Well, hopefully it won't be too bad. Kitty's out of He's out of town. Costa Rica. Costa Rica. She's with the holler monkey. Okay, we'll start, guys. Okay, Wayne. Excuse me. Okay, Wayne, we're ready. Good evening everyone. Welcome to the Roseville Area School Board meeting. I'd like to call to order the Roseville area school board meeting for Tuesday, April 22nd. Clerk will please take the role. Yes. Good evening. Um, Director Shaw here. Chair Anderson here, Treasurer Clap here, Director Bushki here, and Cluck Chu is here. Thank you. Any agenda adjustments for this evening? There are no agenda adjustments. Thank you. We are moving on to announcements, comments, recognitions. We have um Roseville Area Schools Foundation here with us tonight. Uh Chair Liz Ericson, come on up. Welcome. Awesome. Welcome to the board. Thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Uh so thanks for the intro. Uh I'm Liz Ericen Mson, chair of the Roseville Area Schools Foundation. And I'm here for two reasons. Uh the first one is to make sure first that people know what the foundation is and that it exists. Um I think that's pretty much step one. And two is to make sure that people know we are looking for board members. And that's the primary reason why I'm here. Uh so first about Roseville Area Schools Foundation. We work to mobilize our communities to to support the needs of student, faculty, families in the district. We do this through fundraising and engagement. And the foundation funds district initiatives including K through6 AVID teacher staff grants as well as emergency funds for social workers to use to help students and their families. We share the Roseville School District's equity vision as well as its values. And we fund district initiatives that eliminate opportunity gaps, enhance college and career readiness, and social and emotional learning for all students. We provide additional support for the school district to fill gaps and emergency needs as they arise. If what I've said so far align with anyone in this room or anyone else listening, you should consider joining the board. And here are some of those details for anyone who might be interested in joining the board. Uh we have terms of three years for anyone who's a member and two years for anyone who's an officer. So anyone who's been keeping tabs on me, you're stuck with me for another 18 months. Uh we do ask that any members attend regular monthly board meetings. Uh that means the second Wednesday of the month from 5:30 to 7. meetings are typically on Zoom and sometimes in person. We do have two major events a year, one in the spring and one in the fall. And then there are additional subcommittees that you can join once you're a part of the board. Um, which I can address if you reach out, which is my closing. Please reach out. Uh, if you're interested, visit roseville areaschoolsfoundation.org and contact us. So, thank you for your time and I hope I hear from a few people soon. Yes. Well, before you leave, I want to thank you for your dynamic leadership. Thank you for the generosity of time, energy, and expertise. Also like to thank the foundation broadly for all of your support of Roseville Area Schools. I think it's ironic tonight that we are hosting an avid student and staff presentation. Thank you. That's in large part due to the foundation. We'll also have teachers and staff in the audience who have benefited, students of course who have benefited from the teacher grant program as well as the emergency needs support. So just really really appreciate you and I'll vouch for the high quality humans that serve on the board. Uh and anyone would just it would be a pleasure to serve on your board for our community. Thank you for that. Yes. So just for those who might be watching or here Yeah. Um besides being a high quality human, are are there other qualifications? because I I would imagine there are a lot of people who would find value and and personal alignment and satisfaction with being on the board, but they may wonder, well, do I have what it takes? Like, you don't need a degree in finance. I mean, what what are you looking for? What primary, you know, qualities besides just interests or is that mainly it and a passion? Um we do prioritize and we hope that those who are interested in joining um really align with the values of the district because us as a foundation those values of course align as well. Um and I will say we are especially looking for diverse candidates because we realize that our board certainly lacks diversity and we want to make sure that the people who are on the board represent the students who are part of the district. Um, so I think that's another important piece too. Although we certainly don't want to disclude anyone. If you have something to give, if you want to be a part of this board, we appreciate energy. And two areas in particular are um a treasurer we are in need of and a uh business liaison. So someone who is willing to um maintain a relationship because we're primarily a um fundraising uh organization. So to give you a peak behind the curtain, we typically have an operating budget between 70,000 and 110,000. And um a lot of that really does come from working with our community and a key part of that is the position and the subcommittee that is the um the business connection there. So great question and thank you for asking it. And then are your are your you said you meet third Wednesday of every month? I'm sorry. second Wednesday of every month from 5:30 to 7:00. Are those meetings open that if someone wanted to like come to a meeting and see you in action and learn about it, would they would it be best for them to like contact you or go through the website to say, "Hey, I'm interested, but I'd like to see first." Can they come and and just kind of observe a board meeting? Are they public? Um, they're not open to the public. However, um, we can invite anyone who is interested. If they wanted to try it out before joining, that's absolutely an option. Um, they must receive an invite. Uh, I'll send out the agenda typically the Sunday before. Um, so not open to the public, but we very we're very open to anyone who's interested. Right. Yeah. So not open to just dropins. Yeah. But if someone's interested, they could contact you, say, "I'm interested." And then you'd say, "Well, then we'll invite you to our next one, and you could come as a guest in that way." That's exactly right. That we'll say, "Thank you so much for your interest." Um, we'll send them a link to the Zoom invite. And then we'll also add them as an agenda item on the list. Thank you. Thank you. Um, I just wanted to mention, um, as a former highquality human on the foundation board, you're still a high quality human. I guess I am. Yeah. Yeah. Before I ran for school board, uh, I can attest to the foundation. Um, all the work the foundation has done over the years for students, for staff. It's just incredible. And I know the major fundraiser over the year has taken on various forms. It has changed over the years, but there's always that that constant of doing what's right and best for students and staff, and it's just um I encourage anybody to sign up, look at it, and it's it's a wonderful foundation, wonderful organization. Well said. Thanks for being here, Liz. Yeah. Thank you, Liz. Appreciate you. Thank you. Thank you. All right. we have uh the opportunity to um Associate Superintendent Melissa Sonic will be introducing our new Parkview Center school. Welcome. Right. It is my privilege to introduce you to the newest principal of Parkview Center school. Uh after an extensive search, a lot of listening to stakeholders, and a rigorous interview process, we are thrilled to announce that Nate Gibbs will be the next principal of Park View. We can do that. Yes, I will. Nate is a seasoned principal who comes to us from Eastern Carvery County where he currently is serving as an administrator in the department of teaching and learning. Uh prior to his that position, Gibbs has served as a high school principal, a middle school principal, and a K8 assistant principal. He is a proven leader uh with a clear commitment to equity and high expectations. Nate is also a relational leader who during the interview process um with a smile and contagious energy said I love kids and as a leader I need to be in love with students every day and center joy and love for kids. Uh part of his magic is this wonderful blend of humor, culture responsive leadership and scholarly leadership. Uh he is also a leader who develops educators who center students strengths, joy and academic rigor. Uh he believes that families and communities are co-leaders in student success. During his interview, one of the words that came up again and again was families. And he went on to say that families are our students first teachers. So on the note of family, Nate has an interesting connection to the school. Uh his wife actually attended Parkview as a child. Uh so he talked about this longstanding tradition of excellence at Park View Center School and that that is what they are known for. Uh as a parent of two, he's also committed to being the educator that students of deserve. And to really further um students and elevate student voice, Parkview students, both current and some Parkview alumni, played a really important role in this interview process. Um, there was a studentled tour and Nate's student interaction was described as mindful, relatable, and authentic. Uh, students who don't usually engaged engaged with Nate. And here are some of the things that our students said, and these are direct quotes. Um, a student walking by turned to his friends and said, "Hey, he looks like us. I wonder if we'll get to have him as our next principal." Another unforgettable moment was when Principal Gibbs greeted a first grader with um in the hallway with a warm smile and said, "Hey, cool glasses." The child lit up and what Nate didn't know at the time is that the student has been teased about their glasses and experienced significant challenges this year. So, that small kind gesture meant more than he could have known. And at one point, the student leader the tour um whispered to a Park View educator, "Can I tell him he's my favorite and I want him to work here." Um so I think it's really important to know that our students helped select their next principal. So please join me in welcoming Principal Nate Gibbs to the Parkview Center School Community. All right. Inside I'm blessing. Uh it's it's such an honor and joy to be held in regard and esteem by my peers and colleagues. Um, but really to hear about how students experienced me as as a human and and my commitment to this district and and to the school is to ensure students have those humanizing, inspiring, and engaging experiences every day. Uh, you've heard a little bit about my resume. I just want to tell you briefly about who I am as a person. Um, and and also emphasize how excited I am to join this community. Um, as it really resonates and aligns with my values as a person. Um, I'll start by saying I'm a third generation public servant. U, my grandmother was a teacher next door in St. Paul public schools and my father currently serves as a deputy chief in the St. Paul Fire Department. Growing up as a kid, I wanted to be just like my dad and um and and be a firefighter and um and save people. Uh and then I learned I faint at the sight of blood and needles and so I chose um the next best profession and uh and that is uh being a part of inspiring and engaging uh young people every day. And so I I want you to know uh service uh to community is is a core part of uh my ethics and in a lot of ways it's in my blood. Um the next thing that I I I'll just share um is my work as a school leader has been enriched by being a father. Um I am I am living the science of reading uh with my kindergartenner and third graders and and and seeing uh all the the joy and and richness that comes with uh them developing uh confidence as as readers. Um, I'm also living this ongoing dynamic of math evolving and um and and having to uh do new math with my third grader uh during uh during the evenings and and understand um just all the effort that goes into uh making sure students leave schools uh with the skills that they need to be uh confident learners and contributors to the the world. Um, and lastly, what I'll share is, um, I am the the product of of really talented and and dedicated, uh, educators. I'm a graduate of St. Paul public schools and and my experience in in that system was, um, I was led by administrators that care deeply about community, uh, that were dedicated to serving their staff and, um, and purpose themselves to inspiring and challenging their students. Um, I'm the product of teachers that uh in the face of limited resources or infrastructure or expertise um purpose themselves to inspiring young people uh every day to engage with the content, but more importantly engage with each other and community and and it's that ethic and and that value system uh that still permeates through me today. And um and so I feel really blessed and and honored to join uh this community. I feel honored to join again colleagues that I have served with in in other capacities and roles and and thank you for choosing me and and I'm I'm so glad that I could choose Roseville. Thank you. Um that was fantastic. Just an honor to have you. I um thank you. Um I kind of speechless with that. Yeah, that's has any questions. It's it's I think it's a welcome home. It is. Great to have you. Thank you. You typically would ask what made you come here, but you know, led with that. So, thank you. I I will say I went through my wife's yearbooks. There were pool parties at this park you a while ago. Is that still something that happens here or next? Pool parties. That was a lingering question for me. Very good. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Item four on this evening's agenda. Um summary of community input received for this evening's action items. I did not receive anything for our action items this evening. Any members? All right. That moves us on to this evening's consent agenda. Um a minus retirement. Uh we do have one retirement. Um, I would like to entertain a motion to approve this evening's consent agenda. So moved. Okay. Is there a second? Okay. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. Those opposed. All right. Motion carries. Uh, clerk shoot. The retirement. We um I'm presenting to you one retirement today. Uh is Sally Schroer who is an elementary teacher at Falcon Heights. We are so appreciative of her 32 years in the district. So happy retiring to her. So I ask for a motion. Right. It's been moved. Is there a second? Second. Second. Right. It's been moved and seconded. Um with appreciation. Um thank you very much. Um any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. All those opposed. Motion carried. All right. Reading gifts this evening will be director Shaw. Thank you. It's my honor to read the gifts to over the last two weeks that have been recorded over the last two weeks to the schools. Um begin with a financial gift from uh Robert Harms to Unpaid Teta for the Meals on Wheels program. Um a monetary gift from the Eaglebrook Church for community enrichment to the Edgen Elementary School. um a gift from Rebecca Neim uh Niami uh to the elementary school in in Little Canada uh for school needs and uh a gift from Natalie Price to the Roseville Area High School for the girls track and field program. Um, there were a number of of financial gifts uh given to the Roseville Area High School uh in support of the trap team. And I will just read the names uh of the contributors. John and Katherine Dales, Mary and Robert Michaels, Royal Wombat Incorporated, um, DBA McCarron's Pub, uh, Ace Auto Parts, uh, Roseville Anderson Nelson VFW, Post 7555, and, uh, Huring Commercial Decorating Incorporated. So, all of those were gifts uh in support of the trap team. Is the trap team up and running? We are. I think it's been around for maybe the last eight years. Okay. Yeah, I know. I know that. So, so so it so it's going is that an autumn sport or is that a a spring sport? Is it in the spring? Spring. In springtime. So, we could go out and perhaps Yes, I will put out an invitation to the Right. Good. All right. The gifts continue. We have uh a gift to the Roseville Area High School from the Minnesota Vikings Football LLC in support of Girls Flag Football. That program now is that up and running. Cindy, what is there 40 athletes or so? There's 40 or 50 athletes that are signed up. Their first game is this weekend. That's fant. Oh, North St. Paul, I believe. Okay. I'll keep an eye on that schedule. That sounds like fun. All right. uh a gift uh from Katherine and Paul Miller um to the Roseville area high school in support of the boys track and field program. Um a gift by the Roseville boys backcourt club uh to the high school in support of the boys basketball uniforms and gear. A gift from Gerald and Sally Hogan uh for the band club at the high school. a gift from Emily Bloomquist uh to the high school for the boys golf program. And finally, a gift from Beauty Craft um for uh of of hair products to the Roseville area schools for students indeed. Thank you. Thank you, director. All right, we are moving into reports and non-action items for the evening. Um AVID updated certification, come on up. uh Annne Barnes Anna Bogenholm and associate superintendent Don Smith. Welcome guys. Come on up. Welcome. How about how about a walking music? Yeah, we got a walk up song. [Applause] Welcome. Right. I don't know. I didn't know anything about that. Okay. I don't know. Carrie carry the We like the walk-in music. Good energy. I love the baseball walk up. Yes. Your new tradition musical chairs. All right. Well, let's get settled in here. Fine chair. This is Yeah, it's a good problem. Yeah. Yeah. Very good problem. house. We appreciate all the students and families here. Thank you. Okay. Well, all right. Let's get started. So, greetings, distinguished board. Um, Elon Smith, associate superintendent of equity and innovation in the office of educational equity. We're here to update you on the work of Sorry, am I not on? can't hear me. Is it just okay? There we go. Yes, sir. I have to get closer. All right. So, yes, we're here to update you on the work of Abbott here in Roseberry Schools. But before we get started, um I'd like my team to introduce themselves. Sure. My name is Tana Bogenholm. I am the elementary district director and I'm also coordinator at Parkview. And I'm Ann Barnes. I'm the secondary AVID district director and coordinator at Fairview Alternative High School and Roseville Area High School. Right. And we also uh have uh students with us as you can see. Uh really excited about this uh presentation. But as we look on the screen, um always want to mention the connection between ABBA and our strategic plan. It's a key strategy uh key instructional strategy and our strategic plan and we believe it meets at least those four um strategic plan goals of uh our graduates are prepared to achieve their goals and aspirations. Our learners contribute to an equable caring society. We're culturally responsive, inclusive, anti-racist district and the community is united uh definitely united behind uh AVID and students. So uh at this point I will turn it over to Ann Barnes. Yes, we always like to review what AVID stands for. It stands for advancement via individual determination. And so if we go to the next slide, we also want to go over the mission um of AVID. And in the last few years um we have included both college and career into the mission. And you're going to see that come out strong with all of our students today and without throughout our entire presentation. But the mission is to close the opportunity gap by preparing all students for college and career readiness and success in a global society. So we really know that college and career knowledge begins in elementary school and we really want to honor that. We want to help every student find their path. Um what is it that are their strengths? What are their interests? And we really center a lot of this work around the AVID college and career readiness framework. Um within that framework you can see at the top of it are those things of what students need and it's rigorous academic preparedness, student agency and opportunity knowledge. At the base of um the triangle on that framework is what uh what the educators need to do. And so that's insist on rigor, break down barriers, align the work and advocate for students. And then behind it are really our domains of how we structure our work around AVID. And that's instruction systems, leadership, and culture. On this next slide, we take a look at the timeline for AVID. Um AVID started 17 years ago um with an eighth seventh and eighth grade uh class at Parkview, an eighth grade class at Rams, and a 10th grade class at RAZ. And since then um we have added faz and then started with the elementary with fifth and sixth grade two years ago. And so as far as professional development for teachers because we can't have students um using AVID without the teachers being trained um we have quite a few different professional development um opportunities. Um teachers can go through path trainings uh summer institutes also. Um we have also P professional development or PD modules that we'll talk about in a moment. Um but AVID is now embedded in our professional development and so we have uh for the past three years we've had a 712 uh focus and also with 56 for the last couple of years um they have had um some in intentional um training and so that work this year at the 712 level really focused on 90 minutes of choice sessions around those different AVID professional development modules and then the other 90 minutes has been around that college and career readiness framework. And so really looking at in the fall opportunity knowledge and in the spring we're going to be looking at rigorous academic preparedness for that vertical articulation time with teachers. And now we're going to take a a quick video um and take a look at AVID 512. [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] All right. Um, after taking a look at that, we know that AVID um 512 takes a look at a variety of different components. And as far as the system goes, we're going to have these students talk a little bit about each of these components that you see here. So um at this point, we're going to introduce um some students from Edertton um and they are going to talk about organization, time management, and goal setting. So Isabelle, do you want to start us off? We'll have you talk right in here. Welcome students. Welcome. Um, hi, my name is Isabelle and I'm a student at Edertton and I'm going to tell you a little bit about how I have been using Avid for 2 years. Organization has been helpful because it keeps my things in order and I always know where to keep my stuff. I move around a lot during the day and to know where my stuff is, it's just amazing. The space that is included makes me feel like I have time and I'm not being rushed. Organization of time. Keeping my stuff organized also helps me with space. Having enough space makes me feel like I don't have to hurry. I know where my materials are when I need them. Knowing where my materials are is important so I stay prepared for certain occasions. This is why I love being part of AVID. Thank you. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Kamari. I am a sixth grade student at Edertton. I have been using AVID for 2 years and today I will be telling you about how high expectations and goal setting has helped me and students from all over the Roseville district. High expectations has helped me push myself to learn new things and come out of my comfort zone. It is amazing to be able to do new things we might not want to do. Goal setting is maybe like helping someone or learn something new. I am proud to be a part of the AVID program and use the Wicker system. Thanks for having us here. [Applause] Hi, my name is Abby. I'm here to tell you a little about about Wicker. Wicker stands for writing, inquiry, collaboration, organization, and reading. Worker helps with everyday activities such as maths or reading assignments. We also are learning to take notes to help us pro process stuff and get ready for future tests. Part of wicker is writing. We write every day in school. Inquiry is also a part of wicker. We ask questions every day. Collaboration. We work together every day. Organization. We keep ourselves organized. And last but not least, reading. We we are always reading whether we're at home, school, or even on the bus. The five parts of wicker helps me succeed in school. Thank you. All right, we're going to hear from um some students from Rams and they're going to talk about AVID family and collaboration. Good evening everyone. I'm Christine Hwinn, an eighth grader at Rams and also part of the AVID community. Before I joined AVID, I always stressed about my goals. What am I going to do in the future? How am I going to play in my life? What am I going to do in my life? When I joined AVID, all those problems vanished away. All I felt is like they gave me a door open in a community. They gave me opportunities that I would never find and never discover without them. The AVID community had also helped me personally and academically with things such as advocating for myself, organization, and as well as most importantly boosting my confidence. Every time I'm stuck on a topic or not sure what to do, my peers and teachers are always there surrounding me and trying to collaborate me to help solve my problem. I'm thankful for the Roseville district continue to grow AVID and I'm really grateful to continue this journey. Thank you. [Applause] Hi, my name is Biona and I'm in AVID and DSI. I just want to say AVID is such a great community and it's like like it's really a built-in family and like whenever I need a friend or anything I can just go to the AVID family and I just know someone will be there for me to help me. Oh, thank you. Hi, my name is Macy. The AVID community has helped me in many different ways such as anxiety, organization, time management. AVID is definitely the funnest class I have of the day. It's a lot of collaboration, organiz I love organization. I'm very organized in my opinion. No, but AVID really helps me push out of my comfort zone, which I'm not the biggest fan of, and I don't really like change as well. So, they've really helped me with that. And it's just nice to have friends and teachers who can help you at any time. Thank you. Now we're going to hear about tutorials and these students are from Parkview um AVID elective and also um one of our tutors and he'll give some history. Okay. So tutorials are collaborative environment in which students use the inquiry process and socratic dialogue to address points of confusion from the content classes in order to come to a more complete understanding of what they are learning. Um, so a personal summary, uh, Avid tutorials have been a major contributor to my learning experience. Tutorials continue to improve our understanding of certain topics or subjects. I can bring any point of confusion to a tutorial to seek answers and receive amazing results. It helps us grow and build ourselves up from being overwhelmed to having confidence when overwhelmed. As I reflect off the topic questions and reflect off the ideas my community gives, I can gain new insight, perspective, and knowledge off the information from all of our tutorial presentations. Thank you. Hi, my name is Aldo Antonio Garcia. I'm a student at Parkview Center School and to me, AVID is a home. One of our many chores is every Tuesday and Thursday we have to fill out tutorial crust forms or TRFs. TRFs help us dig deeper and better understand our grades material from math to science, English, and more. Tutorials have helped me become a better student and keep up with all my classes. Tutorials are an educational presentation where a group of students and a tutor group up into a horseshoe shape facing a whiteboard. The presenter up on the whiteboard will give a 60-second speech while they share their essential question. Then they go to their vocabulary, what they know about their question and after that they share their tutorial question. The presenter will write their tutorial question on the board and their peers job is to ask questions and help them solve the TRF. No answers, just questions. Um so after all that um you write down your steps on your tutorial and in the end we give them aid whoosh to congratulate them. Thank you. Hello. Uh, my name is Terrace Watson and I'm a tutor/alumni. I went through the average program from 7th through 12th grade. And tutorials is just a place where you you come to collab. You come to brainstorm ideas. You come to solve real world solutions, indoor problems. You come to just be yourself. You bring real you bring problems from other classrooms or just in the real world or things going on in your life and you come and you sit and you just collab with people who who help you bring some different ideas. I think AVID is a program. Tutorials are are a thing where students are just allowed to just come be themselves. They're they're allowed to come fail and and that leads to growth. And I think that's the most amazing part. Like you're allowed to come be yourself and fail and and and just grow, you know? So, and an amazing thing about being a tutor is that I just see the growth in them every day. Like I work with these two every day and I see them fail. I see them have questions. I see Son, he comes and brings his dreams and aspirations outside of school, outside of wanting to start a clothing brand. and we said we brainstorm different ideas, different logos, you know what I mean? So, it's just a place where you just come and you just pour your dreams and aspirations and and you come and just find solutions. So, thank you guys. [Applause] I'm hoping this is education pathway conversation. Yeah, I wish future teachers in the space. Yeah, absolutely. And he is a future teacher. Yes, Teres. Yes, he is. Yes, he is. Principal Gibbs will want to hire you. There we go. Um, we're next going to hear from um about focus notes. Um, Abdi Malik, if you want to start us off. Hello, my name is Optimalik and I have been in Avid for two years and today I'll be talking about focus note takingaking and how how it has helped me become a more organized and independent learner. Um, focus note takingaking helps me learn more deeply by organizing my thinking before, during, and after a lesson. It's not just about writing things down. It's about making sense of what I learn. Focus note-taking follows a process, taking notes, processing them, highlighting, summarizing, connecting ideas, and then using them to study later. Focused note-taking also helps me support long-term memory, which means I'm more likely to remember key concepts when it come when it's time for a test or a project. Focused notes helps me in the future in my college and career, where strong note-taking and study habits are essential for my success. Thank you. Thank you. And I should have mentioned the last group was the two middle schools. So it was Parkview and Rams. And this is from uh Fos and Roz. So um now we are going to hear from uh Priscilla on leadership. Hi. Oh, hi. My name is Priscilla. I'm a sophomore at Ros. And what leadership means to me is basically being assertive in what you want. I feel like being an AVID, we're kind of the leaders of the school where we um have organized notes and we're kind of trying to be the role models. What I feel like being a leader is is taking focus notes, taking AP or accelerated classes and challenging yourself. I also think in AVID being a leader is finding out what field trips we want, what we want to do for AVID and AVID leadership. I'm in leadership council and the ways we're taking um leadership is hosting a spirit week and making AVID merch for all the AVID classes and anyone who wants to join. Um being a leader in AVID has benefited me because I am the vice president of the AVID leadership and I don't think I'd ever do it without learning the skills of what like being an AVID student is. Um, lastly, I feel like I've taken initiative in trying to do PSO at Bethl and I feel like having oh, sorry, having leadership and like asking for what I want and what I want for my future is very important and I think those are all the skills that I've learned while being an AVID. Thank you. Now, we'll hear from Yonas uh to talk about literacy, reading, and writing. Uh, my name is Yonas and I'm a junior at Roseville Area High School. Um, first off, I want to say that reading, actually writing is one of the most important things and Avid helps with that a lot. Um, we had one of our assignments called scholarship mini prompts which just prompts you with four different questions that may appear on scholarships. Um, I feel like this really helps us prepare and especially like uh because these essays I mean these scholarships require an essay will it where you tell your story and explain your goals. Simply put uh the the better the writing uh the better chance you have to stand out and Avid does help with that. And for reading um in Avid where we learn to actively read, not just highlight but annotate with questions, summaries and connections. Uh these actions can help retain information much better than without. That's all. Thank you. And Hamsa is going to talk about critical thinking. Hey, I'm Hamza, a junior at Raz and a PSO student at Sentry. Um, at a first glance I thought that uh critical thinking was like a really complex idea and I didn't really know how to take it. Um, but after sitting down and like learning it in Avid, I've learned that it's just really simple. It's just organized thoughts aimed to solve a spec specific problem. Um, and it's really important for us because it can really help us with time efficiency. It can help us organize a plan to to solve a problem from start to finish and get us there as soon as possible. Um, I really used this a lot in my life, especially with uh PSO. Uh, being cut off from like high school. It high school is like a lot of like everybody like hands it to you. They tell you plan how to do it. But college is like really you got to go out and you got to do it yourself. Like it's a lot of like you got to learn how to do it. Like whether it's like going to the website and like applying certain things and and it's it's been a struggle for me sometimes. Um whether it's my four-hour long chemistry class that I have to learn how to like stay focused the whole time. Um it really helps know get me on track cuz I feel like a lot of times I know how to do things but I just don't know how to start and critical thinking really helps me. It helps me break it down and know what to do first and how to solve it for the rest of the way. Um and that's that's how I I think it's the most important for me. Thank you. Um, next we're going to hear from any of you um, talking about college and career exploration that you've done um, in your classes. Would anyone like to speak about what you've been doing? Rosemary, go for it. Okay. Hello. I'm Rosemary. I'm a 12th grader at Roseville Area High School and I'll be attending the U of M in the fall. So, thank you. Okay. Um, I've been an AVID since seventh grade and every year we are mandated to do uh 12 or more hours of community service and um and I think doing those community service and volunteering has really helped me become an active member within my community and uh without that I don't think it would really I don't think it would help me grow as a person. So I'm really grateful for that. Um, so right now in Avid, we are working on our senior senior service projects and my group and I, we decided that we were going to make care packages for the homeless. So, we're super excited to distribute that. Um, additionally, I am also in NHS and Miss Barnes helped me uh write my essay on it, essay on getting into it. Um, and for NHS, we also are doing a service project which I'm wrapping up and we're making like I'm making uh cards for for patients in the hospital and we're making them and delivering them. And I guess overall my favorite my favorite service has to be when I was a student leader at uh the summer institute this past summer because I got to speak to hundreds of educators about what it's like uh being an AVID. So thank you. Thank you. All right. And then we'll finish up with um mentorships. I'm Lupe. I'm Miss. Hi everyone. I'm Lupe. I am a senior at FOS. Um I've h have been an AVID since seventh grade and have had two mentors since then. One being Miss Bulganholm. Um, I am lucky enough to say that both of my mentors have been strong women and have been very goal oriented and independent and outgoing, something I admire and inspire to be. Um, they have helped me grow academically and on a personal level. Mentorship is something I have that I am able to count on and have support from and help me grow. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thanks everyone. this. All right. As we take a look at the difference between schoolwide um and a the AVID elective, you saw a lot of the AVID elective students. Um schoolwide also means that all students are receiving the AVID strategies in their classrooms. And for that to happen, we have to have the teachers trained in the AVID methodologies. So, um, we are so fortunate to have, you know, fifth through 12th grade teachers, almost 100%, we're getting there, um, trained. And so, when you hear AVID schoolwide, that means all students are receiving AVID. And so, you can see on your, um, one pager that there's, you know, a little over 4,000 students receiving AVID. And so, that's about 60%, I guess, of our district um, out of the 7,000 students. And so, that's pretty cool. And so that's one thing to remember that there are we have the AVID elective which is amazing and special and wonderful um and we have um uh you know a specific curriculum and it really is almost a triple dose of everything that a lot of the other students are getting. And so um just to know that difference um we want to acknowledge that and the AVID elect is at Rams at Parkview at FOS and at Ros 712. We're going to talk about a few elementary highlights and so um we'll go to the next slide and taking a look at um for fifth and sixth grade um organization is the focus. So that was year one um where everyone and they continue this each year but they each have a binder and dividers. Um if you go to any of the schools all of their planners are very similar. Um they have goal setting in there. They have um all of their classes uh wicker. They add of some other elements, but it's pretty cool because if students are moving from school to school, they can walk into a school and they know exactly what to do. They have those same kind of routines. Um, and they know um they can just kind of take off from where they left where they left off. Also, every class uh fifth and sixth grade have social con contracts or social agreements and so those um classrooms agree to what is best for that particular group. And so they change those every trimester. Um, and it's um, really fun to go into those classrooms to see what they have agreed on and what works best for them in that classroom setting. Um, they also deal with the time management and you heard um, the sixth graders talking about that. And then of course goal setting. They start with a classroom goal and now they all have individual goals and it could be from um, having my alarm clock wake me and get on the bus on time to I'm going to get my homework done. So it could be a variety of things. Um, one thing to remember with the elementary is they are just learning many of these skills. And so it does take fifth and sixth to learn it, but it it's amazing. And so again, promoting that active learning, um, student engagement, encouraging tons of different collaboration. So really teaching them a variety of structures um, and getting their student voice out. Also providing all of those academic strategies that we really try and align um, to our existing curriculum. Um, AVID does foster tons and tons of self- advocacy and again that deeper understanding and again we want to build independent and consistent and confident um, learners. And so Parkview 78, the app collective highlights this year. Um, on the next slide um, you will see we talk a little bit about again building that relational capacity and Terrace um, spoke about that how it really is. He he does lead the tutorials and facilitates that but he also has become a wonderful mentor for many of the students in those in that classroom. Uh we also ask for that community service and if they are not able to get out they they don't have cars like the older kids and so they will provide a lot of things at Parkview. Um we also went on a field trip and we'll talk a little bit about that in a moment um with RAM so we're really trying to build community. We went to the University of Minnesota and then passion speeches and that's Saran who spoke a few moments ago and that was one of my favorite speeches I heard from him. It was on wisdom and um it was pretty amazing but I love how they're all learning um and and developing that public speaking. And then in the next slide um is the 10-step inquiry process. Um the boys talked about that and then also how Avid tutors um also are college students. They are our alumni. Um, and you can see up there, Nick on the left was in one of our very first classes um, 15 years ago. And then Joseph was in PSO. He's um, at Concordia and then Terrace is at Hamlin. And then the gentleman in the middle is um, one of our AVIT tutors who's just asked to be a tutor. It's pretty cool to have him there. So that's the highlights. And then um uh Lao and I um connected to build community with the two uh middle schools because we know that they are going to be at the high school together and so we want them to start getting to know each other and to be familiar. So there they are. There's the whole crew. Um and that was a a a great day. It was a fun day to be there um on campus. Um they went through a scavenger hunt and got to go in all the buildings and learn the history um of that community. And then on the next slide is our career cafe and um it'll be um tomorrow night. So you're all invited. Uh fifth through eighth graders have been invited from all the schools and their teachers and their families. Um and uh we have 45 plus um people that are there um that will be our our um speakers or our presenters. Dr. Lake will be one of those and she'll have a table and they'll have pass books. And Lao, do you want to add anything else? Those little trucks that are down there. Yeah. Um, this works. Um, this year, um, we've expanded. So, we're going to have we have five local, um, restaurants or food trucks that have, um, volunteered to bring, um, their specialty to our students and to our families. And it's going to be a great community event. And, um, we expanded also, as uh, Tana said, inviting all the fifth and sixth graders as well this year to our to our school. So, it's going to be a lot of fun. Weather's going to be great. Um and um just continuing. So I'm Scott Lowinger and I'm the coordinator at Rams um for AV and also AVID elective teacher. Um and just some of the highlights, but um just first of all a shout out to our students um for speaking earlier and being at the middle school having future AVID students. All three of our sixth graders that spoke have been accepted into the AVID elective next year. We already know that. and then having our current students, but then also um you know many of the avid speakers also went to Rams and and then Terrace um knowing him as a seventh grader you know what is that 11 years ago and it's just fun to see that that whole cycle happening. So um but some of our highlights sixth grade recruitment is always just a special highlight um for our AVID team to go to all the elementary schools. Um, we interviewed again over a hundred students this year. Um, and it's just really fun to see their excitement and their knowledge grow of what AVID is and how it can help them. Um, continuing with our professional development. Um, again like Tana said, we're all our school at like 98% of our staff is is fully trained in AVID now. Um and again with AVID being in the elementaryaries being at the fifth and sixth grade level, we can really see the difference. Um you know, having so many times where a teacher will come up to me and and say, "I can't believe how good Socratic seminars were." Because we can see that they've been working on that at the elementary and it's again just those building blocks. Um and then, you know, we keep you know, working with them and then hopefully the high school says the same thing about the students at Rams. Um, continuing on with team building, um, our AVID students, um, Briana, one of our speakers tonight, was also on our robotics team at Rams and she's pictured there. Um, again, the field trip to the University of Minnesota. We also have a, um, a field trip coming up in May to the high school. We get our eighth grade AVID students will have a shadow day to be able to um, partner up with some high school AVID students and kind of see how the high school works. And that'll be great. And then just again a lot of the community service and and many many speakers. All right, so that takes us to Roseville Area High School AVID highlights and many of our students, all of the students actually that were here from Roseville Area High School are on our AVID leadership council which we brought back this year. We had had it going and then with some scheduling conflicts and things that had gone away, but we brought it back and it's 40 50 students like strong right now. So, we're really excited and a lot of the students that came today are our leaders in that council. Um, we were really excited to be invited back this year to the best prep career day. Only three schools from the metro are invited and so we went and brought all of our 11th graders to Cargill this year. Um, some of our students, well, all of our students in 11th grade are also meeting up with their best prep ementors this week. So, some of them went today and um other students will be going on Thursday to meet at various companies like air prize to they've been emailing back and forth and now they're going to meet their e-mentors at the job site. So, they get to see like what their c like it was funny when we went for fos for bremer bank like seeing cubicles and things is not something that everybody has seen like what that all looks like in spaces that they meet and what like a workplace looks like. So, um, it's been interesting to bring students into the workplace to see what those spaces are like. Um, we were invited back again this year as well to the Inspire Conference for Medical Engineering at the University of Minnesota and brought a great group of students and got to use some medical um, technology and they got to use some robots and things and maneuver them. So, that was really um, great for those students, especially those that are interested in STEM. Uh we've had many field trips to college campuses including today. All of our 10th graders went to St. Thomas today um on a field trip. We've been to DHY Family College, Concordia, St. Paul. We go to the national college fair each year um and bring all of our 11th and 12th graders so that they can see schools from around the country at that event. We also went to the career connect fair again which was put on by the St. Paul Chamber of Commerce. And so again, that career and college component, really trying to bring in different aspects of that for our students. We continue to partner with the Paige grant and Wallen scholarships and announcements are going to happen on Friday for the Wallen scholarship. So, we're really excited um about that scholarship, which is 16,000 um for some of our students and we're we're hoping and and keeping them in mind on Friday when um announcements go out for that. Um, in addition, we have started a Raider Reach mentoring pilot with our out of school time. So, our students are going into Unity centers and they're doing some mentoring around college and career this year. And so, that's been a new partnership, a pilot this spring and we're hoping to expand it next year. In addition, um, we uh really enjoyed Do Good Roseville's Roseville Cares initiative this year and a lot of our students came and you can see some in the picture there. um helped to run some of those booths at that initiative. In addition, we've been sending student representatives to Optimus Club meetings on a monthly basis. So, they've gotten to learn some networking skills and get out with the community members and that's been a great partnership for us. And then we continue to do other service partnerships with local elementary schools, with um the city of Little Canada, the city of Roseville. So, anybody really that is looking for people to do community service, we love to send our students out into the community to partner. Well, good evening everyone. I'm Maren Keeer. I'm our AVID elective teacher at FAS. Um, and this is when AVID first started at FAS. I was our avid teacher for five years and then um we needed more English teaching so I switched to that and this is my second year back which is really exciting and fun um and I'm grateful to be back doing this uh many things were a continuation from um previous things that our AVID elective has focused on and like lots to celebrate this year um continuing with ementors and our students just really enjoy emailing their mentors and meeting their mentors and like Ann was saying seeing their spaces at work. Um speakers who come into our classroom are always just such a treat and any part of their story that they're willing to share. Um our students just really really benefit from that and really enjoy it. And that's like always on their speaker reflection form what they're adding at the end is I liked when he told me about you know and it's usually like the mistake in their life or they're like um when life didn't work the way they wanted to and they're they share that with the students that always like just resonates and um they'll make note of it and we do get a lot of compliments that were a very good audience too. So we're very proud of that. Um we had six of our students graduate early this year. uh schoolwide field trips continued to the National College Fair, college visits. We went to Dherty. We have another one that's coming up this spring. We went to Henipin Tech um and St. Paul College. We have some students that'll be taking the multilingual seal test and that will give them the opportunity to earn some college credit uh for for their home languages that they speak. We started with Zello this year which has been a really nice way for students to explore careers, explore colleges, learn more about themselves. Many things that like I worry sometimes that we don't have at FO as far as like a career center or a counseling that they that they would have at RAZ. Zello is able to do some provide some of that for students and then we can meet um during AVID class and talk about the results and so that's been very helpful. Students have enjoyed that. new class this year is AP computer science. Uh, and students will be taking the AP test as well this spring and our partnership with Dog Good Roseville started this year and they have enjoyed that a lot. Um, helping prep the projects for their big service day and then also um writing cards to the elementary students at Little Canada before they took the MCA test. Um, MissRandle from RAZ, uh, has helped our staff at FA, our teachers at FOA, train us more on how to more effectively be using, um, supporting students using their iPads for digital organization and tools. And then my favorite thing that we do is our partnership with early childhood special ed. And we go down once a month. um AVID students are in the classroom helping with whatever um and working with one-on-one usually in early childhood special ed most of the time they're one-on-one with the kiddos and um they just their faces just light up and sometimes at this point in the year uh I'll get some people who might be a little I don't know if I but as soon as they come back up they're like I'm so glad I went I'm so glad I did that just being around those young kids and that energy and so that that is one that's continued at and we hope next year as well. Thank you. So that takes us to we wanted to also give a few updates about some of our graduates um and our AVID alumni from Roseville. And so when they came back for an alumni panel like they do each year when they're on winter break from their colleges, we grabbed a few of them and checked in. So we'll show a few vignettes from that. I feel like I've met so many people from you're in a room with people who are likeminded yourself, people who want to go to college, people who want to succeed. Avid prepared me going into like medical field more specifically because it focuses on enhancing your writing and reading skills. It gives you accountability and belief in yourself that you can do it. It's definitely very helpful when you're first generation because you may not have someone to go to if you have any questions regarding your career or college. I'm working on building my nonprofit up right now called Unlock You Foundation. We are mentoring kids in lower income areas using all the things I learned, how to take notes, how to network, how to meet up with your teachers and not be afraid to ask questions. I'm thankful for every moment that I've had with AVID. And we have one more. such a helpful. My experience with AVID was a place where I could come sit with like my peers and talk about like our ambitions, our goals. It was always a family. My junior year, I was dead set on going to college. No one in my family has ever done the process or ever gone to college. Through the support of my AVID teacher and believing in myself, I decided to apply to a scholarship program at the college I'm in right now. I was someone who like was a really high achieving student and I knew exactly what I wanted to do. In AVID, I got the opportunity to hear about this like Abbott STEM internship program which exposed me to like engineering and the healthcare world and that's what propelled me into this like current career. AVID was able to take what my dreams and ambitions were and really turn them into a reality. I've definitely owe a lot to it for who I am now. All right. So we thoroughly enjoy each year when the alumni come back and I think we usually have around 20 to 30 students kind of come back in shifts and talk to all of our classes and they we really let them ask anything they want to ask so that they feel socially ready for college. They feel academically ready for college financially. So they ask them a lot about what scholarships are out there, what's it like with your roommate or living um in another state if they want to go out of state. So, we really try to open it up and our alumni love coming back and sharing their experiences and helping the current students make those decisions. I want to just really commend two of the sites within our district. Rams and Raz were both recently named AVID schoolwide sites of distinction for the 2024 2025 school year. In many ways, um AVID tells us this is almost more difficult to to get than national demonstration. um you have to meet a lot of different um uh parameters as you can see on these site of distinction metrics when you look at things um there's kind of overall process like how much of your staff is trained in wicker strategies do you have crossover between your school leadership team and the Avid site team and then as we start to progress through middle school and high school it's really about like are students doing those college and career readiness opportunities are they taking and um rigorous like college credit bearing courses or high school credit bearing courses at the middle school level. Um are they meeting college entrance requirements? Are they taking the ACT PAT? Um and then of course we do track our um 12th grade students who have applied to college and were accepted. And so to meet that highest percent, as you can see, that's like over 70% of our students schoolwide. And so the that's really like not just the AVID elective, we're talking about both RAMs and RAWs. We're meeting all of these parameters um on this metric. So big kudos to those two sites. Um and then we continue um both Rams and Ross are also national demonstration sites for AVID which means we coach other sites. We host people into our sites. We also get to network with other sites that are demonstration schools and try out and pilot things earlier than other sites that AVID has kind of coming out similar to like we have a new um certification tool that's coming out. So we got early access to it to look at it and give some feedback. This year both sites had their national demonstration coaching visit with an AVID implementation strategist. Next year is kind of our preparation year and refining the last few thing few things around our demo goals that we have that AVID gave us. And then um most likely in the fall of 2627 we will be revalidating both sites and that happens every three years. So, we shared with you some of the data and on um this snapshot um handout we have some of our demographics both um grades 56 and 712 we also have just how many students are participating at the 56 level and then in the 712 AVID elective in addition some of our numbers around the Rams and Park View High School credit bearing classes high school AVID if they're taking concurrent PSO college in the schools courses is um two or more if they've taken during their high school career two or more career and technical courses and then advanced placement classes um at both RAZ and FAS. And so again, I just really want to highlight as well, we have very high levels of staff who are trained in AVID and we really appreciate our staff that give up some time in the summer or give up time away from their classroom to go to this training. And I do want to highlight that three of our teachers, two which are here right now, were accepted into the AVID certified educator program. And so Scott, um, Marine, and then Peggy Marvin from Rams will be joining that year-long pathway. And they were they all had to apply and were accepted. So they will be starting that as well. And then helping to coach other people within our sites with their capstone projects. So really excited to start that journey with those three educators. Congrats. Congratulations. Yeah, it's great. So, now we will open it up for questions. Fantastic. And if you'd like the students to come back up, we are welcome. We can have them all come up. Would you like that and ask some questions? If there are questions for students, maybe the students could just stand a response that we could hear. I'll just start with I really want to thank the staff for being here. Thank you for your leadership. I'd like to commend the students and their families for being here. It's just a demonstration of how much we care. [Applause] Yeah. I don't know if it's a question, maybe just some comments. As many of you know, the board has looked forward I there's no words to describe how much we've looked forward to the continued expansion of AVID, schoolwide AVID, all of that. And um it's uh very I don't know what our word is heartwarming moving to see the number of teachers who are involved. I would guess that the teachers who get trained in it helps them too, right? Because they're they're able to interact. It makes them even more successful teachers. That's that that you wouldn't be this high above 90 97% unless the teachers even wanted to do it and valued it, right? Because there'd be resistance to it. So, uh, I I can't even tell you how s, you know, successful I think this has been thanks to you and the teachers and the leaders of this program and an expansion through the schools. I'm just curious, does anybody know what other are there other metro area schools who are into AVID too or as much as we are? Are we like pioneers leading on this? Is this a movement? I mean, there's there are there are many districts that have AVID. Um, and when we started Avid Elementary, we were one of kind of the only ones at the at in the front. And now there are quite a few around. Um, and so it's always fun to network and talk with other schools and see how they're doing things experiences. We get to go and visit once in a while their showcases just like they come and visit us. So it really is a nice network to just build, you know, in the Twin Cities a really strong Avid community. Cool. Cool. Imagine one I know I know a lot of the colleges are eager to get kids and some of them even have scholarships that are directed to kids who have gone through the aid program in high school. So just because the colleges recognize that they're going to be good students and they're going to be successful and a good student body is what the colleges want because they can market that because they have good students. Just a final comment. I'll just say Scott what you said earlier anytime that you have a sentence that has Roseville area schools um even even below high school like middle school and below and the word Socratic method in the same sentence. It's a drop the mic moment right there. So thank you all. Anybody else? It's always easy to have fantastic presentation, fantastic program. I mean, just the years that I've been on the board, um, just the evolution, how it's expanded. A lot of great work, hard work by staff, but students just it's it's always easy to tell an avid student. I mean, it's just phenomenal. All the students this evening, everybody just Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Well done. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. [Applause] And again, thank you foundation as well. Rose Schools Foundation. Yes. All right. Next up will be our staffing diversity report. Director Kenyatta Mccardi and associate superintendent Don Smith. Thank you. Thank you. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks for tutoring. Thank you very much. Welcomes the student. [Music] Welcome everyone. That's such a hard I don't know how to work. This is the second time we've followed them, so but very inspiring. Um, good evening. I'm Mccardi, executive director of human resources. Tonight, we're excited to provide you with our annual staffing diversity report, which we'll refer to now and as we move forward as the Choose Roseville annual report. We hope to provide you with a brief overview of our ongoing efforts to recruit, hire, and retain a workforce that truly reflects the diversity and vibrancy of our community. Throughout our presentation this evening, you're going to hear from various members of our team who will share insights on our various initiatives. Our HR team will provide you with an overview of our recruitment and retention efforts this school year. We also have representatives from our focus affinity group to provide you with an overview of their 24-25 accomplishments and the impact of their work. And finally, um, we will round this out with an overview from Associate Superintendent Smith to discuss our BIPO day interview process and outcomes. Thank you. Um, our mission is excellence, innovation, and equity in all we do. Our presentation this evening will directly address the top four key goals and strategies of our strategic plan, which is goal number one, our graduates are prepared to achieve their goals and aspirations. Goal two, our learners contribute to an equitable, caring society. Goal three, we are culturally responsive, inclusive, and anti-racist district. And goal four, the community is united behind meeting student needs. Our commitment to building a workforce that mirrors the excellence and innovation of our community remains unw unwavering. So just bear with me for just a moment. Um I want you to think back to your K12 experience. Do you have moments where you saw someone and thought I want to be just like them? Were there times when you looked around and saw possibilities for your future? Maybe you had role models who showed you what you could achieve. Or maybe you had to figure things out on your own without much guidance. Just want you to think about that for just a moment. Imagine a place where you had windows and mirrors that were representative of you. Imagine if we had that for all of our students here. Reflecting a workforce that celebrates the excellence and innovation of our rich community not only supports individual success but fosters a more empathetic culture and climate. Representation matters. I think we saw that a lot this evening so far. When students see reflections of themselves, negative stereotypes are combed. Our underrepresented students find role models. Opportunities are realized. Mental health of underrepresented groups improves. and the learning environment is enriched for everyone. We continue to make progress on our three to five year recruitment and retention plan and we'll talk about that this evening. In the next few slides, we're going to highlight our this year's progress and initiatives. And so, um, as we talk through this, we'll talk a lot about some of our recruitment efforts, but we are going to end with focusing on retention and what that looks like here in our district. And so I'll turn it over to Amanda Cotton who will review our choose ropes bill report. Good evening everyone. I am Amanda Cotton and I am the recruitment and retention specialist. Right. Slide five. Here on slide five um it shows the April 2025 demographic breakdown of our overall district staff with 27% identifying as bipac. Slide six. Slide six indicates that 15% of our teaching staff identify as bipok, which has remained steady. This consistency continues to demonstrate the district's unwavering commitment to diversity and inclusion. I want to further highlight the commitment of our district leadership and the clear mission to create an environment that where every teacher is valued and supported. These intentional retention efforts and support have yielded positive results, ensuring that our teaching staff reflects the rich tapestry of the community it serves. As the district continues to grow and evolve, the story of our district's diverse and dedicated educators serve as an encouraging example of what could be achieved when a community continues to demonstrate purpose and passion. So, as we continue to expand our partnerships like the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, athletics, Howard University, and the University of St. Thomas, we are pleased to see the positive impacts our equity of our equity initiatives. Next slide. In October, we participated in Pro-Day 2024, a career exposition for student athletes, demonstrating our unwavering commitment to supporting excellence. We eagerly anticipate the involvement of the university's forthcoming football athletic career fair this May. Roseville area schools also remain steadfast in our commitment to our rising partnership with Howard University. Despite recent leadership changes, our dedication to this collaboration continues to be a priority. We recognize the immense value that Howard University can bring to our educational community and we look forward to strengthening our ties. The Roseville Area School's Innovative Scholars of Excellence, known as the Rise Movement, is our grow your own program through the University of St. Thomas's work and learn program. Currently, we have eight of our educators actively pursuing a master's degree in special education, driving positive change, and inspiring excellence in our community. In March, we participated in Bethl University Educator Networking event where I met some of our current student teacher candidates of color that will be graduating this year. We also participated in the Minnesota School Job Educator Expo on April 1st. And it is my mission to recruit for Roseville area schools. I am committed in um innovation and I'm also committed in distinctive ways of showcasing our district. This vision led to a creative strategy that spanned multiple districts. So I reached out to South Washington County, West St. Paul and North St. Paul districts and together we created something truly special. our very first cross district teacher expo and we collectively named it the Inspire and Educate Teacher Expo which was held on April the 11th in this very room 2025. This collaborative event marks a significant milestone in our efforts to revolutionize the way we attract educators to our district. I believe this initiative will set a new standard for teacher recruitment, fostering a dynamic and vibrant educational collective community. I also believe that effective recruitment is the cornerstone for long-term retention by sharing our experiences with potential candidates and engaging them to reflect on their why, why they want to be educators and why they should choose Roseville. We attract and retain the best. So by highlighting what makes Roseville special, we create a compelling case for the why and why candidates should choose Roseville. Now I'm going to hand it over to my colleagues in focus. That's a good question. Yes. Okay. One, I am so proud to work alongside you both, right? And everyone here at the table. Thank you for the work. It's impressive. And I am pleased with the the high rates of retention and so forth. I just want to point out the overall goal over time. Yes. Would be to hire a staff, particularly a teaching staff that is truly representative of of our student body, right? So, it just highlights the growth that is also needed. So, I just want to recognize that. Absolutely. So, thank you all for the work. Thank you. Good evening. Um, my name is Loretta Dowalo Towns. I wear many hats in the district. I am an eighth grade teacher first, eighth grade English teacher. Um, but this year I have uh the unique privilege of also being teacher on special assignment for our focus group. Um, so I want to talk a little bit about what we've done this year and and um what we have sort of on the way uh possibly for next year. Uh, last year we underwent a strategic planning process and we established a mission and vision statement. So I would like to start with that. So focus is a community that helps students and bipac educators recognize their power to thrive by using their community cultural wealth. In our vision, we envision focus as an active stakeholder within the decision-making processes of Roseville area schools while simultaneously being national leaders in building educational educational systems of equity. Um and so through that work um we've been able to implement our mission, vision and values. Um and then um we've seen sort of a critical mass. We have 60 plus um um attendees coming to our um I would say seasonal meetings. We um have five large group meetings um throughout the school year held through the school uh through the school day. Um this work is actually funded through Pelby. Um they pay for the teacher subs and our lunch um and thus and so we've increased um participation and especially from even our support staff and that's something that's um kind of near and dear to my heart because I see our behavior interventionist, our restore coaches also as uh educators. And so there's sort of a sense of uh inclusion there. um we see ourselves as providing the professional development, differentiated professional development that we wouldn't normally get in regular PD. Um and so some of the speakers that we've invited uh talking about topics such as conflict bravery, um somatics, uh racial literacy, and uh community cultural wealth, which I've already um stated. These have become sort of foundational to even the language we use, right? Community cultural wealth has probably be been within our PD for the last three or four years. Um and as we think through it um we're able to also implement it in our own classrooms, right? Um encourage each other uh as as professionals through that work as well. Um, one of the highlights of our professional development is actually cultural affinity groups where we invite uh BIPAC facilitate facilitators from the Twin Cities area and they come in and they represent different um communities, the native communities, the black communities, the Middle Eastern North African community, um, transracial adopes, Asian uh, Latinex and also a multi-racial community. And so those facilitators coming in to do small circles uh small groups with uh you know folks who identify in those groups has has al always been sort of a an asset and the highlight and we'd like to keep some of that work going um um through our PD sessions. We also have uh 21 BIPAC mentees matched with uh tenur BIPAC mentors. So we're expanding our mentor mentee program. Um and then this year through Pelsby um their master's reimbursement program we've been able to fund uh six recipients have benefited from um um reimbursement uh towards their education. I mentioned some of the cultural affinity or the cultural affinity groups which um is part of one of our PD sessions and I just wanted to um highlight a couple of you know things from feedback um um from those groups. the richness of sharing cultural experiences was priceless. Um I feel um that I may not be able to articulate or or uh find others to share with. Right. So they this person was talking about affirming thoughts and feelings they have as a result of being part of that group. Um it's nice to have time to sit, think, reflect and process our identities. I truly appreciated hearing about other people's lived experiences and being able to relate to many of them. And this is my favorite. I look forward to affinity groups is such a release of tension, a safe space to discuss things I normally wouldn't talk about in the context of my job or in life. It's healing and gives me space to reflect on not only my place in the world, but also I can extend this knowledge and work with my students. And that's really what it's all about. Um so for next year um we are moving our meetings um to Tuesdays. We've done um Wednesdays this year and that conflicts with some of the building schedules. Um we also want to uh promote board credits um to incentivize more um attendance especially um um with teachers uh or licensed staff. Uh supporting the work of building based affinities. So there's been sort of a um a curiosity around making sure that there's community uh community built among bipac staff and teachers within buildings. Um Harambe so far has been the school that has sort of attempted that sort of to meet to convene um informally outside of the duty day. And so uh there seems to be a need for support and community building um in the buildings. And so we want to extend the energy that we have large group right and sort of have s satellites if you will um in the buildings um to increase so social gatherings and potlucks to sort of complement you know the professional development we do um there's a really interesting idea to cultivate and share stories through some common media maybe like a story core um and then advocating that raider support have a different PD structure so Um once again seeing um behavior interventionists, prayer para profofessionals um restore coaches as educators as well. Um that we'd like to have a a hand in what their PD structure um even looks like moving forward. And then one last thing that I'll I'll just pose. it it comes up sparingly but just thinking about um the future of of funding focus right that um we have sustained ourselves through Pelby's uh teacher mentorship and uh retention of effective teachers grant and um we're a little nervous about the sustainability of those funds given the f the you know the current um political climate and so wondering you know we we're ready and and to have conversations about how Roseville plans to sustain our group in the future. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, uh let's talk about by state interviews. Uh so, our bypoxy interviews grew out of a partnership uh between the office of educational equity and our human resources department. About three years ago, we attended an eight-month training with the um black teacher talent fellowship. Uh this co cohort was comprised of over 20 what we call eleas or local uh educational equities from 17 different states. Uh there were two from Minnesota. Um we were one of them uh representing over a million students. Uh so together we explored promising practices, gleaned uh leadership insights and supporting each other in and the important work of recruiting and retaining and this particular training was about recruiting and retaining black teachers. Uh one of the promising practices that we took away from this professional development um was the BIPO state interviews. Next slide. So we decided to uh so this slide talks about the why uh we decided to conduct the bipox sting abuse uh for the reasons that you see displayed here on the screen. As uh executive director Marti state earlier in this report uh data shows that the positive impacts that teachers of color um has on students of color and white students alike. Um increasing the number of bipok teachers has been a goal of our system for some time now. Um and we consider this street data and we've had some conversations at this table about that, right? Um but this street data that we have collected um it only enhances our uh understanding and our capacity uh to be able to meet the needs of our of our BIPO staff. So, some of the reasons like I said, um, representation, increasing the number of BIPO staff that we have, um, and and and really being able to collect that street data that allows us to to make those shift and those changes, um, that continue u continue to have um, keep our BIPO staff here, but also allow them to thrive. So, let's talk about the process. Uh we scheduled 15-minute meetings with all BIPAC staff uh who were willing. Uh this group included licensed staff and non-licensed staff. So you got a position, you name it. Um we we we were we were attempting to interview with you. Um and these were all of our programs and buildings. These interviews uh were voluntary as I as I said before and we ended up with about 65% of our BIPO staff who participated um in these interviews. Once we conducted all BIPO day interviews uh with our schools and programs uh we would work with the supervisors uh whether that's principles or program supervisors to determine uh the themes and brainstorm some next steps. Uh there was no limit to how many next steps uh we could brainstorm but uh we asked supervisors to only move forward two or three um next steps that they could ensure full implementation on uh because we wanted to ensure that we were building trust uh through this process. go to the next one. And these were the questions that we asked. Um, and so we wanted uh our um participants to think about this from the perspective of a person of color in our district. And so each of these questions, each these four questions were uh preferenced with that. So as a person of color, what keeps you working here? And we try, you know, want to personalize it. So if it was Harambe since that's my own school, we say what keeps you working here at Harambe or um what keeps you here at Rose Schools. As a person of color, do you feel you can show up uh to said school or district as your authentic self? If so, why? If not, why? Why not? Um as a person of color, what aspects of your job you wish you could change? And as a person of color, uh what can I do to ensure you feel supported here? Um can we go back quick second? Um and um so we collect the responses from participants. Um and then last summer um so I wasn't if I wasn't clear about this, it was a two-year process that we went through. Um year one was um with all of our school buildings, our 11 school buildings, and year two was um all of our programs and other uh uh places um throughout the district. But we collected these responses last summer. We pulled together a group of focus members um to analyze this data. And I just want to give a shout out to Abe Garcia from Central Park, Amber from RAZ, um Sylvia Vasquez from Rams, and uh Shanai Shava from RAZ who sits right here uh with us uh and she she'll be she'll be sharing here in in a moment. Um so they were assigned a question each. So, four questions, four people. Um, they were asked to read the responses for their assigned questions. So, read through everything and this was a lot of data that they had to go through, but but we really wanted them to know what this data said. Um, then they were asked to load those responses um into AI um and produce overall themes and five bullet point themes. So, we have an overall thing, but then let's can we break that into some bullet points that are really understandable. Uh, they were also asked um excuse me, I think I read that already. Um, they were they were also asked to give uh overall themes and bullet points um for staff by race um and employee group. Um so, we wanted to know what went to try to break that data down. So, tonight what we're going to do is we're going to share those bullet points with you for each question. Uh so I'll share uh on questions one, two, and three. Um and then Miss Shavu will share on question number four. All right. Okay. So um the responses, what keeps you working here um at Roseberry Schools or at your said school? Um and so you see those themed um responses, a sense of belonging and community. Uh there was a lot of talk about how um you know their their school felt like family. Um, and that was really really really good to to hear. And um, one of the things I would say is um, the schools that probably said that the most uh, were the ones that where we had actually um, more bipok staff. Um, and um, I I think of Little Canada for example where staff spoke about, you know, there's so many people here that's speak my language. Yeah. Um and so, you know, coming to work just felt like coming, you know, and and being with family. So, that was really important. Um there was talk about the commitment to equity and diversity uh here in our district. That was a thing that um really attracted a lot of staff uh to our district in the first place and so they're appreciative of that. Um and they did speak about, you know, the support uh environment in their schools and the relationships that they have with people in their schools and and supportive leadership. to continue on. Um, students were probably the first thing that came out of people's mouths. Uh, when we asked what keeps you working here, students and families. Um, and but they really appreciated that our diverse student population and that that rose up a lot. And then opportunities for growth and development. Um, you know, we'll talk a little bit about that um on some other questions, but but they appreciated that there were some opportunities and look forward to having continued opportunities for development. Question number two, u as a person of color, uh do you feel you can show up to your building or roseary school as your as your authentic self? Uh this was the question I think had the most variations um as far as yes, no, and sometimes. Um and so you'll see that reflecting the theme. So, some some challenges for BIPO staff um you know, just u being able uh to to to show up and and not feel judged by what they're doing um or misunderstanding. A lot of talk about code switching um that some people have feel they have to do. Um authentic authenticity and representation. Um you know, you talked about the um different cultural identities. And once again, those schools that had, you know, more black staff were, you know, where we got more responses of like, yeah, I can I can show up as myself. Um, then there were some mixed experiences. Um, there were some conversations around microaggressions that staff received. Um, and even a story that I remember of a staff member speaking about, um, you know, how they brought a traditional dish uh, from their culture for lunch. and um some people had some things to say about the smell of that particular dish. Um so even things like that um can can cause our staff to to to not feel welcomed in that space and and feel like they can't show up as our authentic self. Um and and we definitely don't want that. Um supportive environments once again um for those who feel like they can show up as authentic self. Those they they spoke about the diversity and inclusivity. Um and then once again um there was some need for inclusivity. um they they like some of the steps but uh we need to continue to address microaggressions and the uh just kind of some of these cultural disconnects as I as I call it or the cultural misunderstandings. Question number three, as a a person of color, what aspects of your job do you wish you can change? Now, this particular question I think um um was the most difficult to answer from a person of color perspective. Um, so there was a lot of things that would go to like what you may hear just about your work like I want more more money. If I could change that, I want some more money. Um, or you know, I'd like a you know, our case loads are really heavy and and things like that. Um, but positive feedback and initiatives. Um, you know, there was some appreciation about that. So, it was like, yeah, keep doing what you're doing and some of those things. Um, but you can see the workload and support concerns, concerns for cultural awareness, which I spoke about a little bit in the last slide. Um, and then racial equity issues once again. Um, you know, uh, one of the things that really came up was people's experience, how they experienced Roseville, it had a lot to do with the the staff members that they work closely with. And so, um, which makes a lot of sense if I'm on, you know, third grade team. Um, those are the people I experience the most. um and you know they really impact to to how I um how I feel the system and then some needs for some some some better systems around growth and and and and things like that. Um real quick I I did want to read um so Sylvia Vasquez was uh slated to go over this uh can you go back for a second? Sorry, Michelle. Uh to go over question number three. That was a question that she broke down. Um and I I asked um um our individuals to if they wanted to share any thoughts around that process and I just want to share with you since she's not able to be here tonight what she had to say. She says, "When I first read the answers to the questions, I begin to feel what the environment was like. I mean, some of the responses felt as if um as if it were a former interview and some answers seemed held back. Um in other instances, I could almost sense an easy conversation between the interviewer and the interviewee. Uh since I had the question regarding the part of the job you wish you could change, I noticed that the answers varied. Um but a common response was acceptance as a bipok educator workload uh bias in the workplace and there doesn't seem to be opportunities for other committees or other uh toas or other positions that entail promotions for bipok voice. And then she closes with um one of the questions that is vital for our success in Roseville is the continued support we receive. I feel that many of our BIPOC members want to advance or possibly seek other opportunities such as instructional coaching or an administration. In all, many of our BIPO staff feel supported uh by their administration and by their colleagues. And so that's from Sylvia Vasquez. And then for question number four, I'm going to turn it over to Miss Shaba to share question. Good evening everybody. I'm Janine Shaba. I'm an English teacher at Roseville Area High School. I'm also on the leadership team for focus and director uh assistant superintendent associate I guess there superintendent Smith looped me in this last summer to do some data analy an analysis and it was a really eyeopening experience I've always looked at data um looked at student data but never adult data in the district so that was really interesting and um and eye opening experience. Um there was a lot of varied uh responses. My question was what can I do to ensure you feel supported at work? So within the district and um some takeaways and observations that I had was that um bipok people will speak when given the opportunity. Um, there were some responses that were paragraphs long and then there were some responses that were a couple sentences long and that really reflected relationships that people had in these buildings. When people had great relationships with their administrators and their co-workers, they would speak freely and at length. And when those relationships were a little bit compromised and people felt like they needed to protect themselves, um, they didn't say much. they said very little. Um I also noted that um people were very expressive about what they needed um such as PD, differentiated professional development, financial support, um clarity on policies, fair treatment and accountability and also people really spoke about the need for inclusion and invitation to sit at the table when decisions are being made. Um, it was also important for them to know that they were able to show up with another person of color uh when they were invited to some of these tables and not just show up by themselves. So, that support piece and that really leans on the cultural um nature of being a person. We do things you never do things in isolation as an individual. You always have people that you do things with. Um I'd like to share a couple of quotations um from the responses that we had. Um one said, "I cannot show up as my authentic self. I'm very guarded uh when I do show up. As a bipok male, I don't feel I can show up because I'm not always given the grace that my other non-bipok peers are. There are perceptions that I'm in this position because of my color and not what I bring to the table. There's some very passive aggressive interactions that I've experienced with non-bipok teachers here and even when I was at RAMs. This causes me to be very guarded and I want people to treat me like the professional that I am because I am qualified. So that's a direct response to what should I ensure you what can I do to ensure you feel supported. So to show up as themselves and to know that they're treated as a professional because they're qualified. Um, another response was remember to ask questions. Anytime you feel you need to talk to a BIPO staff member, please have a conversation ahead of time instead of just addressing it in a big group and shocking people. So talk when talking with BIPO staff, I wish we would really have known about certain conversations before it happened, especially where they pertained to BIPO students. Also, giving permission to staff to find someone they have affinity with um would be really helpful. Having affinity groups would also help with this process. And then another response was um in order to feel supported at work, I would love a BIPO group at RAMs where it is planned as a half day or team building of some sort. I would love if the welcoming staff represented the student population. Now, this response was a few about two years ago, and this person had said they like Principal Cook who stops in to check in. It's important for admin to stop in and check in on bipok staff. Um, try and learn one specific thing about your bipok staff, seeing where your staff shines, right? Try to learn a fun fact. Try to include bipok staff in any decision- making or include them in other opportunities or have certain positions on rotation to give other people a chance. And with this particular one, they were talking about things like lead teachers and positions um higher positions where there's no rotation and opportunity for BIPO staff to get into those positions until somebody retires or leaves a building. Um so all in all really bipok staff just really want to be included. Um they want clarity on opportunities uh and policies. They want fair treatment and accountability and they really really appreciate check-ins. So, it's important for admin to be communicating and not just ignoring people. Um, when given a voice and the opportunity to speak, bipox student, bipok staff will tell you exactly what they need. And that was the biggest takeaway. Thank you. Thank you, Miss. So, we'll we'll we'll close this presentation with um some conversations around next steps. So if you want to go that. So um two parts here. Um what you'll see in the next couple slides are next steps from our our principles. So this is uh our 11 school buildings and and and whatnot. Once again um this was a process of sitting down speaking about the themes coming up brainstorming as many next steps as we could and then picking two or three at the most to kind of move forward with um ensuring that there's implementation around that. So these are some of the things um so I I I um that did I pull from those conversations and I asked principles um recently like how are how is the implementation going uh with these and these are some of the things that they spoke about as far as the implementation uh these regular check-ins once you a theme of hiring more BIPO staff. heard that um affinity spaces um um we've spoken about as well um are are things that are happening. Um addressing those microaggressions once again hopefully you hear in these next steps um things that directly relate to the feedback. Um, one of one of the things I wanted to point out that I thought was uh um was was really interesting was um you know I believe and many of us believe that you know um the more that we learn about each other the the better we we can interact with each other and understand each other and so some of our uh principles have um you know um um started having moments in their staff meetings where they're doing that you know whether it's an IMP poem or it's a a racial autobiography that they're sharing where staff members share about themselves so they can get to learn each other better. Um um staffing changes. One of the things we talked about um was, you know, BIPO staff's uh feeling of inclusivity and belonging had a lot to do with maybe who who they're working with. Not maybe, but who they're working with. Um so some of those, you know, staffing changes where we're checking in with BIPO staff to say, "Hey, here's what I'm thinking about for your team next year." You know, um you know, how do you work how do you work with these individuals? So getting so getting that there's been some um some clustering of staff at certain grade levels um um and what that is is that's ensuring you know there's more than one BIPO staff member on that grade level team. Uh so there's been some clustering around that as well um and continue to collect some street data. Um and then uh you know many other things that are happening um whether it's the bipok uh holding holding circles um having these steps in their in their sips things that they're going to be doing um around uh the information from this bipok uh staff interviews um yeah we'll move to the next slide. Now, as a district, um, we also discussed this thing as as a district, as a a cabinet, um, looking at all of the data that we collected over the last couple of years and how we want to move forward. And so, these are some of the next steps that we are planning as a district. Um, you know, we will take this summer to kind of iron some of these things out and be more clear about some of these things, but you will see some of them mirror what our principles are saying as as far as continue to hire BIPO staff. um you know learning from each other. That's our our heritage months initiative uh where uh almost each month uh focuses on a different culture or a different group of people so we can learn more about each other um that that explicit PD staff has been really asking for um around that continue to try to find ways to do that um and along with those affinity spaces really want to explore that. You can hit the next one. Thank you. um interview teams. That's one thing I I I I'm really proud of as far as a district is we want to make sure we have varying perspectives on our interview teams. Um and we're going to um we're looking at ways of making that happen at the building level. We already have that happening with kind of district-wide positions, but what does that look like at the building level for a building that may not have many BIPO staff members? What does that look like for that? Um, and then we want to um develop a five-year plan around this street data. Um, so we can't roll out a a BIPO staff interview every year. Um, it takes a lot of time to do that. Um, but but what is that in between time look like? Maybe it's a fiveyear that we do this, but then what happens in in between time so we don't lose that momentum? And then uh a a few more things. addressing microaggressions is something that um is coming through loud and clear. Um so we will definitely be look looking at that through our districtwide professional development and how we focus on that piece. Um and then as we talked about what is was you know being strategic about how our our our pock staff members are uh placed and supported in the buildings that uh that we have. And I think that's it. We'll open up for any questions. Thank you. Um I have a I have a lot of thought thought thoughts about this and and just to start out where where I work uh we have the same issues. We're trying to increase diversity. I fully believe in the the cultural affinity groups that they're essential and I know it's all come everything comes to funding right but to the extent that we are faced with risks to grants and other money I would hope that um the cultural affinity groups and recruitment at like how are we going to other HBCU too or is that the only one at this point is it a well the intent is to have more yeah yeah is it a barrier coming to Minnesota with lensure and everything or it's probably more just the barriers They don't want to come live in the winter when it's 30 below zero and I don't really want to go. But so both recruitment to to you know really attack the problem and and the affinity groups I think are essential to welcoming BIPAC staff and and then helping them continue to to stay welcome. So I'm very proud of what we're doing. I think that let's face it, you know, the fact that what 50 60% of our kids are bipac, but only 50% of the teachers, it's better than it was like when it was like 12% and 10% but it's tough. I know it's tough because Roseville is also a place where you can't hire somebody unless somebody retires or leaves, you know, and the the older workforce reflects the demographics of Roseville 15, 20 years ago, right? And so there's just it's hard. It's really difficult to do it. I I do want to say this because I'm I hear the same thing where I work. You know, I I I and this board and I believe administration, there's one unequivocal message that everybody should know, which is that if you're hired into this district, it's because you are well qualified for that job. Not for any other reason. Not for any other reason. That's it. I don't care if it's a teacher. I don't care if you're a receptionist. I don't care if you're principal who we just met tonight. You're here because you deserve to be here. Not for any other reason. whether it's color or culture or anything else, you deserve to be here. So hopefully people can get over that. That kind of gets at my I'm disappointed too because to hear that to me the most important question in here is can you come as your authentic self? And to hear that some people I'll use an old term right they still they still feel they need to pass or they need to hide themselves that's extremely disappointing. And yeah so obviously more PD around microaggressions and stuff like that. We we do that at where I work. Um but it is tough. Is it some of your question is is there a recourse like you hear this what is that addressable at all? Like if someone says wow this particular individual just just keeps intentionally mispronouncing my name or just all this stuff to them or semi-intentionally can someone go to someone and make counseling available to work with that person and say you know stop it. I I just don't know that. And you don't need to answer it now, but I you know to the extent that you hate to say this, but you know, some folks they just they need to be examples. You know, it's like you cannot continue to do that, especially with the stated goal. And as we've all said here for years and years and years, the underlying basis of all this is because absolutely, without a doubt, all the literature supports it. It is 100% true that kids perform better in school from K all the way through 12 if they can see teachers that resemble themselves and how they look and their culture and their language. That's what really is drives all this and um so that's why it's a goal and anybody might be out there listening and wondering why do we care because isn't a good teacher good teacher? Well, yes and no. The literature shows that kids it's the role modeling. It's everything you mentioned. So, um I don't I applaud the work. I hope we continue funding the cultural affinity groups and the recruitment efforts and the expansion of that because that's one way to attack it. Go to an H.B.CU uh for those uh historically black college university HB.CU that will help potentially with recruiting and getting folks in here. Um so that's great. Maybe even on our side we can that Zello system we can game it so that it just tells all the kids all the BIPO students you really want to be a teacher here in Roseville. There you go. Um there you go. And I know there's a hump, right? It's hard because what 15% isn't we're not over the hump yet, right? We're still the staff it's still a a bipok minority staff and it's hard for folks who aren't here to look at that from the outside and feel comfortable even applying to come here I think because you know maybe if I get up to 25 30% it starts to change a little bit and it's still not close to the 50 60% that we'd like it to be. So I don't know I said a lot. My only question was around recourse for folks who are behaving badly. Um and I just applaud the work and you know wish continued success and congratulations on even getting it up a half point or or one or two percentage points over the years because it is it's tough. It's tough. So thank you. Thank you. I I I'll just quickly the the recourse question. I I'll address that. I would say, you know, um, and we've gone back and forth with this, whether it was with, uh, some members of focus or whatnot as far as, um, you know, that was one of the big reasons for having the supervisors do this. Um, so they can hear about their program, they can hear about their school, they can hear about their how their staff is experiencing that and they can make those changes if any of those things are revealed in that. Um, and I and I and I say we went back and forth because then the other part is, you know, um, will people be as truthful when their supervisor is there? So, we continue to wrestle with that. And you know that that that leads to kind of some of that five-year plan where there's got to be some things in there where um you know I'm not I don't I'm not talking straight to my supervisor to tell the to tell these things. But but I would say that was um you know intentional around that piece um so that they get used to um being in a mode where they're they're seeking input from their BIPO staff and from what they hear and should believe um they can do something about that. I'll comment too. There certainly is recourse and we do have the ability and we need to continue to improve. Uh my comments will also relate when clerk 2 reads around our APAC non-concurrence. As a district we need to continue to increase accountability in all our actions. And so I'm always a bit bothered when I hear things like some in some buildings this happens or in some buildings this happens or the district can choose two out of the seven strategies like what is our plan to accomplish our goal and ensure that for this example every bipok teacher in our district has an experience that is highly satisfying and supportive right that's the overall goal and so the answer my question. I was one of my questions with the methodology is that do we think as we continue to do this will we have the principles do it because I I I was grasping with that is when we were hearing about the comfort of some people maybe sharing that and not only because of the comfort with that person but that's your boss who you're sharing it with and how that you know this reflects there and then will we do it again or how often do we do it and all that and then how are the questions developed you may have mentioned that I may have messed it up. Yeah. No, didn't quite mention that. So, uh uh once again, so we were able to um uh be a part of the Black Teacher Fellowship, uh 8month, uh PD. And so, there was a um and so I don't remember the district. I'm I'm not even going to guess, but there was a district, wasn't Minnesota, that presented on this stuff. Um and so that's part of where some of those questions came from. um as as far as that goes and then just kind of working with uh HR, you know, really developing, you know, um how many questions do we really want to ask? Um exactly which of those do do we want to ask? Um so it's kind of a process like that. We had, you know, some idea from that that partnership with Black Teacher Fellows. But then we ended up um just through some process developing those four questions. Yeah. Thank you for the tremendous work. I think our recruitment efforts are terrific, too. I mean, what doing I think seems to be cutting edge and we may not see the benefit for a few years though, but we're seeing some now, but you know, it's still down the line getting our name out there. Definitely evolving. Sure. Yeah. I just had a quick question. Um, you know, what does PD around microaggressions look like? Is it is it like roleplaying? Is it training materials? I mean, because we, you know, we want it to be successful. We want it to reach those folks that are doing it. I mean, just just what does it look like? I just Yeah, it's a good question. Um, so I I would say, you know, one of the pieces is what is microaggressions? Yeah. So, we have um you know, um there's people in our system that aren't familiar with that particular term. Um and so we um we want to make sure that we have a a common understanding of that. Um there are some people who have experienced it but didn't know it was called that and you know and and things like that. So I think you know some awareness around what that is you know what do they look like? We we we actually did some PD with our raider support staff I want to say it was last school year around microaggressions and it was really about um you know um you know what may you know what what might it look like for um um someone who's Muslim and getting um a microaggression. What does it look like for someone from the LGBTQ plus community, what might that look like? What kind of things do they do they say? You know, from from the black community, you know, one of the things you'll hear a lot is, "Oh man, he he or she or they speak so well um as though you expected like gibberish uh coming out of their mouth when when they start to speak." Um, and so those are things that people may not see as like um um you know, an aggression because you know, they may be like really impressed with what you had to say, but the fact that they're that surprised um is the part of the aggression. Um and so really helping people to understand, you know, you know, you know, um those terms and and and some of the things that go into that. And then what do you do about it? um when you are faced with a microaggression whether you hear it or you or or or you hear it happen to someone else what do you do about that um and so some of those are some of the things around professional development um and we've used some tools um Smithsonian has some tools around that um as well um but it's really about those three things recognizing what it is um and um or a couple things recognizing what it is and then what do you do about it when you hear it the reason it's so hard to overcome in some people Because remember the PD you gave us a few months ago, that's all deep in the amydala, right? That's part of the brain that's formed and you have the context, you have your paradigm. And so, you know, oh, look, he spoke so well. It's because you don't even realize you have that subconscious bias of low expectations or different expectations. It's hard to get in there and have somebody really really change that deep brain context because that's what it comes down to. But you're right. I think it's it's even alerting people that it exists. They don't even they're not even aware of it sometimes. You're like, "Oh my god, I didn't mean that." But then, okay, then just think about it a little bit, you know. Yeah. It's very very revealing. So, I don't know whether you're aware. I mean, maybe you are because when Pelby first came up from about the cultural competence training. I mean, I have it. So if you want I'll I mean because I I do the training with teachers and there's a whole section on microaggression with many cases just like the ones you talk about. Yes. And those are really powerful to have discussion about whoa what does that really mean right what is the meaning behind when somebody say that um like oh you are a math teacher like like why are you surprised surprised exactly right yeah so so so th those cases are available so I I would offer that I mean that whole booklet is yes thank you let's talk yes let's do that let's let's do that because you don't have to start from scratch. We did that as a whole team develop a whole section on microaggressions. That's great. Yeah. And it's Pelby approved, right? So, yeah. Thank you. I appreciate that. We'll be connecting. Yeah. I mean one of the thing I I have to say thank you for this work and it's very um it's very aligned like you say right from all the work that I've also done some of you know um like when we talked to 700 people for the elevate teaching movement some of these themes came up and if you look at the research in general not even in education in general around talent management talent you know recruitment and retention is very similar, right? The sense of agency people have to feel, the sense of belonging people need to feel and the environment they are in. Those are all I mean I think about all the things you're trying to do is exactly the things in teaching partly because that's what people want right that they don't leave because they don't care about the students. They leave usually is something else. So it's this is really street data to say this is what it is like in in in Roseville and what can we do about it. So thank you for the work. Thank you very much. I do know I I had a very long meeting long meeting we bring uh this morning that the grow you're talking about is for the adult. It is clear that there is um um uh unfortunately um decline in and students interested in introduction to education. So we've been talking a lot about what is the intent what is more intentionally we could really highlight education pathway so that is very intention in multiple points. So she and I talked for two and a half hours about this. So stay tuned stay tuned. So, but you know because it takes a long time, right? You're recruiting the adults, but in order for the profession to sustain, you got to talk about That's right. younger people like 10 years later, right? 12 years later before they become a teacher. So, that kind of planting the seed has to start so much earlier. So much earlier. So, um lots of ideas to come. So, I know I'll be I mean I think some of your names were mentioned this morning when we talk. So, so we'll we'll we'll be talking about this for sure. Yeah. I guess I would just maybe just say maybe I'll speak for the for the chair. This board 100% supports everything you're doing. Oh, yeah. Your goal. So, thank you. Anyone add on that, Todd? Or Thank you. Yeah, it's um Thank you for all for being here and all your work. It's it's amazing. Keep going. Remember, we're here for you. We're here to support you. So, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. We applauded everybody else. Yeah, we should. Thanks, guys, for your patience and staying so late. Thank you. Thank you. It's April 22nd. All right, we will be moving on to our action items for the evening. Oh, starting off the Harambe Elementary flexible learning year program change. Um, Dr. Lake, Principal Amara, welcome you to come sit over here. I feel like you're all alone once the roof clears in the back. If you just want to sit next to uh, executive director Vonda Lindy over here. That'd be great. Just hear closer to the conversation. Thanks, Nathan. And I also want to acknowledge that we're over two hours into the meeting and I want to acknowledge some really significant important reports that we had this evening and this item that I'm bringing forward is also equally as important. So thank thank you for everyone the the energy you continue to bring. So I will be formally recommending that we transition Harumbbe Elementary School from a year- round flexible calendar to a nine-month calendar effective the 2627 school year. Uh, everyone in this room has received this presentation multiple times over the past two to three months and we think it's important that I give this presentation for the community and that it's on a video recording. So, if the board would consider um holding your questions and then feel free to make your comments and statements at the close of the presentation, I think that would be best. So uh as the other reports have done today uh the the change is reflected in our strategic plan in terms of we believe this decision will increase our potential for reaching capacity for students, staff and families at Harambe Elementary. In terms of our vision as a school district, we have seen a decrease in our K through six enrollment for the past 10 years in Roseville area schools. about 380 students that we've lost again primarily at the elementary level. We've been holding steady in in our secondary schools in Roseville. The lost enrollment has been most significant at Harambe Elementary. We've lost approximately 150 students over the last 10 years. Our commitments moving forward to the Harbe school community. Harambe will not be closing and that's a significant point to make to our broader school community. The district's attendance boundaries will also not be changing. We'll continue to be an interd district magnet school that provides transportation across the east metro, ensuring access for all students at no cost to their families. We'll remain a school that celebrates diversity and fosters a multicultural environment. will uphold a strong sense of community by prioritizing meaningful connections among students, families, and staff will certainly enhance our commitment to providing support for students who need it most, ensuring every learner has the resources to succeed. The new vision, again, I've already mentioned that we'll be transitioning to the 26 27th school year. We felt it was best to take this year to thoughtfully plan and certainly partner with students, families, and staff in terms of stamping that new vision for Harambe moving forward. Year-round schools in Minnesota are no longer in demand. The reasons include scheduling challenges for families, limited academic benefits compared to traditional calendars, certainly when looking at the re the research, and high operational costs. Almost all your own schools in Minnesota have returned to a standard traditional school year. Harumbbe's last school year, pending the vote this evening, Harumbbe's last school year will be next year in Roseville for the year around calendar. Crossroads Elementary in St. Paul will be moving back to a nine-month calendar next fall. And Longfellow Elementary in Rochester at this point will be the only school that will continue on a year- round calendar. Here's a look at the Harambeia tenants. And we'll leave this on the screen so that those in the the audience or viewing can go back or freeze this picture. In large part, when you look at the dark red cells on this calendar, it indicates high amounts of absenteeism on those days. The darkest cells move towards 20% absenteeism on those days. And um unfortunately it's much higher than a comparison school elementary school in Roseville. So again you can note transition dates and including the days in June and July when we would love to see students in school at Harambe. uh again chronic absenteem isism is noted at 10% or more and the cells of June and July at Harambe were approaching 20% on many many days school sustainability that's a responsibility certainly of the school board school leadership of our district uh is to focus on student success it's a responsibility to pro provide excuse me a school calendar that promotes student engagement and attendance The positive impact the C nmonth calendar will support students prek to 12 academic journey by including seamless transition pathways that will be prek through 12th grade in Roseville area schools consistency with their siblings and families family members and a greater educational continuity. N of calendar will also provide students and staff with greater access to district-wide support and professional development, including access to student services, all programming, streamline assessment calendars, greater access to district-wide professional development, and enhanced lead teacher programming. We know how important uh training is for our teachers and all staff. So, our transition timeline, again, just to be clear for everyone in the community. Uh, this school year, we're conducted an enrollment study as we do every year, drafted a plan. We've informed informed our Harambe community. Uh, we're making a formal administrative recommendation to the school board. We processed this at last month's study session and they'll we're bringing the recommendation for a vote this evening. Uh we will engage the school community in shaping the new vision of the Harambe community in a very transparent and authentic manner and that work will begin this May. Uh next year we'll continue with the year round calendar while partnering with the school community again to stamp the school's new vision and again 2627 will be shifting to the nine-month calendar. And just to give some uh a sneak peek, you know, we will again I want to emphasize that we will be engaging family, staff, and students to build the new vision. We're fully committed what I just said, following are some engagement strategies that we can share share with our community. We're considering the following inerson virtual family forums, poll ideas, cards, multilingual surveys, family advisory groups, uh draft review and feedback on multiple occasions and opportunities for the community. uh visioning workshops, listening sessions, facilitated conversations, anonymous surveys, advisory teams, idea boards, and again seeking many opportunities for feedback, student engagement, classroom brainstorming, drawing writing prompts, uh increasing student voice, a great school is prompt responses, vision voting, and school hashtag development. And so bringing it all together, theme mapping, vision, gallery walk, transparent, consistent updates. And again, we'll be partnering with several different organizations in this regard. And then two last slides. These are just some ideas. We know that we want to take advantage of the beautiful setting and the history uh at Harambe Elementary School, whether it be that environmental or nature-based learning. But what is connected to that? What is making folks feel really proud? And what do we want to continue? So both in terms of the themes of the school and last slide would be ideas around uh sample instructional styles. Again we know that we have avid inquiry based arts experiential service-based learning or even project based learning. So really appreciate the history and honor the history going back and look forward to celebrating the future as well with Harumbbe Elementary. So thank you everyone. Thank you Dr. Lake. Okay. Um, this is a action item we need to as a board um take part in uh this evening. Um, we've just heard a report from Dr. Dr. Lake and as was mentioned, this is something we looked at at our study session the last meeting. Um, now I will entertain a motion moving right into the motion. Entertain a motion to transition Harambe Elementary from a year- round flexible learning year program to a nine-month calendar. again effective with the 2026 2027 school year. I feel it um maybe symbolically important for me to move that we that we do this and I'll talk more about that during our during our discussion of the change the calendar as discussed. Okay, it's been moved. Is there a second? Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Now, um we're up for discussion the motion at hand. Yeah, if you don't mind, I'll just share some things. So, um, you know, I've been involved with Harambe for many, many years. Our daughter, who's now 28, was there, you know, K through five, K through six, it was five, then it was six, then it was five, then it was six back when it was part of the East Metro Integration District along with a sister school that since doesn't even operate like this anymore in uh, Woodbury, was it Woodbury? Uh, Crosswinds. Yeah, Crosswinds. Yeah. Yeah. Um that was then 6 through 10, 7 through 10, 6 through 10. Um and as some may know, those schools were started as a result of a court order many many many decades ago that said that, you know, there was a lot of uh separate and not equal going on in the Twin Cities and that the the the St. Paul district uh was largely students of color. The suburbs at the time were largely not. I think when we moved here from the Chicago area in 1991, it was like 91% white in the Roseville district students. Uh someone joked at the time that they have all the ethnicities. They have Norwegians and Swedes and Fins, you know, which reflected, I think, both the attitude and the culture at the time and over the years that's changed. But the the court said it was brought a lawsuit brought by my whatever his name is the the lawyer uh that it wasn't working. You had to at least offer a choice for a more diverse school environment. So schools were formed initially with three districts. I think it was Roseville might have been 622 in St. Paul and then it grew and grew and grew to like 10 districts. And the model was that half the kids about 50% were were enrolled from St. Paul and 50% from the suburbs. So by proxy at the time it was like okay then 50% kids of color and 50% white kids. So you achieve that more integrated environment, multicultural environment. And uh our our son was in uh Falcon Heights because we're only three blocks from there. That was a neighborhood school. We actually chose to go to EMID because of that. Because having come from Chicago, which was a much more ethnically diverse, you know, environment than we were experiencing here, we wanted our kids to benefit from that multicultural, multi-ethnic environment. So, we enrolled. Uh so that was the primary purpose was that was was providing that that very intentional multicultural environment and multicultural body of students and that's not changing. It's going to stay that way. The busing is still there to bring kids in. Even though over the years as the suburbs changed in their demographics, as soon as they reached a certain point where they were no longer, you know, uh racially uh uh what's what's the term? Racially independent or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. To their next door district. Then they didn't have to participate anymore. And so districts started dropping out of the Eid schools. In the end, I think it was Roseville, even St. Paul dropped out before we did and then when it was all going to just close because there was no interest at the time back in Sherry what year I can't remember what year did we did we get 2013 2013 so what 12 years ago um John Tyne the superintendent at the time of Roseville who had been one of the initial pioneers to help set up and form the EMA district and Roseville was one of the member districts that could send kids there um decided he'd like to take and and get Harambe transferred into the into the district and maintain what it was. So he and others parents, I was a parent, went testified to the legislature month after month. Sherry, I think, was a business manager at Eid. That's where we got her from. Um and the legislature said, "Okay, sure." Because it was a legislature founded school because of that desegregation rule that that was passed. sort of became part of Roseville and we just kept the attributes, the multiculturalism, the the environmental sciences as you said, the nature, the fe the beautiful grounds there that that can be used for stuff. Uh many might not know that building was specifically designed architecturally to support neighborhood model in the classrooms themselves. That's why there's partitions and they can be bigger or smaller. So, you could have multi-graded classes, you know, if you wanted to. you could have you could have have classes geared around the intellectual age of the kid, not just their biological age, so to speak. So maybe that's something that could happen. So, um, one of those attributes was the year- round calendar. And, uh, I think that, uh, I was even shocked when I saw the absentee data. And I think that, Jenny, you said earlier that, uh, year- round school is no longer in demand in Minnesota or even across the country as much. where it is where you see successful year- round schools. Um it's a whole district because I think like you made mention of the difficulty because we went through the difficulty of when you finish out at Harambe say after sixth grade and now you got younger siblings who are in Harambe but older siblings in the more you know the regular school calendar it's really hard when do you take your vacations you know one has a break one isn't different just it's it's messed up and I think also because Harambe is is just a single school it is kind kind of isolated in terms of not enabling its kids to have the same experience around things like the football team or the band because you're not going to have like a year- round football team and a and a and a regular term football team or you know so that's tough. So, when you get to the positives, what could happen to going back to a to a regular 9-month calendar? But just the fact that um enrollment is dropping there faster than at other schools and the absenteeism which says that even though families have the ability to take advantage of the year- round school, many just don't. They still go on their vacations. They still take it. They still do that. is that is that it's not just that it's no longer in as much demand in Minnesota or the country. It's it's frankly no longer as much in demand here in our district and in our area. So to me it's compelling because financially it's just unsustainable as that enrollment keeps dropping. So a lot of this move this change is to encourage and and provide a school where enrollment can start to creep up again. And certainly it would solve the absenteeism problem because people, you know, they might go to Disney World or whatever in the summer, but it won't be pulling their kids out of a Ramy to do it. So that that was compelling to me. I think it's um it's really not serving those kids or those families if for whatever reason they're not taking advantage of that year- round calendar either because they're not enrolling or because they're enrolling but they're not coming to school in the summer. whether they can't, whether they don't, whether they won't, doesn't matter the reason, we're not serving those kids with the current model. And so if we can keep we're going to keep the multicultural stuff, we're going to keep the environment, it's there. So yeah, maybe highlighting that in terms of, you know, more nature nature centered, making full use of the advantage of the physical design of those classrooms and who knows what. I think, you know, with input from parents, teachers, kids, others, maybe there's an arts focus. We don't know. I mean, I think that's part of the uh the excitement to me and the fun is the anticipation over the next year of what could come out of some of those focus groups and those in those committees and those sessions as to what can be the cornerstones of the new Harambe of Harambe 2.0 because the only thing that's going away is your own calendar which evidence shows pretty clearly is not as valued. The other things are there and we can build on those or expand on those or add to those as we move ahead. So for all those reasons um I'll I'll support this. Thank you. Even though you know I've been you'll continue to be a Harambe champion. Continue to be a proponent of Harambe and both from just our family history and just because it's a great it is a different school. I mean part of it was to even try some things there. The thought when it was EMID was that it could serve as a learning lab for new teaching techniques, new PD. let's let's try some things there that if they work in kind of a of a of a in that environment then let's expand them out to other schools. So there's that aspect too from a teaching aspect. Maybe there's some things we try there with with teaching staff and and PD and see if it works and and use it as a learning lab. So I think the future can be very exciting depending on what collectively everyone really wants to do and make use of the resource because it's a tremendous resource. So more to come. Thank you. There you go. Thank you Director Bobesky. Any other discussion? I don't know. Dr. Lake, could you just share? I know at the community event we had and last time people talked about class ratios and what our plan is moving forward or what we envision that to be. Yeah, thank you for the question. Uh just to be clear, the board approves our class size ratios in Roseville and they apply to all schools based on grade level and Harambe is underenrolled and so our class sizes are in some grade levels lower than in other schools but the class ratio is the same in terms of how we staff the buildings in Roseville. So thank you for the question. Any further discussion? Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Um, all those in favor signify by saying I. I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. Okay, moving on to item uh 7B uh resolution in response to the American Indian Parent Advisory Committee letter of non-concurrence. A little bit of um context. Uh the American Indian parent advisory committee issued a resolution of non-concurrence on February 18th. What that means is that the parent committee finds that the district um has not been meeting the needs of American Indian students per Minnesota law uh by resolution uh the board must respond excuse me must respond in writing uh excuse me within 60 days to each recommendation made by the committee and states reasons for not implementing the recommendations. Uh clerk Chu will read through the resolution for us. Yes. Resolution in response to the letter of nonconcurrence. Whereas Minnesota statutes 124D.78 outlines expectations for parent and community participation in the education program for American Indian students. Whereas as per Minnesota statute 124D.78 subdivision 2 in a communication to the school board dated February 18, 2025, the American Indian parent advisory committee issued a resolution of non concurrence with educational programming for American Indian children as well as the following recommendations. Number one, follow through with American Indian Education Aid strategies from the Office of Educational Equity. Number two, policy change regarding inviting Native American programming staff to individual education program, discipline review board, and attendance meetings. Number three, American Indian Education Aid funding for programming. And number four, staff retention. Number five, increase staff by by.5 FTE. Where as per Minnesota statutes 124D.78 subdivision 2, the school board must respond in writing within 60 days in cases on non concurrence to each recommendation made by the parent committee and state its reasons for not implementing the recommendation. Now therefore, be it resolved by the school board of the Independent School District number 623, Roseville, hereby responds to the resolution of nonconcurrence uh below. Number one, in respond to recommendation one, the board agrees that the strategies in the American Indian education aid plan would contribute to meeting the goals of the uh AIA plan. The board is concerned with the number of strategies that were not fully implemented in the year's AIE grant. Roseville Area Schools is committed to ensuring our school staff are aware of the strategies in the AEIA grant and understand their role in supporting these strategies. Associate Superintendent Smith will work closely with principles to monitor progress and accountability as it pertains to AIEA grant strategies. In respond to recommendation two, the board agrees that it is important to have representation from our Native American program staff in all individualized educational program discipline review board and attendance meetings. This allows our students and families to have representation from a cultural lens that they may not have otherwise. There has been some progress in this area and the board agrees that this progress is not sufficient. Associate Superintendent Smith will work closely with principles and student services staff to refine our process of notifications for IEP, DRB, and attendance meetings. This will include monitoring of progress around this goal and implementation of accountability measures to ensure we are meeting the needs of our students and families. In response to recommendation three, during the 2022 2023 school year, funding for the Native American cultural liaison was removed from the AE AIEA grant budget. The only funds currently awarded for staff in the AEIE grant budget are for the American Indian Education Program Coordinator. This use of funds has been approved by the American Indian parent advisory committee in the past, including an increase to the salary for the American Indian Education Program Coordinator, which was approved by Apac in spring 2024. Roseville Roseville area schools plans to continue to use the AIA grant funds in line with recommendation from Apac. In respond to recommendation four, this school year, our Native American cultural liaison and our American Indian education program coordinator are completing their third and fourth years respectively in their roles. Roseville area schools increased the Native American cultural liaison position to a full-time position in March of 2023. In June of 2024, Roseville Area Schools increased the compensation for the American Indian Education Program Coordinator by 50%. Roseville Area Schools is committed to retaining our American Indian education program staff and will continue to set the conditions that foster healthy retention of our American Indian education program staff. In response to recommendation five, Roseville area school is experience is experiencing a budget shortfall of $4 million for 2025 2026 school year. This will result in Roseville area schools having to cut 10 full-time teaching positions from our budget for the next school year. Roseville Area Schools is not currently in the position to add any staffing for the 2025 2026 school year. We will continue to monitor our financial situation and hope to revisit this recommendation in the future. And that's the rest of Thank you. Okay, that's the first has been moved. It's been moved. Is there a second? Thank you very much, Clerk Ch. Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Further discussion on the resolution itself? uh a comment and then a question. Comment is are we going to clone associate superintendent Smith so that he can do all the stuff that we're loading onto his shoulders resolution? I I'll ask that he'd provide some comments around our strategies moving forward in terms of limiting and focusing our work in terms of capacity both for yourself and for Gabriella. Well, and maybe I'll ask my question too because then around I think it's number two with the uh representation in the um IEP and disciplinary. Yeah. Is is it doable? Because just the numbers if we can't bring on more staff, you know, you can't stop those things from happening if you know I don't know if there's a way to do it virtually. I'm I I think our first layer is to create the really high accountability around the communication plan like have some insuranceances around how we're communicating. I I just don't want us to say we're going to do something and then we're really not able to do it. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Um yeah, thank you for the question and um also for um considering my workload. I appreciate that. Uh but yeah, I I I I truly believe it is doable. Um, you know, um, what I would say is, um, you know, I think we have some things, um, that are already starting to be shaped and be in place around that. I think we made some good progress this year. Obviously, it wasn't enough. Um, and what we're trying to get to is we're trying to get to um, at least having a system where our leaison are at least know about these meetings, right? Um, you know, attendance may be, you know, uh we may not reach 100% just because of, you know, how many meetings that could happen at at at one time and and and some of the other duties that are coach, but I do believe this is um doable. You know, one of the things um this resolution speaks about is, you know, like Dr. Lake said, the communication around this, the accountability piece around this, how do we um you know, how do we do that? Ensure um whether that's um some physical things, tangible things that, you know, we add to the process. Um, as far as how do we notify and who's being notified during those things um where it could be a checklist, you know, that we have to fill out each time. Um, and continuing to to to to to press forward the importance of of of course down to being there. The last thing I'll say, um, it's there's a few parts here. There's there's um ensuring that those who are in charge of those meetings understand who needs to be invited. Ensuring that coach leazison one of the things that and I'll just give you one I'll give you a sneak peek. Um you know one of the things that we ensuring one things that we want to ensure coach leazison have when they return in the fall is a list of all of the students in their culture who have IP meetings and what those dates are. So we have those on our calendar so we know they're coming up. So if we're two weeks out or a week out and we still haven't gotten an invitation, then you know we can put some things in place around that. Um so really trying to get ahead of some of those things we know are going to happen and do that. And then um also the the last piece is working on the family side to say like hey you have a meeting come up let us know about it. Um so trying to like triangulate this this particular piece so it become systematic. Thank you. Absolutely. and and I would say right this is the beginning of a process to create that infrastructure some communication and I think you can do a lot of collecting data to kind of know how it's working and you can revisit as part of school improvement right to kind of go how is it working and and where where are the places where you have five minutes in the same time or is there followup that we could have if somebody couldn't be there right and So those are things that I know you can do the you know data collection quantitatively but qualitatively to kind of understand what is going on. Absolutely. Yeah. And that part of the plan is you know some frequent check-ins on that system and adjustments throughout the year. So yeah thank you for that. Thank you. Any further discussion? Well maybe I'll just say this. Um, you know, there are many districts in Minnesota. You're you're required to have an AP pack if you have 10 or more Native American students in your schools. I think Duth got a letter of non-concurrence this year because it's it's difficult. It's hard because you have a population that's extremely valued. Um, but especially if they're spread across different grades, it's hard, you know, you to to just make this work. So, I would hope that um the APAC members and all parents would would know and I hope they would they would give us the grace to to believe us when we say that we we care. You know, we it's not that if we're missing the mark, it's not out of intent. It's just because we don't have the resources or the funding or whatever. I think we all have the same goals. We have to make this district be successful for for those kids. Absolutely. And u you know the road to you know where is paved with good intentions. So good intentions aren't enough. We have to have action. But I think we are trying. So I would hope at least that um that that all the parents and all families can have faith that we're trying to trying to do it right and trying to do right by their kids by what we're doing we're putting in place. So thank you very much and thank you for your leadership role with the group because I know it's it could be a tough group. So it's a I'd say it's a fun group. It's uh you know they come with passion, they come with their ideas, they come with um you know things they want for their kids and um you know that's exactly I tell everyone that's exactly what we want. We want to be pushed. It's their it's their kids. It's the most precious things in their lives just like for all of us. They should be tough. Be tough. And I'll just piggyback on that. I I know we have the right leadership staff in in place to bring this about. So, thank you for all the work that's been done already and going to continue to be done. So, thank you. Um, moving seconded. I would I would say the last thing is let us know as you know as school board whether is letting us know the progress along the way what we can do to also support this effort because ultimately this is our responsibility legally and otherwise. Right. And that that we want to do this right. So, absolutely. Okay. So moved and seconded. Um all those in favor signify by saying I in support of the resolution. I. All those opposed. Resolution is adopted. Thank you again to Cliff Chu for the readings. Okay. Right. Moving on to 17C. Um direct primary care services contract Kir Health. We welcome Sher Thompson and Kinyatta McCarti back to the table. Thank you. Thank you guys. Good evening. Good evening. So, yes, we uh we are here uh seeking approval for a direct to employer healthc care provider uh contract. Uh this came about as a result of uh receiving our health insurance re renewal for the upcoming school year. It's um year three of our three-year contract. So we do have guarantees and what our how high the cap can go. Um the cap came in or the rate guarantee came in at the cap was 11% but our experience actually called for a 28% increase based on claims this year. Um so we're always looking to reduce that. Um and one of the um recommendations brought forward was um CARA and again this is not an insurance plan. This is a health purchase of health care services for the employees uh and their families under our group. And the thought is when health partners looked at this that if we were to be offered if we offered this plan or purchased this plan that it would include it would decrease their claims experience. So they lowered our renewal rate to an 7.67% increase in our insurance premiums. Um so we are saving uh we are saving dollars there but as a result we are entering into an agreement to purchase services from CARA. So the net savings on that um uh will actually uh be about $265,000. Um actually we're paying CARAS $265,000. The net savings is about 38,000. So, um we are seeking approval for that. Cavira is a service that comes out to homes, comes out to your place of business. It's a portable service. A lot of districts, I think some of the larger districts have clinics in their schools. uh uh that's not something that we can operate but we're hoping it also maybe helps makes the health care more accessible to our staff whether it's throat cultures I think there's there are handouts in there look that list the different services that they provide um again helping it with even chronic conditions and we just want to give it a try for a year to see if it helps reduce if it helps reduce our costs and then also um if it's something that our employees see as a benefit. And yeah, it's a it's employer sponsored. Um it is based on a sub subscription based on your employee group. And so it's voluntary for employees to participate in it. But it is a a great benefit because it does address and it can support primary urgent care needs as well as chronic needs. And we have taken this the insurance committee is advisory committee has reviewed this and so has the finance advisory committee. Who's on the insurance committee? I mean I'm more familiar with the finance advisory committee. I'm just just curious who's on the So the insurance committee is actually that is that has representation from each employee group. Okay. So we don't have we don't have a board member on there but we have a representative from each employee group. um that has um comes and has input. Yeah. So, as someone who's who worked at Health Partners for six years before I joined my current employer, um yeah, you're right. Health Partners is going to do whatever they can to encourage more direct care because it's very costly for them. Primary care, right, is is through the roof for the insurers. So, any payers continue to decrease their costs. And is it is it a fixed cost? Is there also a per visit or per encounter fee or no? That's it. But we're paying them $265,000 and then whoever uses it uses it. Correct. It is actually $27 per month per family that's on our health insurance. So we should encourage everybody to make use of it to call them to have the visit to have them come to have whatever. And the reason that the insurers um really support this kind of program, especially for things like school districts, cities, police forces, fire departments, is because we do have long-term employees. And so if you help someone prevent diabetes when they're 30 or 40, you reap the benefits by the time they're 55 or 60. Whereas if this was a Starbucks and our baristas were on average here only two years before they move on, why the heck would we care about preventing their future heart attack? I mean, that's that's gross and blunt, but that's kind of how it works. So I I applaud the the where whether this came from health partners or from you, whoever it was, it's a great idea. It's it's the way of the future. more and more stuff is going to be happening in the home remotely at the kitchen table all that. So, you know, I think the next step is to really try and encourage our staff to use it and make use of it. And we have a Kenyatta's team has a marketing promotion planned and getting the um the word out. I think that's already started. So, yeah, to encourage staff to use it. So, thank you. on the contract. Is it one year and then renegotiate or is there provision to like autorenew at at like the first year's price or are we like once we buy in are we then kind of hooked and it Yeah, we're not. It's one year for Okay. Because we're trying it out. Okay. All right. So, in a year. Yeah. Well, and we go out for bid next year too under the health transparency act because I think even in a year's gonna be there going to be more cavieras out there hopefully you know and we'll be be competing for our business hopefully. Yeah. Right. Thank you. Thanks for your work, all the research and the recommendation. All right. Um this is an item we have to take action on. I'll entertain a motion to approve this one-year contract. I'll move it. Okay. Is there a second? Second. Okay. All right. It's been moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Right. All those in favor signify by saying I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. Thank you. Thank you, Al Kinyatta. Sherry. All right. Staying at the table will be uh Director Sher Thompson, policy 724, the second reading of the school bus transportation. Yes. And this is an easy one. This is part of our regular policy review. This is the Yes. second reading and there were um no changes proposed after the first reading. I move we approve it as presented. Is there is there a second? Second. Move and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. All those opposed. Motion carries. All right. Guess who's staying at the table? All right. Uh I'll say 732 student transportation safety for its second reading. Um thank you. And uh actually this one isn't much more complicated. This is the second reading. Uh you will note under the if you look at the redline copy the one change that we made from the first reading is um under 1.2 that had said K through 8 students and now it says kindergarten through eight students. But the other changes um were as a result of legislative changes and they were included in the first reading. All right. Entertain entertain a motion to approve the second reading of policy 732. I'll move it. All right. It's been moved. Is there a second? I'll second. All right. Moved and seconded. Any further discussion? All those in favor signify by saying I. I. Those opposed? Motion carries. Thank you very much, Sher. Thank you, Sherry, for your work on this. Thank you for your work. All right, that brings us to the study session report. Uh, Director Frank, Director Frank Shaw, thank you. We had two things, two um items on the previous study session. The first one was um the u report on the curriculum uh the whole the whole curriculum process and how that's going. And the second one was uh the presentation on Harambe. I don't think I need to go over the presentation on Harambe. We we've just done it and um but but it was was very well done and compelling from my point of view. Um for the curriculum, I will just say briefly because we actually moved quite quickly through it that a rather huge amount of work is being done and has been done recently since co um stopped the process essentially and then it got started again um in 23 and since then. Uh so we have practically all of the curriculum that this that the K6C is is in early implementation phase. So we we learned about that and uh um really the most impressive part of that um report was the amount of work that's being done and also the moving target that um the teachers have. back in the day um oh what 15 years ago early in my schoolboard career uh these committees all of the all of the curriculum committees had assigned to them schoolboard members. So we would go to these meetings and and I was just always impressed by how hard the teachers worked on this and the good ideas they had and that sort of liveless is is continuing and uh I think that finishes my report on the study. Thank you. And moving on to board reports. Director Shaw, why don't we just start with you? You're warmed up. Let's uh All right. All right. Um, I attended the AIP pack meeting. Um, I watched Assistant Superintendent Smith in action. And this is it it's important because it is a difficult it I shouldn't say difficult committee, I should say it's it's a a hard-nosed committee. that they they they really have um the uh welfare of their students in mind and and they want they want satisfaction from the district and so there is a hammering out of in this case smart goals uh and these will be the goals that will inform the next vote of compliance or non-compliance and so this is where um director Smith here has is is really crucial because because in in the putting together of these goals, there needs to be some there's some needs to be some reality um there and and that's often difficult to uh to bring forward but I thought I thought it went very well. Uh the last thing I did a uh a PTA meeting at Falcon Heights and I learned at the end of that PTA meeting that a certain student who had arrived at the school as a second grader um speaking no English uh began second grade last fall and was presented with the problem of filling out a square of paper with the 100 numbers that make up a 10 by10 square. And then it was suggested to her, or perhaps she suggested it to herself, that she could tape onto that a second sheet of paper and write the second 100 numbers, that is from 101 to 200. And then by induction, you put a third piece of paper on. And then you've got three pieces of paper. And so her idea was that she would roll this up into a scroll. And so she continued to work on this scroll through the entire year. And then a couple of weeks ago, she unrolled the scroll with the entire school standing up and down the hallway. The school the scroll was was 120 pages long. She had 12,561 numbers that she had written down as of that morning and the whole school celebrated it and it was just um you know a great moment. So, I thought I'd I'd bring that up because you come in, you don't speak the language, but here's something to do and it's something that you can really move far with and and you have the entire school supporting you and that it was marvelous uh to see to see pictures of this reveal as it was called. They stretched the scroll out to the end of the hallway. And you know, the hallways are pretty long in in Falcon Heights. Okay, that's it. That's it for me. Thanks, Director Shaw. That was awesome. That is cool. Uh, cool. Treasure Clark. Sure. I um we had a board handbook meeting tonight um that we're working on our handbook that we hope to have sometime ready next fall. Um, also I had the pleasure of attending with executive director of student services, Nicita Thomas. We toured Carner Blue um, educational center last week that we have several students that are there. It's a school in u Northeast Metro District 916 um that serves K to8 emotional behavior disorders, autism spectrum disorders as well as developmental cognitive disabilities. It was a great tour. It's great facility. Um the staff seemed great. Our students who go there are in good hands and they have a plan along with um nice team in when we transition students back if it's that time. So it was a good visit. That's it. All right, Director Boasheski. Um first I'll just comment that around the world there are many languages but your story Frank just proves that math is universal. And other than that, the only thing I did was I did attend the Harambe presentation and we went through all that. So, it was it was as you just did it tonight. So, thank you. That's all I have. All right, clue. Yeah, same. I I would say that meeting I felt really I mean it was very I was very grateful for all the parents and and students who showed up. It was really wonderful to see I mean you could it's powerful that you know the community cares. So glad to be there for a little bit. I was and thank you for your presentation. Thank you to a principal Nathan and you were you did I mean as a former principal there. So it was just great and I know um I think Sherry was there too. So it was just it was great. Yeah, it was just to be with the families. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you so much. All right. Thank you. A couple items. Uh, I would be remiss if I did not um mention and congratulate Shawn Padden, health teacher at Roseville Area Middle School, um, who is a finalist for Minnesota Teacher of the Year. Uh, the winner will be announced on May 4th in St. Paul at a special banquet. Good luck to Mr. Paddton, um, as he moves forward in the process. And then, uh, last but not least, Rose Schools recognizes and supports that today is Earth Day. We join with others and other organizations, other schools to raise awareness of environmental protection of planet earth. And with that, superintendent report, I do not have any news to share today. Thank you. All right. All right. If there is no further business before the board, we stand adjourned.