Not at all. Not at all. >> Not at all. >> I would like to call to order the August 18th regular board meeting of the Mounzu School Board. Good evening and welcome. Our first item of business is 1.2 adoption of the agenda. I would entertain a motion. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Then moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? >> I >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion carries. Right. We'll move into item 2.1, announcements. Jim, could you please read the gifts for us? >> Uh, yes. There were 32 gifts for schools and programs received this period for a total of $19,494. Ralph Reer receives 37 gifts this period for the total of $81,65. It is recommended the board accept the gifts and extend thanks to the donors. >> Thanks, Jim. And thanks to all the generous folks in our community. Shauna, could you please share an update on tonight's comments to the board? >> Yeah. So, the school board was available for 30 minutes prior to the uh this school board meeting uh to listen to comments from the public. This evening, we did not have anyone um attending comments to the board. >> Great. Thanks. Um, upcoming meetings. Our next work session will be September 17th at 5:00 pm and the next regular meeting of the school board will be Tuesday, September 22nd at 7 p.m. Both will be held at the district center. Now, we'll move on to agenda 2.2, the superintendent report. >> Right. Thank you. Uh, just a couple of updates tonight. Um, and while I know we're still in summer, is just a reminder that we're three weeks away from the first day of school. Um, this year school kicks off on Tuesday, September 8th. Um, and we hope that everyone does enjoy these last few weeks, but we we're really looking forward to welcoming our students back to a start of the new school year. Um, and although classes have not yet started, fall activities are already underway. So, yesterday, Monday, uh, August 17th was the first day for the Minnesota State High School League activities. It's just great. If you go anywhere near our high schools, you're going to see all kinds of kids uh back in and around our schools for their activities. We obviously wish all of them great success here in in the fall season coming up. And finally, uh registration for our fall community education activities is now open. So, if you, your child, or someone you know might be interested in participating uh in activities this fall, I just highly encourage you to take a look at the variety of offerings that are available through our community education program. That's all I have this evening. >> Great. Next on our agenda is item 3.0, approval of the consent agenda. I would entertain a motion. >> So moved. >> Second. >> It's been moved and seconded. Any discussion? All in favor? >> I passes. Next item on our agenda is item 4.1 and Superintendent Lennox will present the 202627 district operational plan. >> Yeah. So board members, you have the um updated plan in your uh packet this evening. Tonight uh we're bringing that forward for the 2627 school year. uh for the public. Uh both our administrative team and the board have had multiple opportunities now to review and and discuss the uh goals going forward for next year. Uh this year we're recommending a total of eight goals. Three of them uh have a priority status and I'll just run through what the goals are uh this evening. So the first is the implementation of our capital projects work that is going to be addressing the safety, security and instructional technology needs across the district. That is a priority goal for us this year. So you'll be hearing uh several reports through the course of the year and updates on that. Uh the second goal is the completion of a review and reset uh of our early college program. uh that program originally uh was kicked off in 2011 and we believe it's time to do a refresh uh and reset of that program. That also is a priority goal and again we'll be back in front of you multiple times uh for updates. Third goal to complete a comprehensive review of our secondary school co-curricular offerings. Uh we're excited to be able to do that uh and bring you that information and recommendations. The fourth goal is to expand our facility study that we uh started last year in our K12 schools to focus this year on our specialized programming and lease spaces. So, we'll be looking at all of the spaces across the districts and the programs that occupy those. Um that also is a priority goal. So, recommendations coming to the board uh by this spring as well. Uh the fifth goal to strengthen recruitment, retention, and onboarding for our staff. Goal six to expand our outdoor classrooms and environmental learning opportunities uh across our schools and opportunities for students. Goal seven is to expand our student information system, assessment, grade books and analytics. That is a new uh tool for us that we're excited to be able to roll out this year. And then finally, the eighth goal, recognition and reporting of good news and achievements at all levels across the district. that one uh came in conversation with the board. Uh we often see high school uh recognition, but this really would be for all students, all levels and staff, all levels across the district. So, uh that's highlights for the draft goals that are included in your materials this evening and administration is recommending approval of those goals for the 202627 school year. >> Great. Any questions or comments from the board for Chris tonight? As Chris talked about, we've been through them several times as a board, discussed them in depth at our retreat a week and a half ago and gave our input and and thoughts around that. And we look forward to hearing from you and your team throughout the year on um progress towards all those goals. So, at this point in time, I would um entertain a motion to approve the 2026 27 district operational plan as presented tonight. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I >> I. >> Any opposed? Motion passes. Great. Next, we will move on to item 5.1, quarterly budget report. Tonight, we're going to welcome our new executive director of business services for the district, Carolyn Dean. Welcome. >> Thank you. In your board packet, you have a copy of the fourth quarter budget report for fiscal year 26. These are not the final numbers. While these represent all of fiscal year 26, um there are several audit adjustments that need to happen. So, right now, the staff are working on it. The auditors are here this week checking those numbers out. So, you will see changes from what's in the board report to what the final results will be. Does anyone have any questions? >> No. But can we say welcome? >> Yes. Y >> uh we and this is not the moment for for comments from us, but uh we we did get a chance to meet you a week ago, a week and a half ago at our retreat and so thrilled um to have you and your your history and your experience um is really exciting. And so we are firmly confident that you'll be a huge ad to our district. And so we're just wanted to say out loud and with vigor um that we're excited to have you. >> Thank you very much. >> Yeah. And just to note that um you know the auditors are in this week. Uh people have asked me, you know, how do you how do you know everything's like the books, everything's cool and things like that. We are required by the state to have a thorough audit every year. And we pay some good money to do that. And um we have that reviewed. We have that publicly uh available to folks. and we have a meeting in the fall presenting that to people and so uh we are in great financial shape thanks to the leadership uh of the district and our taxpayers being um generous to us. So uh really appreciate that. But yeah, we go through a thorough review of our books every year and it's required by state law. >> Yeah. Great. And again to the public, the board looks at these numbers and we continue to revisit them over the course of the year. not the only time we we look at these budget numbers and make adjustments. So, I appreciate that update and >> thank you. >> We'll have you back soon, I'm sure. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Great. Next, we're going to move on to item 5.2. Um, and hear the 2026 27 academic year enrollment update from Darren Johnson, executive director of school management. Good evening, members of the board. I'm here tonight to provide an update on enrollment as we look forward to the start of the 2627 school year. The numbers in this report are based on August 16, 2026 data. As we look at our total district enrollment projection from January 28th, 2026, our current student enrollment is 11,349, which is 136 students over our January projection. Of particular note are the following points. Both of our high schools are over projection. All three of our middle schools are slightly over projection. In our six 1-5 elementary buildings, we are scheduled to have 166 home room sessions sections. At this point in time, all home room sections fall within board approved class size range. All four schools are currently above projection and two are currently below projection. This year, both of our kindergarten schools are under projection. Added together, between the two kindergarten centers, we are scheduled to have 35 home room sections. At this point in time, we continue to remain open for non-resident student placement at our kindergarten centers. For the 2627 school year, we received over 269 applications for open enrollment. 154 of these applications have been accepted, enrolling these students into our district. As is typical, we saw a spike in district enrollment in both sixth grade and 9th grade. Combined senior classes for Mountains View and Irondale high schools exist at 900 plus students for current grades 9 through 12. Currently, the combined senior class enrollment, the graduate class of 2027, sits at 98 students in our district today. The largest cohort of students exists in our current 11th grade co 11th grade cohort. This current this cohort is currently at 939 students. And finally, at this time of year, we are confident our October 1st, 2026 enrollment will be over projection, but it is likely certain our number will not be exactly 136 over. Of course, we will continue to watch enrollment numbers for these final few weeks of summer, supporting students and section sizes at all schools by continuing to communicate with site administration. Any questions I can answer for you regarding enrollment? >> Hey Darren, when you say the word overprojection that uh it doesn't mean that we're overly crowded, correct? It just means there's more students than we were anticipating. >> Correct. Yep. based on our projection uh that we create in January of of the year. So earlier this year. >> So plenty of room for everyone. >> There is. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. When Darren says that all of the the classrooms, the section sections 160 some that you said we have, they're all within board ranges. So when we get more kids, should they non-residents apply, we may not have room at a particular school at a grade level. When residents move in, then we do have to have room. And there are times where we may have projected fewer and as more come we add an extra section. We watch this constantly through the summer um that we our enrollment team pulls weekly reports. Uh so Darren does a lot of work with them. Uh Carol was just up here with finance enrollment and finance go handinand glove uh as we go through this. But just a reminder, I know that you as a board know this, but to the public, to the point of how we go about allowing or accepting non-resident students, our goal is to maintain our enrollment. We are not trying to grow the district bigger. We're trying to maintain so we can keep the staff we have, we can keep the section sizes we have, we can keep the programs and services that our community is used to us offering. that's how we're we're accepting students uh moving forward. So, it's really very prescribed, very consistent, and very controlled a as we move forward uh with our enrollment. And and again, this is a weekly look at this and and as things uh adjust as we come up and into school, we'll make sure we make any necessary adjustments to keep those class sizes, those ratios within border range as we start the school year. So, >> thank you to Darren. Thank you to the enrollment team for all their work. >> Yeah. >> Well, we look forward to welcoming those 11,349 and maybe more students in three weeks. So, >> well, we get to keep Darren here for three agenda items tonight. Just moving right on now um to item 5.3. And uh Darren is going to share a readiness for school opening report with us tonight. >> All right. I'm also here tonight to provide an update on our readiness for the upcoming school year. I'll begin with activities and athletics. As Chris mentioned, uh yesterday signaled the return of fall activities and athletics for our scholars and athletes at Irondale Mounds High Schools. At Mounds View High School, the installation of the new auxiliary turf field is complete and is scheduled to begin use as early as tomorrow. At both buildings, the gym floors will be waxed and uniforms will be distributed as our two proud high schools will be ready for competition during the coming weeks. We are thankful for our high school administrators, activities, directors, and coaches for their dedication, organization, and preparation. Want to give some updates on the summer remodeling and maintenance projects as well. Throughout the districts, there have been a variety of larger summer remodeling and maintenance projects that have that have enhanced our schools and buildings. Begin with Pinewood Elementary School. The geothermal and LMC remodel projects are still currently underway. While the geothermal project will continue into the fall, this work will be done behind the scenes. For Pinewood students and families, however, their entrance into the LMC space will be simply breathtaking. We are also excited to see this space in use to start the school year. Mountains High School, you will recall this project turned three science classrooms into two updated science classrooms, complete with new cabinetry and student workstations. The work on this project is scheduled to be completed prior to students entering these spaces on the first day of school. High View Middle School, we've talked about that over the past year. Uh updates have been given about this project and we are happy to say that this project is now complete. As students and families enter our schools, they may also notice the little things, right, such as fresh coats of paint, new cabinetry in some classrooms, and fresh seal coating of our parking lots. That's traditional. Uh the hard work of Chris Pette, who is our director of school operations, our site level custodians, and our district maintenance crew members is always greatly appreciated. Transportation. In our transportation department, team members have been collecting registration forms and communicating with district families for the better part of the summer. Routes are being finalized and communication with our transportation vendors continues on a daily basis to help ensure that buses will be running safely and smoothly on the first day of school. Families can expect to receive student bus passes starting September 1st. Please visit our district website for more details and forms. As a district, we are grateful for the bus drivers who proudly serve our community every day. Staffing throughout the final weeks of summer, members of our district's HR team, as well as building principles and school office staff, will continue to work the fil to fill the few final licensed and unlicensed positions in our schools and programs. Their commitment to our school communities is recognized and greatly valued. Community members who are interested in employment with the Mountains View Public School District are encouraged to review the current job posting on our district's website. In particular, we are always looking for interested custodial services staff, nutrition services staff, and PAR educators to serve in either a substitute or permanent capacity. And finally, preparation for buildings for the start of the year. We would like to share our appreciation for each and every staff member who played a role across the district and helping our schools and buildings be prepared for the return of students, families, and staff. In summary, I'm pleased to report that schools will be ready to go when students return on Tuesday, September 8th. Any questions I can answer for you? Sounds like we're ready. >> We're ready. >> Great news. >> I I just I can't help but say thank you. This um you know, from a user standpoint, I think, you know, for our for our families, your kids in school, you know, there's a lot going on over these months in the summer. Well, my kids not at school. It must not be a lot going on. I think you heard from Darren. Uh we remain incredibly busy. And you'll hear later about the summer work. you know, our teachers did the robust programming that was offered, but but across all our operations, uh, that too going full steam through the summer and lots and lots of work happens that goes sometimes a little bit unnoticed until kids and families come back and say, "Wow, look at this." So, Darren, pass along our appreciation to to all of our staff who work so hard this summer. Truly appreciate it. Thanks. >> Thank you. >> Great. And finally, Darren gets to stay with us to present item 5.4, transportation service agreements. >> Okie do. I remain with you this evening to ask for approval of an extension of contracts for our type three transportation providers. Type three vehicles provide transportation for routes such as midday shuttles from building to building within our district. routes for students who are homeless or highly mobile, including students who qualify for transportation under the McKenna Vento Act and also routes for students who are taking courses at off-site vocational education settings. The the contracts for these pro vi the contracts for these private five providers which are safe tree transportation, twin city transportation, united transportation services and efficient transportation as well as integrated student transportation were initially approved on May 7th, 2024 as two-year contracts with an option to extend for two additional years. The recommendation at this time is to extend the term of these contracts by formally extending the term for contract years 2026 through 2027 and 2027 through 2028 with an option to extend for two additional years 2028 and 2029 as well as 2029 to 2030. This additional extension would be permitted within Minnesota statute that allows student transportation contracts to ultimately have terms that do not exceed 10 contract years. At this time, I ask for a motion to approve the contracts for these five type three transportation providers. >> Any questions, sir? I'm disturbed that we're talking about 2030. Fair enough. >> This is another one where I appreciate the work of your team because I think we all know how much transportation costs have gone up. Um, you know, that's an increasing cost for our district all the time and for your team to really watch that and and um try to make fair contracts with our with our vendors is um great. being ahead of the curve and trying to renew and keep those relationships so that um families and students have the least transitions possible is really appreciated. >> Could you repeat what you said about the 10 year not to exceed 10 years? What what happens at the 10 year mark? >> Right. We need to put it out for bid again, right? >> Okay. Y >> So at that point, it could be the same five potentially, but it would be a completely new bid, right? >> Okay. Thank you. >> Great. Well, if there are no questions, um I uh ask for a motion to approve the student transportation contract addendums as outlined. >> So moved. >> Second. >> Any discussion? All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? >> Motion carries. >> Thanks, Darren. >> Thanks, Darren. >> At this time, we're going to move to item 6.1 and hear a report on summer school and summer work by teachers. Um, we're going to welcome Heidi Sari, executive director of curriculum and instruction, Carl Brown, community education director, Ryan Lang, principal at Snail Lake, and Bobby Olsen, principal at the district ALC to present to us tonight. Thank you for being here. Good evening. Thank you for having us. So, it's August, which means it's time to report in on all of the wonderful summer programming that happened uh across the district this year. And I have a team to help highlight that work. will let them introduce themselves and kick off their work. >> Good evening everyone. I am Carl Brown, director of community education. >> Ryan Lang, principal at Snail Lake kindergarten center >> and Bobby Olsen, principal at the Area Learning Center. >> Just Okay. >> All right. >> Well, we are going to kick off with the elementary summer programming. >> Super. So, there's a Thank you. Thank you. >> All right. So just a recap of what the elementary program is. Um our elementary program is four days a week across four weeks. So you can see the dates of July 7th through 30th and it was just mornings only. Uh this year we provided one planning day for our staff without students which was July 6th. So I'll bring that back up again later about what that impact was. Um we had our elementary programming at six of our elementary sites and one of our kindergarten centers similar to previous years. and our class sizes remained the same between six and 12 students at the elementary level. The focus for learning each day was on literacy, math, social emotional learning, and of course just those connections between peers and the adults that they know. In 2026, we taught over 520 elementary students across those seven sites. And of the 188 summer school staff that we employed for summer school at the elementary level, over 90% of them were current uh Moundsu employees, both para educators, clerical staff, and of course teachers. Awesome. No, you're good. Pictures say a lot. We love pictures. Um, additionally, some highlights uh from the end of summer school staff, the summer school staff survey. Um, answering the question, "What did you like most about summer school?" Um, to get to know students better. It was a wonderful experience, said one of our staff members to be able to focus on building number sense and reinforcing skills, those academic pieces. And lastly, to just create a schedule that best fit their students needs. So, they really got to know students in those 16 days um and spend time with them of really get to know what they need. So throw in some more pictures. Kids are amazing. Um, also in this last year's last year's survey, so one year ago, um, I sat before you and just said some of the challenges that we were finding, a lot of our summer school staff said that they needed more time to plan and that that was an obstacle for some of the work that they wanted to engage in. So this year we gave them one day uh, paid time for them to be on site with their coordinator, with their hourly staff, and get ready for the summer planning. So their summer planning day, 100% of our respondents appreciated that time and mentioned that the impact of their preparedness to welcome students well and then to jump into instruction was really aided by that day of planning. So um we're really proud of the fact that we were able to respond to our summer school staff's response from last year's survey. Uh last uh the last slide for me at least was um what would have helped them be more effective in their role. 26% of our staff reported that they had a great time and didn't have recommendations for other things that would help them. Um, several staff shared that more consistent student attendance would be helpful. That's an obvious tricky thing in the summer. People are traveling, doing fun things. We want them to do that as well. Um, but also several staff shared that more consistent internal communication would help them. So for this next school year, it's like how do we really uh impact that staffto staff communication so our staff can continue to do their best work in the summer with our students and families. >> Great. And I'm going to shout out my colleague Ryan for being prepared and having printed off our presentation which I will now use. Thank you, Ryan. Um I think it's the difference like littles, you know, you're you're prepared for everything in high school. you're like, "We've built it. They will come. We will address their needs." Right? Um so this year, middle school summer programming was fantastic. Again, we had high numbers. Um we had majority of teachers from our district again rejoin us at all three of our middle school sites. We really look to develop that steambased programming for students so they can have hands-on experiences. We want to improve their skills in math and reading, but also enhance their relationships with peers and adults and continue to be that connector for students to their buildings. So, our rising sixth graders get an opportunity to get into the building in the summer, meet some of the staff, and get comfortable with the environment. We had a number of successes this year, as we always do. Um, relationships were strengthened. We had a lot of positive feedback about relationships, studentto student, student to adult. Um, students engaged in that hands-on learning and those experiences, that safe transition right from elementary to middle school, so they know what's happening. Um, areas of improvement. We really want to continue to build our field trip experiences. We only have one really at the middle school level. and kids really like getting out in the community and we like bringing kids to the community. So, the more opportunities we can create there, the better. Um, and then our continued partnership to recruit those sixth grade students to help them launch into their middle school environment. Edgewood this year did something really amazing and they shared great great data around it that we can share more detail on um if you're interested, but they utilized the CAPD data that they had from three different points in the school year to really base their interventions for students around that data and they saw phenomenal results. So for students that um maybe were struggling in the spring, they might not have had growth in their super score, but they showed growth. So it's interesting when you look at the data, right? You see this subset of subset of students where you think, oh, but it's still not where we want it to be. But within that piece of data, individual students experienced growth. So there was growth across the board. it's just that they're making more movement towards those scores that we want to see, right? Um, and then of course we had five students who scored better than their spring score in at least one of the subtests. So using that data throughout the school year to really inform those interventions in the summer, they were able to see growth, which is what we want to see all the time. Oh, and there's the rest of it. That was nice to do for me. Um, high school credit recovery, we had 215 students participate. We had 272 students the prior summer. We saw our numbers go down a little bit, but that doesn't necessarily mean that our need is down. Students might be accessing programming in other ways. We had 140 credits achieved from students, 202 the prior summer, but again, when you have a reduction in numbers, you're going to see a reduction in that credit. We had 11 students graduate this year, which is up from last year. We had five. So, that's always a huge achievement for us to see them make that. Um, we met students and families where they were at to help them move forward in their goals. Ideas that we have for improving is really to continue our early identification of students and their needs for credit recovery um as they move through the school year with their deans and their teachers in their mainstream schools. and then always retaining teachers from our high school programming. We did have uh a significant number of teachers that returned to summer this year who are outof district teachers but come back to us every summer because they appreciate our setup um how our students are organized and the interventions that we have. And then I always like to do a shout out for our Silverview child care because they provide child care every summer to our students who are in both the high school program for credit recovery and then also our AB programming and our adult learning programming. So those adults and those students are still able to work towards their goals and have high quality child care in the summer. All right, moving on to community education opportunities. All right, so we we have a lot happening for summer enrichment programs. Um overall, we had a great summer. Uh community education programs were winding down for the summer just with the start of the school year coming in. Um summer camps and the things I'm talking about have either wrapped up or soon to wrap up this week. Um what we're talking about is looking at um elementary and middle school uh day camps, summer band, summer orchestra, sports camps and clinics, um early childhood age programs, adult education, and adult and family enrichment. Before I get uh begin, um I just want to share out um I know uh school preparations and things. One of the things that's great about summer programs with community education as we have an opportunity to work with many schools and many principles and staff members. Um, I just want to say thank you to all of their work because we can't do it without them. We don't have our own physical spaces for that. We need to use our schools and it's great when we are in so many of our buildings and utilizing the spaces that u kids and staff are familiar with. All right. With summer enrichment, uh, we had a total of 5,239 enrollments. Some of those are repeats uh, or multiple where uh, we may see children or adults that are taking multiple programs with us. But we also see in the summer we're we have a very flexible model. So for some families they pick one class and that's uh what they do and they fit it the rest of their summer in with other things. So uh really good participation. Uh we have steam arts and language and sports. Um the day camps we have have been traditionally at Turtle Lake. So we have an AM and PM block schedule that can be put together for starting at 8 a.m. and goes all the way till 5:00 if students want to have a full day opportunity. Uh usually that's two different classes they would take for that in there. Um, we also have summer explore which has been I think it's our third maybe even our fourth year of a traditional day camp. Uh, sometimes that's just that summer camp experience where it's arts and crafts and getting a chance to be with other children with less of a focus on a particular content area. It may have a theme for the week, but um, that's been very popular. Um, and it's a little uh less expensive sometimes for families to fill in uh, different things. Uh, lunch bunch. This is a program just where if you're going to want to be there all day, we have supervised staff. uh elementary level, we'll have kids out at the playground. At older levels, it's just giving kids a supervised spot to have an hour break between the next program. And then we do fun Friday field trips. So those day camps are Monday through Thursday. Uh people sign up for the four days and really if they want to attend on Friday, they can. Otherwise, if they want to do something on their own, we've found that even though the numbers are significantly less for those 135 students that wanted that, it was a great fit for what they needed. And there's others who take a Friday off or find something else to do um in our community. Middle school day camps, we had 747 students. This is now we're going into multiple years. This is our third year of a middle school program. And I think I've shared before this has been an age where we've been trying to we know there's an interest by parents and are just trying to match that with interests of kids. Um these are day camps where there's an AM block and a PM block and opportunities for sports, uh steam camps, arts and language and things. And that is something where we're seeing a growing interest of that. And interesting enough, we are seeing some students where they're first time with us at middle school, but we're also starting to see now that we've done the day camps a number of years, students that participated with us in the elementary day camps are finding that model at a middle school content level and finding they they still enjoy doing those things and they don't feel like, you know, young kids anymore. So, it's great to be able to try to match their interest and needs. Um, same thing with this. We had lunch bunch. Uh, this is 164 students. So, we we had quite a few kids that were staying the full day with us, which is always great to see. Uh, moving on to um summer instrumental music. We've had a beginning band and orchestra program in our district for years. We also have middle school opportunities. Um, for summer band, we had 548 students. This is pretty typical to what we'll see. Um, for band, it's uh students entering fifth grade and then as we get into orchestra, it was 598 students. Um, a little bit more, but they can start entering as early as fourth grade. And then so we see elementary level fourth and fifth graders there um as a part of that. And we also have some middle school programs. All right. We also have a number of high school and middle school sports camps. Those are ones that run through community ed. Some of those are our sports teams where it's their summer opportunity to bring either younger students in to participate or uh sometimes at the high school level. It's just that out of the Minnesota high school league. It's a a way for them to strengthen condition and build skills either preseason or postseason. Um but great participation every year uh with us. Uh Wolfridge, I'll get to that slide in a minute, but we had 41 students uh participating there. Um and then we also had just another variety of youth enrichment programs across the district with about a little over 350 students participating. Some of those were tyke sports, uh non-day camps. Um we also had a great partnership. I just want to uh call out as well is that uh the SAM Foundation which operates out of uh St. Paul, we had some connections in our district and we were able to offer four soccer camps, kind of building off the World Cup soccer hype and everything free of charge to kids in our district and um feedback we've heard from kids who are participated, it was just a great experience. Um so we're looking forward to, you know, seeing if we can continue that partnership in years to come. All right. Um I think I just shot over there we go with Wolfridge. This is a highlight of a little bit of that. About a week and a half ago, we had 41 students who came back. Uh this is our third year at Wolfridge with that. And we're finding the students who have participated just absolutely have a blast. Five days uh leaving on a Monday morning early and coming back late on a or early, you know, evening on a Friday. Um those students had a blast this year. There was great weather. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend this year with them, but it um I know they had a great experience and all those things up in northern Minnesota. We avoided the smoke and the hot weather and everything. And um we're seeing a number of kids that uh returning um you know for multiple years in a row. Really fun to see. All right. Now some of the things with um some details on summer band. Um we did have the of this the 550 or 48 students about almost 300 were beginning and then we had a little over 250 in the middle school level. So it remains very popular with students. Uh and with that we had an optional valley fair performance field trip where 20 270 students uh signed up. It was also one of the rainiest days we've had all summer. So, uh, the feedback from that, we did end up canceling the performance just out of the safety and protection of all the instruments, which absolutely on that day was a great call by the teachers. And I, uh, being there when kids got dropped off, I think either they thought it was the best day in the world because there are no crowds or they did not like rain and they would much rather be there on a sunny day. So, um, the trip happened and I think we'll continue that in the years to come. But, it was it was nice to see um, with these programs. Um, as we've heard before in our summer school programs, many of our district teachers are are the music teachers who are teaching in there. And then we also have additional teachers from other districts that are um, teaching with us. And just seeing year after year, we have a number of uh, music teachers who come from other districts that have been teaching with us for five plus years. So we have a lot of experience in those programs, which is really great to see. All right, orchestra. Um, little more details on the almost 600 students. Grade four, we had 214 students entering. grade five we had almost 200 and then middle school is um close to 200 as well and with them uh their end of season um both groups the band and orchest orchestra groups we do a final concert that is that uh Wednesday and Thursday night of that last week of summer school but the orchestra group also does a national anthem performance every year and their night is September 25th which is a Friday um twins versus Rangers in case you're wondering uh tickets are still available so if you're interested it's always a fun night uh for kids and families to go down for that. Um same thing with our orchestra groups. We have a model where we have a lot of returning teachers. And I might add too, we also have sometimes we'll have our retired teachers who are recent retirees that just come back because it's it's a fun time. It's very quick um but they get a lot done. One thing to point out with summer band and orchestra, um it is still possible for students that did not participate in those be beginning programs, if they are interested in participating, they can start in the beginning of the year. It's just something that a lot of our students do participate in. But we also see a fair number of kids who start in the fall. All right. Adult education. Um Bobby had mentioned that our childare program is at Silverview that we are able to do. We have a lot of different things happening. I'm just going to um click through these. Um Oops, one too many. We have uh adult education or our silverview program. We have our ESL classes. We continue. We take a little bit of a break in June, but we start up and a lot of our students really are looking to not have a break. they want to continue but uh many of our students as adults are also having children in our schools so sometimes summer isn't as easy uh for people to attend uh we have compia security um that's a class we have we have a number of certification programs for technology that students are can participate in um pareducator programs that are independent study uh plus the uh licensing tests we do a lot of work with GED and diploma working with um the GED testing and also helping some students if they are close when um they had a gap in their education to a diploma. For some students, they choose to go the diploma route. And then we also do a number of um Microsoft um components with their Microsoft boot camps, uh uh Microsoft OS, the operating systems as well as the um office products. And then we are a Piercing testing center. So, not only for the tests we have, there's a whole bunch of Pearson tests that people just come in and register with us. And um we're open all summer, so it's pretty popular if people have flexibility. the uh testing center is um a big hit. We had about 300 students participate in our summer programs as well. All right, adult and family enrichment programs. Uh 219 enrollments when we're talking about that. We have summer community lunchons that go on. Um that is a partnership. We've talked about the city of New Brighton. Um those have been really popular. We have continued with our breakfast and bingo, which is a little bit less time commitment for people, but um it's just been fun to see members of our community find ways to connect with each other and sometimes they come with friends, sometimes they come alone and make friends. So, uh we have that and then we have Wild Mountain family enrichment and different things that are happening. Um and then the last thing I'll say is as uh as Chris had mentioned, our summer catalog, um all of that is really wrapping up. Our fall catalog has been mailed to all district residents and registration is open. So if people are interested, they can find it on our website or check their mailbox. It gets mailed to everyone. >> Is there bingo in the fall? Also, >> we do. We have breakfast and bingo in the fall and bingo. Alyssa and I are going to sign up. >> It is fun. >> See you there. >> Okay. I am going to talk about some of our teacher summer work. So summer also just offers our teachers the opportunity to do some reflective work and growth in their own profession and their craft of teaching. And I just want to highlight some of the work that was done this summer. I'm going to start with new teacher orientation. We just finished that. So yesterday and today we welcomed 80 new teachers to our district. Great energy in the room. Um they represented early childhood, special education, and then our general uh classroom teachers. So again, they're with us for about a day and a half and then they uh go on to their sites for building orientation, get into their classrooms. As you know, we have mentoring again this year. So they met with their mentors this afternoon as well to help with some of the onboarding. And then on the third day, they will um meet with the Mounds View Education Association Union um and uh meet with Stacy Vanderport to provide them some time with their union. So um the other thing that happens during the summer, we have our professional learning community uh teams or our PLC's. They are provided with uh two professional learning days each summer and it's a chance for them to meet as a team, review information about their incoming students for the year, start talking about their goals for the year uh for their instruction and then making some curricular adjustments to the year based on the previous year. Uh we also offer courses each summer to our staff for professional development. Um most of these are free and they are options that just provide some great professional development for them. So I want to just highlight some of the co uh courses offered. Collegial coaching is a course that we offer about peer review. It gives teachers a chance to uh look at how they support each other as a professional learning community and provide feedback to improve their teaching practices. Uh so this summer we had 12 teachers take part in that. We also have two foundations courses. So we have foundations of effective teaching and the other one we offer is specialized for our special education teachers. So we had 14 participants take the foundations of effective teaching. 19 teachers uh registered and took special education. And then another course we offered this summer was introduction to English language learners. 13 teachers engaged in that course and that's all around designing support uh to provide equitable access to our multilingual learners in our classrooms. So really learning some new strategies to support those students. And then lastly, um we offer a reading comprehension instruction course this year as well. Um that is a course we focused on helping students acquire strong reading comprehension skills. 10 uh teachers chose that. The last one I want to highlight is actually a capstone orientation course. So this is our third course in the Mounds view certification module and it begins for our teachers, those five participants an action research project. So it's asking them to really engage in some action research in their classroom. How will they change a teaching practice? How will they collect data around that throughout the year and how will that inform um their teaching practices and and support student achievement? And this is supported by the instructional support team. So, just the fact that we have so many teachers take advantage of this during the summer is um just continues to show how we really value continuous improvement in our district. As our teachers take that time to really support um students and improve their own skills, we also uh during the summer have curriculum writing. So, we have teachers engage in this also optional, but in the spring interested teachers submit proposals to be compensated for work that they want to do over the summer around their curriculum. So I wanted to share some of that summer work that happened this year as well. The first one uh is a literature and composition course. So we had some teachers from the ALC uh work on designing a course for students who need English credit. Uh really making that a meaningful course for them at um that level. We had uh some teachers from Island Lake work on um creating some curriculum and programming for Stages knowing that it was expanding to Island Lake this year and they wanted to be ready with appropriate supports for the students who would be entering um Island Lake and the Stages program. Synergy assessment work continued this year. So our staff continued to move assessments from Mastery Manager, which was our previous assessment uh platform into Synergy. So looking at the ways that they could pull those assessments over, review them, um make sure that they are uh up to up to speed and ready to go for the next school year. And then our middle school design team continued working as well. So some of that work started last year. Uh you might recall that um we are implementing some changes across our middle schools in some capacity this fall and a team of teachers from across those schools came together to create lessons around those essential skills for middle schoolers. Those were identified a few years ago in our middle school program review. So the curious thinkers, resilient learners, solution seekers, empathetic leaders. Um the team created lessons about what those mean at a middle school level and how can students practice those skills in their daily academics. So work continued around that this uh summer as well. CKLA one of our core resources for K5 last year. So it was our first year of implementation and uh teachers found that in kindergarten and first grade the um workbooks or the activity books that came from CKLA were not quite developmentally appropriate in terms of um space for handwriting. So they wanted to ensure that students had adequate space to write in responses to do some of those sketches of pictures for that content. And so they created some alternative workbooks for that. And then we had teams from grades one through five take the uh assessments in CQLA and enter them into synergies so that they could align them to the standards and better um understand how our kids are performing on the standards throughout the year and during the units. And then Tamarak um worked on some second grade uh field trip planning and some updates to those units. So as part of that do goal around environmental learning in second grade that experience takes place at Tamarak Learning Center around maple syruping. It's a wonderful trip for the students. They they get a lot out of it. And teachers uh in second grade worked with the Tamarack Nature Center to modify those lesson plans. Um making sure they're they are more storyline based definitely appropriate for our second graders on those field trips. Also ensuring that they have a tight alignment to the standards. And then the last thing I would like to highlight is just some new course designing and training that happened this summer. So the first one is ninth grade um data science and quadratics. You might recall that we have new math standards starting in the 2728 school year. However, for our 9th graders to be ready for that MCA4 test when they take it, we needed to make sure we had a course ready to go for them this year that aligned to those new math standards. So um our teachers came in, they did a lot of great training around the new course for nth grade data science and quadratics. It included a new resource and professional development on that as long as well as working on the scope and sequence um and unit planning for that course. And then we had teachers from both high schools engage in um updating our personal finance. So you might also recall that that is a new requirement from the state and that impacts our current juniors entering the 2627 school year. So, our teachers worked on updating our current personal finance courses to make sure that they are meeting those new requirements and created a hybrid course that will be offered um at both high schools uh as part of the DOP goal that will um work that came out of the DOP goal a few years ago about online learning. So, some of the new workaround courses. So, we just really want to take a minute to um thank everyone who enriched our our summer programming this summer, right? supporting our kiddos in um activities. Our staff who took time out of their summer to continue to grow professionally um and continue to work on new courses for the year uh reviewing their curriculum and and working on making it better, continuously improving the work they do. You have questions for us? >> That was we should really do something in the summer. It really seems like we don't do enough. Okay, sounds like a lot of great work happening with our students, with our staff. Um, like you all have said, grateful for all the staff who remain committed to working with students over the summer, um, and planning for the coming year with all the curriculum work as well. So, thank you all for being here tonight, presenting all that information to us. It's great to uh to just get a glimpse of what we know is happening every day in so many of our schools. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Thank you. Great. Now we will move on to item 7.1 updates. Jim, do you have any AMSD or legislative updates for us? >> Oh, yes. We had um we uh had several AMSD meetings since we last met. Um the last one, um we discussed the little blue the blue ribbon commission on special education. There's supposed to be about $250 million a cut. Next Miami special ed. We learned a lot what they've recommended, the changes they're looking at. It's an unfortunate situation and I don't believe anybody wants to cut anything, but uh they gave some pretty strong recommendations and uh I think the committee did good commission did good work and so we'll see what the legislature brings. We also had an update on the compensatory revenue task force that also went through a lot of financial things with the state and made some recommendations. We also had um a lot of work on a legislative priorities for next session. We're getting those in shape uh ready for um January when the legislature convenes. And um I guess that pretty much uh sums it up. So >> well, it sounds like there was also a recognition um as part of the meeting of the previous AMSD chair. Our own Jim Demay was the chair of um the Association of Metropolitan School Districts and recently stepped down. So I'm glad that they took the opportunity to recognize you. um we've benefited from uh your leadership and your knowledge of what's going on AMSD and legislative and are grateful as well, but great to see that AMSD was also >> Well, thank you. It was a lot of work, but it was a lot of fun and it's really important and so um happy to do it. >> Great. Appreciate >> your service. Thank you. >> Yes. >> Uh Shauna, any updates on 916? >> I do. So, we met uh two weeks ago, the first Wednesday of August. Uh we had a uh review of the legislative session and how that impacted intermediates, a little preview of what the intermediates plan to put forward as priorities for the next legislative session. Um and then beyond that, it was pretty routine. We will have one more meeting before school starts. So we'll get all of the um back to school uh readiness at our next meeting, which will be the first Wednesday of September. >> Great. Um, our next item is 7.2 schoolboard member reports. Are there any schoolboard members who have reports for us this evening? We've al we I feel like kind of a slacker after we just heard we had a bit of a break um as a board. We take July off. Uh we met a week and a half ago for a retreat to to um uh really goal set for the year and work with the administration and we're thankful for so many members of the exec team who could be with us that day as well. Um, I I would be remiss if I didn't remind everyone in our community that soon school buses will be around. So, everyone be watching out for those buses and slowing down and stopping and um watching out for all our kiddos waiting for transportation in any shape or form if you if you pass by a school. Be patient. No. Uh, we also have some construction going on around some of our schools. So maybe some extra patience if if there's construction happening on roads that uh that may interfere with that as well. >> Anything else? Go ahead, Jim. >> Well, you know, as folks alluded to, it was great. I was out and about um early this morning and I could see cross country runners training. I saw kids on the tennis courts. I saw kids on the soccer courts but here soccer or the soccer fields. But you know, we live in such a great community. I've been you get out and about all summer and you see kids over here in Sh playing on the playground. you see people in the parks and um on the trails. There's so many great things for kids and families to do. And one of my favorite issues of the Shore View Press is coming out because it'll have the Mounds View in the Irondale School uh uh sports schedule. So, uh do what we do at our house, we clip it up and then we put it on the refrigerator so we make a little soccer, volleyball, uh gymnastics, anything that's going on out there. So, it's just a magical time of year and um it's um you know, it's exciting to hear the kids going to be back in school. >> Yeah, >> absolutely. So, we wish all the parents and families and all the kiddos a great last three weeks of summer and great preparation. Dig out the backpack, see what you left in it two and a half months ago, and um get that ready for the fall. >> If there's nothing else to come before the board, we are adjourned. >> Thank you. >> Thank you, Heidi. >> Thank you. So that we found library books. You come by.