We are gathered on the land of the Dakota and Ojiway peoples. I ask you to join me in acknowledging the Dakota and Ojiway community, their elders, both past and present, as well as future generations.

St. Louis Park Public Schools also acknowledges that it was founded upon exclusions and erasers of many indigenous people, including those on whose land the school district is located. This acknowledgement demonstrates a commitment to dismantling the ongoing legacies of colonial power and the district's desire to support the ongoing work of local indigenous communities to thrive in our schools.

It is recommended that the school board approve the agenda for June 24th, 2025 as presented.

So move.

Well, I am excited to um just share our updates for June and it's all about celebrating the end of the school year.

This is um an opportunity to really close out our year um in community with uh with all of our staff. Our staff really um shared that at the beginning of the year they enjoyed our kickoff because it allowed them to come together as one St. Louis Park which really ties into the roll out and of our strategic plan where one of our commitments is one St. Louis Park.

St. Louis Park School sees, inspires, and empowers each learner to live their brilliance in an environment that centers student voice and experience to create racially equitable learning that energizes and enhances the spirit of our community.

Skills is the first one which is where students are demonstrating proficiency in reading. Identity is to allow students to discover who they are, who they are told they are, and who they desire to be. The third one is intellectualism. So, citing textual evidence, how are students able to support their statements and their work with evidence. Writing and expression of ideas. Criticality, which was where kind of the critical thinking comes in. Students understand power, humanity, inequities, and oppression, anti-exism and anti-racism. So, they're using what they're learning and their knowledge to solve real world problems, sociopolitical problems that are happening around them. And then finally, Dr. Muhammad kind of caps off these pursuits with joy. Students should be expressing happiness and a love for learning. And joy can show up in many different ways.

I think I saw a real growth in understanding and implementation of the care team process this year. I felt like I got kind of more details in the documentation, not not in every case, but from some teams and some buildings. I got a lot of information. It seemed to be at a little bit deeper level and more reflection going on.

How does my own racial and cultural identity as a white woman impact my capacity to build authentic connection with families of racial and cultural backgrounds that differ from my own?

So rather than correcting making a connection with cross-linguistic transfer. So if a kid needs to learn how to segment for example the word bath bath I don't know I'm not a literacy teacher versus bath and they want to teach them that but also honoring that saying the f is also correct.

They found that most students do find joy in the group work but that it can reduce academic outcomes. So, how do you find the balance in that with allowing them to to experience that joy or maybe a preferred way of working but not to the extent that it's going to reduce academic outcomes.

They really appreciate the collaboration time and the teamwork and the chance to just work together and reflect on their students and their data.

They value collaborative time and they want even more of it, more time to plan and collaborate.

So I think they always want to just improve. I think they want like clear like clearer expectations and guidance probably mostly from the building level and their principles because every building does it a little bit differently.

I think it um, it's helpful context as we've been talking a lot about care teams this year and I think I might finally understand care teams in a way that I haven't.