direct reports. Uh we'll bring that together into a close session and evaluative process where you evaluate my overall performance. And with that, I'll happily stop talking. and leave it open for questions or comments. Thank you for that detailed update. Let's hear from the board. >> Okay. Um yeah, tons of information. Thank you. I I have two questions. Um one is just so as there's so much impact around a lot of these data points given our kind of current crisis in our community or current situation in the community. Um, is there like a we're kind of just if we're just going to be looking to data at the end of the school year, right? There's not an interim assessment period, right? Like there's this one, it's kind of wonky and then in theory at the end of the year, if everything's running normal, then either way, our numbers are impacted through the rest of the school year. >> Correct. Correct. So yes, I will be presenting in June uh where the data stands. Um then I would say the flexibility that you determine how to evaluate that um is up to the board. >> Yeah. >> Um I'm very comfortable with being evaluated. I'm very comfortable with the fact that if this incursion negatively impacts achievement, I'm not going to hide from it. I'm going to call it out. My job is to deliver achievement either way. Um and >> right >> um the board can determine what that looks like evaluatively. Yeah. >> Cool. Okay. And then my other question is not it's just a little bit of a a little existential maybe, but as I'm thinking about strategic planning >> and we're we're undertaking a strategic planning process while facing a federal incursion in our community. Right. So >> correct. >> Just kind of I I don't know. I'm just curious what are the ways in which you're kind of thinking about that leading through that around thinking strategically thinking in the future when the future is so uncertain from a next hour let alone five years from now. Just curious how you guys are kind of thinking about that. So from a strategic planning perspective, we are trying to move forward with meetings to the extent that we can. And so that is gathering broad-based voice. Um I'd say multiple meetings have been postponed or been moved online. Um and so one of the examples of what it looks like is RLFA, Latino Family Association, has moved their strategic planning input session online. Um so we still want to make sure we're gathering people's voices and it's represented. um and doing that in a differentiated way. Um different staff meetings and community meetings have been postponed at different times. We might have to postpone the process. Um >> it's a really hard question. Um it's funny because >> planning and implementing a virtual online program is not in here. Um >> right, >> I'm not asking the board to throw that in there and we're obviously going to be talking about that. that I'll be presenting at our next board meeting, iteration two, and what that looks like. As you all know, I've talked to board members and continue to communicate about what that looks like. We are negotiating agreements with Education Richfield, with our different team members. We are delivering food and doing all of these things. And these aren't things that I'm getting evaluated on. Mhm. >> Um, so I think something I said a little bit earlier is we have to do the regular business of running and organizing and planning for our school district while also dealing with all of this stuff, >> right? >> Um, that's just the job. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Appreciate it. It's just it's not a there's not like a direct answer to that. Just >> something to kind of think about. >> Well, there's a right answer. I'm just kidding. >> Yes, sir. C >> Cassandra, can you jump to slide 49, please? And maybe I'll try to take a swing at answering it, too. Right. I mean, I think um >> page 49. >> Page 493 slides. Thank you. Right. So, I mean, this is um again how it breaks down is the student achievement. So, there's the numbers, the process. I say it wrong. the process that the kind of the goals we said do the things and then board is that subjective piece where we kind of go and we as a group fill out and say how do we think he's doing um and then I think that last piece is the how do you handle the unexpected right because we look as a board we go geez there's a lot of stuff that like was thrown at Steve at the district that we didn't anticipate how were those handled and then that's our opportunity to go ahead and grade that and so each of those different buck buckets right come together to give an overall score uh where we rate Steve and then also we looked at that and then reflected how did it look at different years so um we don't know necessarily the answer today because there's still unknowns and I appreciate that we're still we've got strategic planning in place and we still need to drive towards it so we can't lose sight of it will it be delivered on time or will be delivered on the time that we had hoped it was 6 months ago maybe not but we'll get there and then we'll understand how we get there in the context of everything else going on in the The other thing we do is we try to I try to match I mean I control the evaluation of my direct reports. You all control my evaluation. So I also share with the board what I've done with my team members. So when I find that their goals don't match um I will then adjust. I will either take that off of their measurement um or change how that is measured. So if something unanticipated happens and it creates this whole cascading effect, um we have the ability to stray from different things, but that has to be the supervisor's decision. And as you all know, I have six supervisors. Five of them are here. Miss Cole's not here tonight. And then I have my direct reports. that each supervisor gets to decide as a group how they want to provide that flexibility in those and and what extenduating circumstances count or which ones don't and how we determine or evaluate the performance of different folks. So >> other questions and comments that Oh, >> sure. I'll have one. Um just and I was going to bring this up at the end, but I think it's related to this because of the strategic planning. Are we measuring that the inputs that we're getting for the strategic plan are representative of the students and families that are in the district? Uh it's a definite sort of um what we are doing is making sure that um it's well we are not pulling the demographic data in the same way we traditionally would. uh we are making very deliberately sure that there is strategic planning outreach that matches those intentions. Um gathering the demographics in relation to this is extra complex. Um when I go to Spartan Foundation, it could be a group of four or it could be a group of 20. That could lead to 20 individual responses or one individual response. Um and so we're we're working our way through that. Um but with everything we are being extra deliberate in doing additional outreach to those who are historically marginalized by the system. >> So thank you. >> Yeah. But I've got one last question. I think the um what's our strategic plan input survey? So, at the end of each presentation or during the strategic plan presentation, there's multiple options to um provide input. Um, but then post it on our website. And I'm not sure you want to pop it up. Post it on our No, that's okay. I won't I won't put MissWam on the on the spot, but on our Richfield Public Schools website, there is a strategic planning area and it has that opportunity um to provide input um at our website. Um and so we have I believe communicated that out once. There will be multiple other communications. Um obviously we're doing loads of communications at this time. So we have put it on the back burner. Um but there is opportunity in the future um to continue messaging that out um to make sure that that's that's available. I'm going to go and just get myself in trouble, but if you could send the link out to the board again because I'm sure we've already gotten it. I just didn't read my messages, I'd appreciate it. >> There are a lot of messaging. I mean, I realized as I sat here, one of my own messages just hit our inbox at one point during earlier in the meeting. So, okay, it's uh it's constant right now. >> Thanks for taking the fall on that, Eric. >> Yeah, I'm here to help. Okay, >> I have one thing just you know in this performance evaluation process thing. Thanks for staying on top of the present situation and being proactive instead of reactive to what's going on. That's talking in your favor. >> I appreciate that. >> It's it's good for the kids as well. >> Yeah. I mean, I'll do a quick interlude even though I've been talking a whole lot and throwing a lot of information, right? So, we launched a virtual temporary program um through the 13th of February. That is only a week and a half from now. Uh we are in the process of creating version two which involves analyzing what we have knowing we have to do more and more in depth which knows that it's going to take additional planning. Uh but what it means is there needs to be more live instruction, more rigor to what's going on online. Um, and we have to work that out with our staff. We have to work that out with our families. We have to work out all the technical details about who's going to participate. And then we have to work that out with our unions. Um, and so I anticipate at our next board meeting I will be able to update you all publicly on version two. Um, which I also anticipate coming out with a lot of communication and steps prior to the end of this week. Um so if you think about where we've been in the first week of our first online program we implemented in week two we developed um program plan for version two. This week we are doing all the logistics will include communication and enrollment and then the final week of this first program we will be getting ready for implementation of version two. Um, and so there's been literally one week of actions in each case of this four-week window to get us ready for a more rigorous, more intensive program, which information and all those things are to come. >> I have a question. >> Yes, ma'am. >> Um, what's the participation rate um for the online classes and are have you identified any barriers um to participation such as maybe moving um frequently, you know, just to be safe. And >> so when we rolled out our first program, um the first things that we had to do were distribution. And so that included computers. Um and so the first barrier was um well, secondary students have Chromebooks, our elementary students don't take them home every day. So, we had to distribute to all of our students who were in elementary and some of our secondary students Chromebooks. At the same time, we distributed food. In the same time, we distributed learning materials. Um, and so all that had to be surveyed. Then we had to organize and structure the distribution of all of those things. Uh, the current barrier at the moment to the next steps. Um, we also gathered information on Wi-Fi hotspots. So, some folks don't have Wi-Fi in their residence. Um I believe the answer is 86 of them at present or 86 is what we are in the process of distributing. Uh we had to order uh receive catalog and now distribute out hotspots. Uh given unfortunately the winter storm in the south um the delivery of those were delayed. Um and so we are in the process of working our way through delivering out hotspots. And so there are a set of families that we haven't been able to get Wi-Fi into their homes so they could engage online. And so there would be an additional barrier. Um >> um I just like to say all of this is just overwhelming. And I just want to applaud you for being able to even stay up, you know, with all the different, you know, changes and readjustments and being agile um with what's going on because I'm thinking even from week to week, day to day, things can change >> and how do you keep track of these students? How do you monitor how they're doing in addition to doing your regular work and and and and how does the staff keep up? And I'm just I'm I'm overwhelmed just hearing all of this. And I don't know I I just want to applaud you guys here at Richfield for for everything that you do to make sure that the students continue to learn and feel safe and um seen and um and valued here just because all of this it takes so much and it's it's almost like you'd need an army, you know, of people to do this. And I don't see an army. Um well I I >> I see commitment, you know, and I see willingness. >> Yeah. I don't tend to use terms like army, but I would I use terms like team. And so what I would tell you is we can look at me all we want, but the reality is most of the work is being done by highly skilled people at their roles. So if you think about students who aren't engaging or families who aren't online, there are outreach workers, there are secretaries, there are social workers who are calling kids all day every day um as part of their jobs. Um the social emotional staff who had been doing more behavior might have lower behavior assignments at this point because of the reduction in students. So they are then calling and engaging students. We have teachers who are uh doing things online in addition to their traditional jobs. There are teachers who are packaging things together and so we have people who are running out to bus stops in case there are federal agents sitting there. We have people who are going to sites to support all the things happening. So each person in in a scenario like this, each person has to learn what their extra role is. Um and we have an amazing team of Richfield educators um in every role in this in this situation. Our bus drivers are trained in what to do if ICE shows up. If you think about what made the news, our bus driver parked his bus, kept the door shut, and waited for support, which is exactly what he was trained to do. He called to the district transportation office. They did what they were supposed to do. Our administrators then did what they were supposed to do. And so, it's having this whole team who has a set of expectations and learning and having a really strong team of people who are doing that. Um, which is great. Thank you. >> And then the only other thing I'll mention is unfortunately five years ago we learned a lot in CO. >> Um and so what I keep telling our team is hey we had four months in CO. We started and we planned for an entire summer from Aprilish all the way to the opening of school. And so one of the unfortunate yet great learnings of CO is how to do this work. And so most of the things we're doing we are looking at what we did and just trying to improve it and do it better. Um, and so that has been very helpful to this process. So, but thank you. Appreciate it. >> Any other questions? If not, brings us accommodations. All right. Now, I'm lost because I've talked so much. Um, okay. Um, speaking of which, we also have an amazing community. Uh, RPS would like to commend several local businesses providing items to our students and families during this cold, difficult times. Edina Kowalsskis donated a thousand grocery bags to the food shelf. Lake Winds Co-op donated 600 grocery bags to the food shelf and Edina Whole Foods donated 200 bags to the Spartan food shelf. Pens Spices donated 300 blankets to be distributed to students and families. So, we want to thank our community businesses um because as our team is doing things, our community, as we talked about, has stepped up. not on here are also the many many folks who are delivering things all day every day and giving donations that are being distributed out as fast as they arrive. So we are amazed and would like to commend our local businesses and also our community. And then it's appreciation week uh for national school counselors. So school counselors are that bridge between academic potential and their emotional well-being seeing that they are seen, heard, and prepared for the world. So we appreciate our counselors um and how they lead our students. So thank you. And it is an acknowledgement week for counselors. >> Back to you. >> Thank you to unmute there. The next item is approval of our consent agenda which brings us 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 just to see if there 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 by director list and a second by director Tomkins. Is there any discussion? >> Hearing and seeing none. We'll bring it to vote. All in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> All post, please say nay. The chair votes I. And we have an approved consent agenda. Brings us to old business. There are policies this evening before us for continued to review and possible action. The first item is policy 651, athletics and activity program and administrative guidelines 651.1 and 651.2. It is a fourth read. >> A fourth read and so I'm not going to review the entire um policy and guideline. Um, we did have some questions, questions specific to the third season free, um, and questions related to, um, how we have some of these components worded and also the guideline that looked like it was related specifically to um, athletics rather than just activities. And so we went back um based on board input and did some review. Um athletic and activity policy um the policy itself did not undergo um significant changes because we had gotten through most of those. Um most of the changes um and one that we missed um one we're going to look at the athletic program philosophy the appendix. Uh one thing we slightly missed at 651.1 page three um it should be activity program philosophy. So when we do get a recommendation uh we did uh rewrite and gathered input to make sure that it is clear that it is not just coaches it's coaches advisory it is athletics and activities. Um we talked about uh changing it from sportsmanship to competing with grace. uh we changed language to make sure that that was inclusive uh because we had not um updated that fully clearly um to realign to athletics and activities at the same time. Uh then um we also had most comments in regard to 651.2 school activity fees. Um and so I want to note um at the bottom um it is area 4 donation opportunities. Um so what we have is a commitment from our um team um at the time of activities registration. Families will be given the opportunity to make a donation to the activities department to help offset the cost of student scholarships um or activities participation. So as we think about the barriers um what our activity department will be doing is they'll be adding to the registration process um something that makes everyone aware that we are open in this window to take uh opportunity for sponsorship um for people to do that and participate um and so that people can actively engage in removing barriers. Uh then on page two of that guideline, uh we also wanted to clarify um above there um that the third season free is specific to athletics. Um and so there are different fees and different engagements. Um and but for those participating in three athletic activities and so the wording was clarified uh fall, winter, and spring because that was also one of the questions. So this doesn't apply to summer. This doesn't apply to um uh more scholasticbased activities. Um this is solely for athletics. Um and so that aligns the language to practice and also aligns the language to the fees that are required um for engagement. So with that, we made the updates and input from the board except for um when the motion is made to make sure that that appendix says activity. Um and we have this for hopeful passage today. questions, comments, or of course we'll entertain a motion. >> I just have one comment. Um just I mean it's not very often that we do a fourth read and appreciate um the the handling of this. There was a lot of questions that I had and I think that all of the questions and and concerns that I have have been um have been answered. Um, one comment maybe for the next time we look at this in five years or or maybe we can take this offline. I'm I'm curious about the different fees and the the formula that the fee that drives the fees because I don't think any of them are unfair. So that's why I have no issue with this today, but I I would be curious as to um how they come up. Um, Superintendent Yowski, you and I have talked about this uh maybe a month ago that a lot of it is driven by the number of coaches per students that are on the team or number of coaches for the team and that's probably the primary driver here. Um but um so I guess that's my only comment and if others don't I will move the um policy as presented with the one change from athletic to activities. I second it. >> Motion by Director Spencer and a second by Director Dennis. Was there a question in there as well? >> No. >> Any more questions, comments, or discussion? I guess I'll throw out there. Um the fees are discussed or expected to be discussed as part of the um competitive athletics committee uh which director Dennis is now a member of >> um and can speak and represent us on behalf of the board. Um I don't know when they'll come up again. I mean I guess I we brought this up early, right? So this is now midcycle anyways, right? >> Um I think this is the five-year read. We have done this more than just that window. So we can often times the things with fees uh rental fees or activity fees those come up more if costs have changed or if there's reasons to re-evaluate. Um so this will remain on the 5year cycle and if there are reasons from a fee perspective for us to look at it differently or we need more fees we could or different or less fees uh we can certainly bring it back faster. Sorry. I guess my comment was is that this this current review this fourth read wasn't its fifth year cycle, right? >> I think it was >> I think this was the cycle 21. >> Yeah. >> Well, then um I don't Well, I'm just We didn't talk about in the committee. We didn't talk about the fees the actual fees themselves. So I don't and maybe it was like expected that the review was supposed to cover it. >> I I'll pull a fun logistic on you. >> Oh boy. Here we go. >> Right. So technically the guidelines can be changed without going to board. Um so the board actually officially passes the policy. However, we we do policy and guidelines. I would love for you to pass it. Um and then if you are suggesting that the fees go back for a review and can come back here if there are changes recommended, then we could go that way. I I was actually trying to help and the more just giving director Spencer background about how how it's handled. That said, if this is the five-year cycle, I I don't know if the fees need to be reviewed since we were looking so closely at the um the fees for the parents um and family members to join in the events. >> Right. Go ahead. >> So, I think the policy was reviewed by competitive activities >> and uh the athletics office did review the fees. I don't think there is a need to change them. Um, and but >> yeah, I don't I think we're good. I mean, I guess to Steve's point, if we have more questions later on, we can bring it back up or you could always ask in the committee, which I believe is coming up on Monday, actually, as a side note for you. Uh, thought I'd let you know. Okay. Any more questions or discussion? If not, we'll bring it to a vote. All in favor, please say I. >> I. I. All post say nay. The chair votes I and the athletics and activity program and administrative guidelines 65 651.1 651.2 and the policy 651 with the amendment are approved. Brings us policy 709 development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed asset and fixed asset accounting system and administrative guide 709.1. >> Exciting. Exciting. All right. This is a third read and we are hoping for uh finishing it up on a third read. So this is mostly statutory language in regard to the policy. So the policy itself just had updates from a branding perspective. Um and so uh there are not uh significant changes in this particular policy and so we are hoping for passage of the policy that guides um how we maintain um an effective inventory of the things that we own. questions, comments. >> Is this something that we that gets looked at in the audit? >> It does. It gets looked at in the audit and then it gets changed based on basically statutory financial requirements >> and we haven't had a problem with the audit. >> Uh minor minor things which are very normal. Uh but nothing significant in regard to to that. Then I thus I move that we pass development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed assets at fixed asset accounting system. >> I'll second. >> We have a motion by director listen and a second by director Spencer. Any questions, comments or discussions on this one? >> I'm noticing this is a great example of us copy paste from the MSBA model policy other than the the name of the school district. I think it's >> Yeah. I mean, there are mandated policies, there are non-mandated policies, and there are those that are basically 90 plus% statutory language. This would be one of those. >> Yeah. Means we didn't spend too much time rewriting it. >> No. No. >> Then we'll bring it to a vote. All in favor, please say I. >> I. >> All post, please say nay. The chair votes I. And policy 709, development and maintenance of an inventory of fixed assets and fixed asset accounting system and administrative guideline 709.1 is approved. Brings us to policy 581, protection and privacy of pupil records and administrative guidelines 581.1 and 581.23. >> If we pull this off, I mean, I'm watching MissWam who can hardly stop smiling at these three policies about to be hopefully passed us. Uh this is the updated policy with a lot of statutory language uh which clarifies uh circumstances about which data about our students can be shared and under what circumstances. Uh so it includes the protection and privacy of records. It talks about what is available to volunteers and what is not. Uh when do we release them, what do we release and to whom. Um and then it also follows up with the model policy. And so these are the changes. They are designed to protect the data of our students. Um we are there are districts that are more giving of data. We are not. Um we are doing all that we possibly can to maintain the privacy within the legal bounds of our students. Um and this policy and the guidelines reflect that. So with that we have this in front of you in case there are any questions, comments or a motion. Um, and this is a very long one. Uh, to pass policy 581 with the accompanying guidelines. >> Doing my job. Any questions, comments, or as you've said, motion? Um, this one is, as Dr. Yowski mentioned, is a thick one and a lot of information in it. So this is one of the opportunities I used AI and compared this to the MSBA and there was very little concerns that I saw as I had um an engine compare the two of them. So with that and the approval of my AI agent I guess as well I would move that we uh approve policy 581 as presented >> director Spencer and robotic dispenser. Why do we dare ask which one? Is there a second? >> I'll second it. >> We have a motion by Director Spencer and a second by Director Liss. Any more discussion, comments, questions other than my >> This is an important one in this climate. >> That's all I'll say. And that's why um that's one of the things of the board that I'll just remind um that our role or your role as the board is to make sure of our policies and then hold us accountable to implementing the policies in word and in intention. Um and so you see it under legislative platform and our words and our intention are to maintain data privacy of our students to the extent legally possible. >> Doesn't look like there's any more questions or comments. We will bring it to a vote. All in favor, please say I. I. >> All post, please say nay. The chair votes I. And policy 581, protection and privacy of pupil records and administrative guidelines 581.1 and 581.2 is approved. Brings us to policy 406, professional learning and administrative guidelines 406.1. Second read. All right. And normally we don't have four policies, but with the four read, three read, three read, we will not see those others again. But this one will be back at our next meeting. policy 406 and 406.1. This um clarifies for us um professional learning, professional development, and how we um teach our staff about our strategic plan and the work that we do. How do we make sure that they understand um and that we are doing our job as a district um to teach our staff appropriately um through professional learning and providing opportunities for them to develop. It also talks about our building staff development team and our district staff development team and all of the work that we do. Um, so there are a number of changes for you to read through. And again, this is a second read. Um, and so we are not looking for a passage, but we are just asking our board members to review all of the changes that are updated to bring it in line with newly updated best practices and newly updated state expectations. questions on this policy and not there need to be any but I thought I'd just see if we have anything before we move on hearing none that brings us to a new one new business and I say that it's a new one because we normally I say we have several items of new business tonight we have one >> which is donations sorry >> STEM Elementary School received a donation $185.78 from the Minnesota Orchestral Association for field trip transportation. Ordonation of $79.20 from Boxtops for Education and a donation of $500 from Mississippi Park Connection for field trip transportation. So, Richfield STEM Elementary thanks those donors. Richfield Dual Language School received a donation of $185.78 from the Minnesota Orchestral Association for Fieldrip Transportation. So, thank you from RDLS. Centennial received a donation of $100.32 from the Minnesota Orchestral Association for Fieldrip Transportation. Centennial says, "Thanks." And also Sheran Hill says, "Thanks for a donation of $92.89 from the Minnesota Orchestral Association for Fieldrip Transportation." Thank you for all of those donations. RHS Spartan Food Shelf received a donation of $375 from Emily Dvita of Hopkins, Minnesota. Thank you, Emily Dvita. and the Richfield High School received a donation of $700 from the Optimus Club of Richfield for the Job Olympics. So, Richfield High School and we thank the Optimus Club. Thank you to our generous donors. Thank you very much all of our donors. Is there a motion to accept these donations? >> I move that we accept these donations with gratitude. Look at you guys. We have wake up. You got this. Good job. We have a motion by director Tomkins and a second by director Dennis to accept these donations with gratitude. All in favor, please say I. >> I. I. >> I. >> All post, please say nay. Chair votes I. And we have accepted these donations with gratitude. Brings us to advanced planning. Uh our first item is a legislative update which I don't know if we really have. Uh the only update is um AMSD, Association of Metropolitan School Districts will have their legislative kickoff session on Friday. Um and so it is available in person and online and our AMSD reps are scheduled to be there or at least I am scheduled to be there as the representative and so we'll have a report or some information to share about the AMSD platform and anything that we are hearing from that meeting. >> You planning going in person? I was not, but if you would like to go in person, we can. Otherwise, check on that later. Just more just checking. Gotcha. >> Uh, and then also just for those who may not have attended, we had our also our um study session early this evening as well, which is why I was ready to skip ahead on our uh legislative update. Anything else for that? Uh, information and questions from the board. Um, I'm going to jump in and go. I apologize, Director Dennis. I was thinking athletic committee. It is the health and safety. Didn't mean to scare you. Thank Sand for keeping me honest. >> Again, I can hold up my hand to say I made a mistake. >> Any other information or questions from the board? On to suggested future agenda items. And so you hear um in addition to what we were anticipating, you will also get an update on assuming that we are moving forward uh version two of our virtual online program which should be launching um on the date of our next um meeting. So we'll have more on that um two weeks from Tuesday which Mr. Carter will tell you about in a second which is >> and there's nothing from that that needs our approval. >> There's nothing from that that needs your approval. which then brings us to future meeting dates. Our next board meeting will be Tuesday, February 17th at 7 p.m., which is an opportunity for public comment. And then it'll be March 2nd will be 7 p.m. in a back to our normal regular board meeting, which then brings us to the final item of business. The agenda is to adjourn. At this time, it does not require require a full board vote. I'll officially join the meeting at 8:35 am.