welcome everyone to uh the regular meeting of the prik Savage Board of Education all members are present and would you all stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance I pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to theic for it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all as I've already said all members are present and we will begin the evening with Laker Pride Dr Thomas thank you chair white board of directors good to see everyone this evening um we got two things uh this evening that will be highlighting for our Laker Pride um the last time we were together we welcomed back um one of our own major promotable David Brown who leads our ALC and uh he is uh coming back this evening um to present the district uh an an award for the um support that our district has shown him and folks like him around the country who are continually serving the country as well as serving their local community so with that I will turn it over to uh Mr Brown all right uh Dr Thomas chair white directors and Community it's my absolute privilege to be here tonight to present uh the Patriot award uh as recognition to the wonderful support and patriotic support that the district has provided me uh during my service but before I get into that particular I'd like to turn over to my colleague here to explain the the Department of Defense award and some aspects to it Mr swager thank you David and thank you guys for having me uh my name is Nick Swagger I am a volunteer with esgr that's employer support of the garden Reserve we're a DOD sponsored organization run by one uh government employee here in the state of Minnesota about 40 volunteers like myself so ESR does three major things first thing we do is we educate service members and organizations on kind of the rights and responsibilities of deploying and returning uh the second thing we do is uh adjudicate questions that happen between employers and uh service members they deploy and the third thing by far my favorite is recognition and that's recognition of outstanding employers who support their their G and service members so I've been doing this for about 10 years done about a hundred of these it's my first time at a uh education uh facility and it's just want to say really thank you guys uh I'm going to read off a few names I just want to say this award is not just for those people it's for for you all for the people in the audience that really support those Garden Reserve members that leave their families it's really really difficult to do um so today to recognize uh Michael Thomas Dan Edwards and Emily Herman so I'll read this uh citation here it's from the office of the secretary defense employer support of the garden Reserve recognize the aforementioned individuals of the Prior Lake Savage area schools as a patriotic employer for contributing to National Security and protecting Liberty and Freedom by supporting employee participation in America's national guard and Reserve Force so thank you very [Applause] much I'll turn it back over to David to talk a little bit about what it meant for him thanks just a couple quick concluding comments thank you so much for uh representing the importance of the work that you all do and the support that you've that you've done uh during my deployment for uh the 34th infantry Red Bull division last year uh in 2024 to the Middle East and Central and South Asia uh your your it's just this award is just a small token of of my appreciation not only for me but my wife Maria that we have for the support and the care uh and the helpful actions that you all did leading up to my transition away into to theater while I was serving and back here uh to my beloved uh Bridges which uh is such a privilege to serve at each day um folks your actions speak as loudly as your words in supporting me you're a model employer uh for service members and I just would also like to express my gratitude to my colleagues at Bridges area Learning Center as well those of us that serve in the Army we have a saying about our families which is a key component to our service which is our families are Army strong but I'm happy to say uh Dr Edwards uh Dr Thomas Miss Herman and Dr beik uh that plsas is also Army Strong thank you so much for your [Applause] support believe the other two are sitting over here Dr get this right very your name all right thank you um thank you so much sure next um I want to uh share an update on some exciting work that we're doing here um may have seen this a couple times my Friday is 5 and maybe some of you have been out to the school but we have an exciting thing that's uh happening in our district and it's the incredible growth of our unified Champion schools going from just two schools to 11 in just one year this is a huge step uh toward fostering inclusion leadership and meaningful opportunities for all of our students and a lot of this work is being led by Michelle Chuka who leads a lot of our student Support Services here for the district and her staff and so I'm going to turn it over to Michelle to talk talk a little bit about the program as well as probably meet some of our students thank you Dr Thomas good evening chair white and members of the board I'd like to take credit but I'm really going to hand it over to the team of people here who have made this happen um as Dr Thomas said going from 2 to 11 schools is was incredible and it couldn't have happened without um some really incredible staff members and some really incredible students that that came to make this happen inclusion is a core belief of mine so getting out of the way and letting them do their thing really has been one of the biggest privileges of my time so far here in Prior Lake schools so without further Ado um I want to hand it over to them and I want you to know this is just the beginning of incredible incredible things more students with and without disabilities are learning playing and leading together through unified programming so this will be maybe one of of many over the years of times we get to come and tell you of the great things so here you go I'll hand it off to the team hi I'm Hannah ring I'm a speech pathologist at Prior Lake High School um and I'm going to give you just a little bit about the history of unified um it started in the 2018 2019 School year I was approached by a student at Prior Lake High School that was super interested in starting this club they realized that a lot of schools around the area have this unified program and we didn't have anything like it and so it was really kind of the student-led vision from there Twin Oak started a unified group as well they became a unified school and so they started doing some Polar Plunge events um and then last year the 2023 2024 school year is kind of when it became a really big vision for a lot of us we started doing some district-wide research and planning um the motor group which a lot of them here today started planning the first unified track and field day you might have seen some of that highlighted on social media last year but that was a really cool opportunity for our students um and then this year we are a fully um a unified Champion District so we have other schools that are in the area that have schools here and there but it's not the full District um we are one of 17 unified districts in Minnesota and um everything about unified is voluntary for both student participation staff participation um so everything that you'll kind of see here today is really staff and student driven hi I'm Megan headed I'm a Dae teacher here in the district this is my second year here and I've been loving Prior Lake um I'm here to just talk briefly about the funding sources for unified um Championship schools so Polar Plunge it's been traditionally here in Prior Lake which has been amazing um but but now that we're Unified District 50% of the money that our district raised comes back to our programming um and it's also been a fundraiser for sports teams in the past um but with us being Unified District we were able to let them still fundraise for their money so they got 30% of what they fundrais and then 20% of it also comes back to unified funding so um this is all Polar Plunge fundraising opportunities that we get to create um our district will approximately be getting back $3,200 that we could to plan for more events and field trips and other things that our um team will talk about um we also did some swag sales with our t-shirts and sweatshirts um that students and families were able to purchase um and yes thank you how do I click something hi I'm Todd Deckler I'm the physical therapist for the school district um I do office out of uh Edgewood so I'm representing Early Childhood today so a big thing with our Edgewood School is that we are one in four of preschools in the state that have signed up to be a unified Champion school they're doing some great things there with uh starting an inclusive Library partnering with Community Education for the Down Syndrome day on 321 um different buddy activities there's some pictures of those things going on and this year we are um last year we did Trek and field for secondary and Elementary and we're planning a day for preschool this year as well and you can see our our fabulous uh Plunge team did really well this year raising believe over like $15,000 so thank you good evening I'm Andrea hilgers and I'm another dape teacher in the district and I primarily serve students at the elementary level so just some of the um highlighted activities that we have done includes a physical therapy day where students came into our elementary and just spoke to the kids about you know how they can support students and and using Physical Therapy equipment um bringing that awareness to the students at Red Tail Ridge we've done a couple of bowling field trips unified we are track and field day there's also an inclusive Library so our um all of our elementaries and and the schools um have access to books that also do to talk about disabilities so they can share those books and talk about um disabilities with their peers and read about them we've got morning announcements where we've highlighted different um months where we've celebrated um inclusion and those types of things so we've come up with some um morning announcements and then also just whole school activities as well so cookie decorating and things like that so some highlighted things that we've done at elementary thank [Music] you I'm Jenny running and I'm the physical and health disabilities teacher for the entire District so I cover all levels um a couple of things happening at the middle school this year is they've been partnering with kiddos with all different abilities to do morning announcement similar to what Andrea just talked about we have a really Stellar uni unified advisory in 7th grade right now that is really amazing um true friendships are being born and it's just really fun to be a part of and to see we are hoping for some unified electives next year at the middle school level so we'll see how that goes um and new this year launching in gosh I think right after spring break will be our unified Club between both middle schools so we've gotten a lot of great interest in that just within a matter of weeks of getting get started so very excited about that now the big stuff so I'm going to introduce some students that are here to talk about what's going on at the high school um like I said I'm Hannah ring the speech pathologist at the high school I'm also the unified Club adviser at the high school and then a fax unified fax co- teer so today we have um Ethan Glenn with us he's a 12th grader he's one of the presidents of our unified Club on our board we have Lucy sadland who's a 10th grader also a co-president of our board and then we have Ella Miller who's a 12th grader as well um and she has been an involved buddy within unified um Ethan and Ella they're both both throughout for throughout their four years at Prior Lake High School have been involved in unified um and Lucy's been a really big pillar this year to Our Success too so they're going to share a little bit about the high school so as far as the unified Club does it brings students with and without disabilities to together um for really fun activities before and after school we do fun activities After High School celebrations tie Dy t-shirts party snacks and open gym I like unified because you make very great friends um I like the UniFi Club because I get to um build relationships with kids of like all different abilities and ages and it's just a really amazing thing unified is important to make new friends students need something like unified to help make new friends and give time to spend with those friends oh hi my name is Ethan Glenn and unified represents all students of all different disabilities like Lucy said and we just really want to give everybody the same opportunity at the high school and give the same experience and I think it's important to us and Ella I've known Ella since freshman year we just been became really good friends all throughout these years and really grown with each other and just excited to see what's yet to come unified PE is a class that you can do to make new friends and enjoy doing work I like unified PE because sometimes you need something special to help you in class and you're able to get that yeah I was really excited this year when I heard there's going to be unified classes in the high school we always had the club throughout in the last three years but this this year when I heard there was going to be classes during the school day I was super excited especially gym class it's just a fun time a fun hour to go run around hit a baseball throw a football just spend time with each other and really grow on that deeper level because it's one thing to be sitting in a classroom and maybe you're studying for a test or something like that but when you're out there competing with each other having fun La know is an incredible athlete so it's fun to be in there play soccer with her and really stuff like that growing those connections and I was lucky enough to be in it two quarters and there's a third quarter coming up and I just really hope for the next couple years more kids know about it and can use it as their gym elective and can use it to spend time and meet new kids in the high school cuz there's so many kids in the high school that we don't even know because is such a big school so it's just great opportunities to meet people from all different backgrounds all different [Music] abilities so one of our other classes that we have um is Unified facts and it is a cooking class that gives students the opportunity to like get to use like adaptive and really cool like cooking supplies like we have an Adaptive apple cutter and it was super cool to see kids get to use that and we've done a bunch of different units so far we've done units on vocabulary measuring knife and cutting skills and microwave safety and just like again using how to like learn or learning how to use those utensils and then I really like unified facts because it's more like opportunities inside of a classroom to be with um the students of like different abilities and stuff and and one part that I really love is that we all get to like walk down to lunch together and like get their lunch and then just kind of see them continue their day uh what does unify mean to you and to all of us I think I can speak for all of us here that it means everything like the joy that it brings us when we walk into a class or walk into the morning I know apod first floor is where the life skills room is and usually in my morning I go stop by and say hi cuz it just brings a joy to my heart and everybody I know here and the joy and happiness I know especially to El when we run in see her in the hall say hi just the joy that UniFi brings to all of us unifying everybody at the pr High School is means more than most people can understand and just I hope the success of UniFi can continue to grow and give more opportunities the love that I know I have and all of us have up here the passion that we want just everyone to feel included and have the same High School experience and go home after a good day being happy and proud to be a Laker to me unified means having great friends and having more friends I want to see more students joining UniFi and more classes and then we just highlighted a couple different pictures so these are pictures from fied fact our um Club some different Gatherings that we've had um our secondary track and field day so you can see kind of like in the bottom right corner we have students that are using some adapted equipment with a balloon um and their wheelchairs so um just making it accessible to all of them because they can go into any fiad class and kind of sit off to the side um but this is really a class that's for them and then their gened peers can kind of come in alongside them and help them out um similar to what we're doing in fax and then just our events after school are typically a social based event and we also had the opportunity to do some Partnerships with mcaps so Ethan I'll let you talk about business yeah so I'm a part of mcaps here at the Pake high school and I'm in the business the advanced business pathway and this year we were lucky enough to do our client projects and partner with the Polar Plunge in unified and because of our work we were able to put all of the sports teams at PR high school Under unified Affiliated so then the sports team were still getting their 30% back but then UniFi was getting money back so it's kind of a win-win so everyone was the whole District was getting more money back so we really just strive to see what we what can we do we know all these sports team are wanting money are needing money and so is Unified so we just kind of combined them together so we were able to promote that and it was an easier way to put out there saying hey we're raising we're raising money for Special Olympics and Special Olympics here in our district so it's not like the money is going all the way across the country it's here in our community that's helping the people here they were an amazing team they did all the Promotional and marketing materials for our plunge this year so that was awesome um some of the motor team also did a presentation to the education Pathways year one and year two on uh unified for future Educators that was awesome they did some planning with us for kindness month as well and the trades pathway partnered with the life skills program at the high school and did a couple different projects that they got to work on with them that was really awesome to see too so we've been across the whole District future dreams and we have many many um we would love to see more unified classes at all secondary levels high school and middle school as you can tell it just brings so many opportunities for all of our students um increasing our unified advisory at the middle school like I said we've got one amazing teacher um in class right now we would love to see that expand we are in the works of doing some Partnerships for more inclusive playground equipment including some legislative action um we'd love to see our Polar Plunge increase so we can have that funding still to fund all this amazing stuff and more inter District events we just scheduled a baseball game against Shaka gloomies which will be in May so we'll let you all know about that and we'll let you know about our track and field days too coming up so awesome thank you guys so much thank you [Applause] so yeah [Applause] G grab you want to be in it's close together as a kid want [Music] thank you thank you thank [Applause] [Music] you thank you again everyone uh next on our agenda is our superintendent report thank you chair white and just a brief one tonight just to remind um our families our students and our staff that uh on February 24th we opened up our survey window our annual survey that we do and it's open until this Friday the 14th and just want to make sure that everybody takes the time to complete that you know we were talking with some teachers today and they asked how is this used and do you actually read through all of those surveys and I said guilty yes thousands and and so yes we we really pride ourselves on listening to our stakeholders whether it's our parents our students or our staff to really help inform the practices of what we can do better things that are working well that we want to continue to replicate so again that window closes um uh March 14th and I believe at the April study session we'll be slotted to bring that uh that we do our annual presentation to the board as well um and then we'll share that out um throughout the school year with the staff um and our students so just that's all I had tonight all right thank you next on the agenda is the open Forum this is a 15-minute period of time set aside for the board to receive citizen input um I would just just remind speakers to uh try and speak in a manner with which you'd like to be spoken to and to try and honor the 3-minute time limit tonight we do have one speaker if Dustin Smith would like to come forward a little nervous to follow that uh imagine that was uh pretty incredible and as somebody that works for a disability rights organization that's uh that's really incredible to hear so it's glad to see that people are advocating for inclusion and and accessibility in our community uh good evening Dr Thomas chair white and directors of the board thank you for the opportunity for me to speak this evening my name is Dustin Smith and I have two children starting in kindergarten next year that's right two and I need to get away sometimes and this is where I choose to spend my time so what does that say about me um I was in attendance at the February 24th board meeting in which a number of individuals expressed their anger and frustration regarding the administration's response to a teacher's online conduct as a human resources professional I know that decisions and discipline involving workplace conduct are never easy human behavior and communication is at its very best complicated we believe that there is a solution for every problem that everything is black and white and in my 40 years on this Earth I have learned one immutable truth there are no Solutions there are only tradeoffs human behavior is nothing but Shades of Gray with that in mind I want to let you know that I support the decision the district made regarding this specific situation I do not know what the teacher's intention was in Sharing The Post online and we can debate about what the intent was but at the end of the day we cannot control how others received that message did the end result of that me message they shared cause harm to other students and families yes does this mean that that teacher is an evil person no all of us are the hero of Our Own Story we do not like to think that we are capable of harm but we are I am capable of harm I have caused harm both unintentionally and regrettably with intent our words and actions have consequences and in fact I am still atoning for some of my words and actions and the thoughts that I have expressed in the past case in point I remember listening to the speakers last time and thinking to myself there is not one thing that I have in common with these folks for me in that moment what I decided or what I was thinking was right and they were wrong and as I have had time to reflect one of the speakers spoke about spoke about his concern for his daughter's future and the education that she was receiving I share those same concerns when it comes to my two children well now we've got something in common and maybe that's all there is maybe we have vastly different views on what that looks like and what it should look like but we share that core belief I said before that we are all the hero of Our Own Story the unfortunate byproduct of this means that people who Express different views or support different causes as the opposite of us we cast them as the villains in our story this cannot be how we interact with each other in this world we need to be able to trust regardless of what a person's beliefs are trust is a choice I choose to trust that the school and the administration and this board are making decisions in the best interest of our students and educational professionals I choose that parents have the best of intentions for their children I believe we all must work together effectively with understanding compassion empathy and mutual respect if we are going to achieve our goals for this District as a final note it turns out another shared interest from last time was an admiration for speeches by Abraham Lincoln I won't read all of his inaugural address but I will just close with we are not enemies but friends we must not be enemies though passion may have strained it must not break our response of affection thank you for your time appreciate it thank you thank you Mr pleas all right next on the agenda we will move to the consent agenda these are items that are considered routine in nature and will be enacted with one motion is there a board member that would like to pull anything off the consent agenda before I ask for a motion yes CH chair white thank you um I'd like to to PLL 9d the monthly financial report as well as 9f2 District retirements please okay we'll just move them down to the bottom and and call them G and H when we get excuse me chair white uh it was mentioned that we need to approve the agenda first oh thank you thank you thank you for catching that one luckily I haven't taken a motion yet so I will now take a motion to approve the agenda as presented so made by director I can't remember last name France France I name second second by uh director Johnson any discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 now moving on to the consent agenda is there a motion to approve uh the consent agenda minus uh letter D and F2 so M by director ainson second second by director bullan any discussion hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 and we'll move down to the monthly financial report I would like a motion to approve the monthly financial report so made by director ainson second second by director olad discussion yes thank you um I just have a question um this question I emailed in for director or for um director Frederickson um my question was is that in the December monthly financial report the unassigned unassigned fund balance was 14.4 million approximately 11.7% and then in January the unassigned fund balance shifted to 7.6 million for 6.2% and so my question was why was the money shifted if you could help um the board better understand why it was shifted um to um shifted certainly um chair white um Dr Eon members of the board um when we get money into Revenue into the district it goes into essentially a um unassigned bank account um we're allowed to use that money for whatever it was intended for um as I've talked about several times we have about 40% of our money that is actually categorical which means we have to spend it for the exact purpose that it was intended so when we get payments every month which are metered by the way the state doesn't just send us our total U allocated Revenue they meter it out a tenth every month um and then there's some other miscellaneous Revenue that we do get but every month um in that pot of money that we call unassigned because that's our bank account um we don't distinguish all of those categorical fundings we are required by Statute and the Department of Education to specifically have um assigned balances in those categorical um items so for instance Capital um the gifted and talented the Q comp Levy um compensatories the staff development all of those we have to report as separate funding sources so typically in the way that you can rearrange those unassigned fund balances to those categorical programs is at the end of the year you just make the adjustment uh last year we actually made the adjustment in the middle of March I believe um the problem by making it early in the year is that there's not because we get metered payments there's not enough to quite cover all of those we'd end up with a negative uh unassigned fund balance if we did it at the beginning of the year we're trying to be proactive and not have all of this work at the end of the year for the audit because it has to be done so we did it in the month of February so the transfer is not moving money it's just taking those uh categorical assigned dollars and moving them to those assigned um kind of buckets if you will um again we just did it a month earlier this time so you had less total revenue than you would have done last year when we did it in May or March um so I appreciate that it looked to me like it moved to Debt Service fund is that correct no no um no there was um thatb service is entirely separate there is a Levy that we get for Debt Service um there is part of the ltfm that has to go to Debt Service but that's entirely separate okay yeah because in December debt Services was at 10.8 million and then in um January it went to what looks like a negative 3.6 so I was just assuming that's where but you're saying it basically spread out through all the different funds so my question is is because I don't recall and perhaps I didn't pay as as close attention to this in the past pass but I don't recall this massive shift in the past and my concern is and my question is is that now that our unassigned fund balance is below the 8% per our board policy um what is the it says in our policy that deviation from the fund balance will be reviewed and addressed by the school board so since we're at 6.21% what is the um what is the next steps for us regarding this so once you see the March statement um it's it's already May or actually February the February it's already been fixed so as we get another payment all of that payment that we received from revenue in February now just goes into the unassigned because we've already fixed it and I think it's at 9.1 I believe is what so it's just a cash flow it's just a matter of timing on when we do it I mean we could have waited another month but again we're trying to be proactive and take care of these little things that we required to do um in preparation for that audit just to make as much as we can in in July when we do the audit have less work because there's just a massive amount that we have to do then so it's just a timing issue that helps ease my mind thank you so much any other discussion or questions um no I just want to say that thank you very much for that wonderful explanation Tammy we're H when you look at the financial statements it's pretty easy to see over the past I don't know how many years that it it's the fund balance is quite volatile we're looking at that average and um it will continue to swing and it has swung in previous years but it's usually balances out uh to what is uh estimated at the end of the year and um I know that we have new members on the board and new people listening and so thank you very much for repeating the the uh process that I know you've repeated last year and in previous years so thank you yep certainly there's no further discussion we have a motion and a second on the table all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries 70 and not under letter H District district retirements I'll make a motion to approve the district retirements so made by director ainson second second by director France discussion um no I was just hoping that we could recognize our district retirees who have um contributed a lot service so I don't know if you want take that one or sure yes we have uh a number of um longtime employees couple of them that I know personally that uh had children that that played Sports and other things with my children back in the day so with gratitude um for all their years of service we uh accept these retirements 215 cumulative years 215 cul years that's quite a bit so thank you thank you thank you D thank you we have a motion in a second on the table if uh there's no more discussion all in favor sign signify by saying I I opposed motion carries [Applause] 70 right next on the agenda is acceptance of gifts and I will quick find that all right we have one gift this evening uh the the donor is the Minneapolis foundation and the mingon Su Community it's a grant of $700 uh for five Hawks um uh for the understanding native Native Minnesota Grant and it will be used for the purchase of books and to help improve uh the narrative about native peoples and their histories and culture and tribal governments this does require a rooll call I'll now accept a motion to accept this gift so made by director Johnson second second by director bullan and we'll start at the end director olad hi director Johnson hi director ainson hi director bullan I director France I and director Mason I and I that motion carries 70 with gratitude next on the agenda is Personnel items director Herman thank you chair white members of the board the first one um we are presenting today is on behalf of C coaching this is already agreed upon boost or funded position um recently boys volleyball has joined the middle SCH School High School league so we are adding um a b Squad position that will be fully funded by the boosters okay is there a motion to accept so made by director France second second by director Mason any discussion or questions just happy that we finally got it in I know they've been trying for some time M all right there's no further discussion all in favor signify by saying I I I opposed motion carries 70 and then additional Staffing director Herman thank you chair white members of the board the next Staffing request is from Community Ed um they had these positions last summer and um the need continues um to be there so we're requesting the the two FTE for May through June and then moving forward in director doll's budget he will continue these positions says there's there's definitely an ongoing need for them they'll serve the same role that they served last year um helping ensure that they can um meet the additional registration needs of their summer programming and it's all funded out of the 04 Community Services fund right thank you is there a motion to accept the additional Staffing for Community Ed so made by director ainson second second by director buan any discussion or questions hearing none all in favor signify by saying I I opposed motion carries 70 we have no unfinished business so the next item on the agenda is new business our annual compliance vote for American Indian education director Oak good evening superintendent Dr Thomas chair white members of the board um every year our American Independent advisory committee hold a a vote a compliance vote um to State whether they concur with the district's offering um educational offering to American Indian students um this year's vote is um by a vote of 15-2 non-concurrent um so the next step in the process is that um our APAC chair uh will work with their committee to write a letter to us here um she is planning to present that at the next school board meeting and then we will have 60 day 60 days to respond uh to her letter okay is not an action but are there any questions for director Oak thank you for um your relationships with this group I we did increase by two votes positive votes so uh celebrating the little wins than anyone else all right thank you next on the agenda is the 2526 uh budget enrollment projections revenue and expenditures and again a report only director Frederickson thank you chair white members of the board uh you have the 25 26 enrollment projections um at our last Finance advisory committee we talked about the different ways that we could look at projections and we had agreed that we would use a linear progression model with a three-year weighted average so that's the chart that you'll see uh what that would look like um we are still kind of working with the enrollment numbers we still have some Kindergarten um challenges which is the second report that you'll have in there for kindergarten enrollment um we still have less than what we um were hoping for so we're still about 40 kids down from what we anticipate um but again we'll continue to watch it and we'll make adjustments um the final vote for the budget is in June so we'll continue to make adjustments as we see fit um I don't know if you've heard but the state set the inflationary factor for the formula allowance at 2.74% we were using 2.5 in our budget so that's about another $140,000 um there are some items that the governor has proposed so we're kind of waiting to see what legislation does with that and we may have to make some last minute adjustments around that so we'll continue to monitor it monitor the uh what happens in legislation and and continue to keep adjusting the uh Revenue projections um the kindergarten enrollment as I said is the way that we calculated that was from um the 28th of February and we looked at how many were enrolled with the open enrolled um and then compared that to where we were previously in the other year so we're still um about 40 kids KS down from what we were hoping to see um but we'll keep hoping that we're going to see more in the next month or two um so as I said we'll keep adjusting it as as we get more information questions or comments director Frederickson can you tell me why it looks like on February 3rd looks like there were 78 open enrolled versus on February 28th there was only seven um I'm not sure we got 78 director that was as of February 3rd so on February 3rd we had 30 78 open enrolled kids and then on the 14th there were nine on the 21st there were five and then as of February 28th at 7even so um when we begin the process we're taking kindergarten enrollments um we kind of hang on to them um to see if we're going to have space for open enrolled kids specifically around Lola Del Lago and we kind of hang on to them um until until the 14th so that second week that we got the kindergarten registration then we placed all of the open enrolled kids so it's just a kind of a timing process um we typically will always accept any of the open enrolled kids unless we absolutely do not have room which hasn't happened um this year so any students that are open enrolled we will find a place for them so if we were to calculate we would just do the 78 plus the other numbers if we were looking at open and R well they've been placed so now they're part of the in the on the February 24th you'll see we have 413 as opposed to 301 the week before so that includes those open enrolled kids that we've placed y all right thank you appreciate it director Johnson and director frederson please correct me if I'm wrong um it can't be just a straight calculation of open enrollment because there could be some that didn't accept their placement yes so if you look at the 78 plus 9 plus 5 plus 7 that's not necessarily going to be how many of the 435 are actually open in roles because some of them could have denied their placement that we provided to them okay is that accurate director FR yes I should have mentioned that there sorry if I misunderstood your question perfect apprciate it we asked for them for their three top three choices we try to give them their first choice um if we can't then we offer them their second and sometimes they just don't want the second so they'll decline the Open Enrollment but yes thank you I appreciate the context any other questions yeah uh director Frederickson one more question on the kindergarten enrollments for 25 26 it looks like you're targeting like the 520 number um is that correct but then on our three your weighted average um we will use that c for financials right so that number is like 560 correct that's what we're hoping to get is the based on the linear progression with a three-year weighted average it we would expect to have 560 what the 520 number is is if you look at the previous years we had um you take the 85% so if you take how many are enrolled at that point compared to the official October 1st it's 85% of of um what the October 1st number looks like so it's just kind of a a gauge to see how we're the statuses right now um so if we said that 442 is 85% of what our October 1st enrollment would be that would be put it at 520 but if you just look at a a linear progression with the three-year weighted average we would expect to have 560 so at what point would you adjust your budget to that number that um so I haven't adjusted it yet because the um formula allowance changed there is some talk about the special education Transportation being only 95% so that would change that number there's um the governor is proposed eliminating Q comp so that would be a change so I'm just kind of waiting to see as we move along um in the process if there's going to be any other drastic changes I don't want to keep coming in know this changed this week this has changed that week we're just kind of waiting to get um where we can at least work with a number that we feel like is fairly um solid at that point so there will be some adjustments thank you anyone else with questions regarding the enrollment all right revenue and cash flow director Fon um the first report you have is the revenue the general fund Revenue again this is looking at um the state AIDS and the um Levy amounts from the levy certification report assuming um the um enrollment comes in at 560 for kindergarten that would be our projection so it's most of it is Formula based um there is a couple of them that are have other than formula based but I've just put all the calculations on there if you want to there's a levy certification report on the MD website like 44 Pages you can um kind of match up each of those items in there um if you want to see how it kind of all fits together um but for now our Revenue projection is 12,555 481 any questions or comments yes director Frederickson I think this is the correct sheet for the email that I that I sent you based on the the negative deficit that we had is that correct um that comes with the cash flow summary which we can to early um so I had a request from a couple um board directors that are financial statement was um kind of confusing to try to follow and that there was a request for a cash flow report if the board decides this is a useful report to them um I would ask that we no longer put together the financial report um because everything in this summary can be found in that financial statement packet um and we just don't have the bandwidth to keep adding reports um so if this one makes more sense to you then certainly we will continue to to do this one um the way that we do a cash flow forecast is you essentially take your expenses in each of these category or revenue and expenses in each of the categories from the previous year you assume some inflationary factor and then you take the actual amounts from last year apply the inflationary factor and then that becomes your forecast for the current year and then every month as you get actuals you kind of fill it in so in this sheet where the shaded areas those are the ones that haven't been final yet they're not actuals they're just projections so those numbers are a um percentage increase from the actuals from the previous year um one of the things that um I would kind of mention is this is a forecast so it's not always going to be accurate so one of the things that you'll see in here I think there was uh a few emails about a concern of a $1.43 million negative fund balance uh if you look at the February salary expenditures you'll see that the forecasted amount in there is $6.8 million 6,811 $990 that actually last year included the Retro payment that we paid for the teachers for their contract settlement we're not going to see that this year so as we finalize the actual numbers for February that number is actually going to be about a million dollars less than the 6.8 million that's in there which is going to reduce that $1.4 million deficit at the end of the year um there's also um we've been talking about all year the um amount that we're overspending or Not overspending that we're paying for transportation that's over what we anticipated um we have been taking steps to kind of negate those overages the activities buses only are going one way they're not going both ways so we're saving some money there we've um halted all the spending for um non-salary supplies um to try to save some dollars there we're making whatever it costs that we can savings as we move forward um I can tell you that in the last two months we've actually come in about 800,000 less than we spent last year so we're trending that we're trying to fix that but um to be perfectly honest we're we're going to be spending about 2 million more than what we budgeted for transportation and as I've mentioned we're doing an RFP we're in the process of getting that done U we're actually going to do two rfps one for regular Ed Transportation one for special ed Transportation um because a special ed transportation and the activities um because of the way that the contract is structured they're higher than what we anticipated um we thought the contract would be about 6% increase and it's actually coming in about 177% so we are taking measures to try to to negate those overages um which is why every month we in um the business office we kind of do an analysis to see where are we right now what's it going to look like by the end of the year um so while this analysis will show that we have have a negative fund balance at the end of the year we are anticipating and are very hopeful that that's not going to be the case um because we have taken measures to uh negate that for the rest of the year um I can also just um would like to add um also that there is as we look at a $1.4 million deficit even if we keep that number um that's a 2.3% variance um I I totally understand that that's a negative number and we're taking money out of fund balance but if you look at some other Industries and their variance um of what it's allowable between budget versus actuals for expenditures in construction it's between 5 and 10% variance um they're actually three to 5% variance the tech industry is usually five to 10 or 15% um there is an organization called the Council of great City schools that has 78 members of the largest urban districts in the country and every year they run um a performance measurement and benchmarking project um which basically is the key performance indicators that are applied to all of the um operational and business services for all of those um 78 schools and I looked at the latest report and um budget versus actual percentages for adopted budgets um the lower quartile is at 95.5% um and the mid is 110 with the um upper quartile 119 which is significantly different than it was two years ago because we're still kind of seeing that effect from Co um and the last report is from 2223 they haven't done um obviously 23 24 the 24 25 um prior to covid it went from lower quartile of 91% um the mid at 100 and the upper quti 108% and we're sitting at 97.7 um so again we are trying to take measures to get to that most efficient um amount that we can get to um but as I've said before there are many things beyond our control in the in school finances like utilities the transportation um we've added some um High need special educ education students that are costing more dollars so we are trying to be as efficient as we can but I'd just like you to keep in mind that our variance is 2.3% and we are certainly making an effort to increase that um or decrease that amount um but it is within Benchmark of what the council great City schools has put in their kpis any I have a couple of questions so it looks like most of the overage that you're projecting um is in the purchase Services um is that were Transportation Poli figured um yeah I mean that that to me is like 18.58% to 16.7 so that's like 11 11% overage I believe or somewhere in that neighborhood so are we are we taking measures to cut in other areas for purchase Services because I think that RFP for transportation wouldn't kick in through until next year's budget right I mean there's nothing this year that would save us so you have as you take it as a whole um while the purchase Services is 11.1% it's also um you know it's $16 million compared to the 70 million that our salaries are within 1.1% yep so that bottom line um is that 2.3% variance and we are doing what we can to um decrease that you'll see other expenses is reduced by 21% um Capital expenditures is where we're saving some dollars we're at 1.8% variance um so we are again making um whatever reductions we can um this has luckily been a so far far a mild winter um so I'm hoping that our electric bills this winter won't be as high as they were last year or the year before so we will gain some there um but again this is the business office every every month goes through a a complete analysis to see where we can make some tweaks to um reduce whatever we can um and I I just want to say thank you for supplying these reports I think they're super helpful personally um and then so as far as like the projected amounts going forward you will adjust those every month right is that what okay we would see just as we're you know saving on expenses that might we'll see that number come down perect okay any other questions director France um so you had made a comment at the beginning that if we want this cash flow report that another other reports would disappear um including the ones that compare last year's year-to date and all that um the information that's on this cash flow report is found in that financial statement report um so the request was if we can do this which is essentially getting the information from that report that you wanted to see that I would not do that financial statement report I mean if if it's not being helpful um I we don't need to go through all the work to produce it if it's not going to be a useful tool for you which financial statement report that whole packet just that the monthly packet there's other funds in there the monthly packet that we would produce um that was one of the things that we were saying that we would just pull the essential information that was relevant for a more on time tracking um and this is much more efficient from our standpoint as well so that's the big that big monthly one is what we would suspend and if if anything maybe quarterly uh at best okay quarterly but is that also include the balance sheets for each of the funds um it was my understanding that those weren't really being used that we're just looking at the financial statements and that this report the cash flow report would replace that okay I liked the balance sheets from a financial perspective they're they were useful to me um I don't need your write up because you always go through that um but those balance sheet and the revenue sources um comparing last year's um uh numbers also from where we were last year at 2024 and all that just cuz that data is not in that report um so I don't know are you would you consider taking feedback I didn't realize you were replacing other reports yeah we could certainly do and I and I and I'm 100% in favor of lessening your workload there's no doubt about that I'm just concerned that that because these reports have to be done a week before the board meeting um and we're already stretched to try to get them done by Wednesday because of the bank statements and everything else that um adding one more report on there is just going to stretch us pretty thin to get them done um by that board packet on Wednesday um but we'll we'll do what we can director I'm sorry I was going to say um the monthly highlights um I could go without because you're repeating everything that's in there and stuff like that but would it help if we um gave our input um I don't want you to go through all the work of that huge report because lots of it is redundant and it's already in the transaction reports it's already in the summary reports um it's just being restated in different ways um but I do really like those Balance sheets um and the comparison to last fiscal year um but if there's anything it be automated through Infinite Campus um as much as possible particularly since it seems to me that the write up that you do to summarize on the monthly highlights that seems to be manual um I could go without that but those balance sheets are really nice and they do say everything that's in the other one because I'm not so much interested in what's projected I'm interested in where we are year to date compared to where because I understand the fluctuations okay I will make a note Dr I was just going to add um so I'm wondering if um because I would agree there's a couple pieces of components as information that we're in is in the monthly financial report that I don't feel like is reflected on this report um the last year component I wondering if you could just add like a a a year-to date last year comparison um and then also there's no budget listed on here of like where we are like what our actual budget is so unless I missed it um but I know like with our Revenue we're at 121.8mi that comes in um and the impact Etc particularly on some of the other funds uh so that helps explain a lot and if we take too much out then we're going to go through explaining again and again and that's what I also don't want what I'm really looking for is obviously with a financial system some of these can be run with minimal um minimal human hopefully um input that sort of thing it's basically you you run your p&l you run your cash balance you run all that um so that's I would be interested in keeping those automated reports uh that did show a little bit more of the detail because that way when when questions are asked they're they're definitely in here um um but I don't I I totally agree that we need to eliminate as much manual labor as possible that's just the way I um I feel cuz I've been um these are very especially the breakdowns of the uh expenditures um that help explain where the variations are um and hopefully avoid more questions to you as people learn how to read Financial reports I think that would be really helpful okay and then I have um another question um the categories on the very left hand side where it says beginning fund balance Revenue local S I understand the revenue and those those names and categories are similar to what's on page 22 of our budget manual is there any way to make the names the same so that there's consistency within our documents so like under expenditures under this document we have it broken out by administrative District Support Services Elementary but then over here it's lumped together different it's salaries benefits so like there's no consistency from what we're seeing from a budget standpoint to what's in this document yeah there I think in the budget document we've also broken it out this way so this is by object so if you're looking at the um monthly check register it will be lined up to this what you're looking at for the um administrative those are programs so um in order to do a program report to get the same information we would have to do um break all of these out which would take considerably more time because we'd have to break out all of these categories into each of those programs um and again if if it helps we can do a uh eup far's account code kind of training at one of our study sessions to show um how the account codes affect this but it it it's two different things um either program or this case object is what we're showing on here so I'm I'm just wondering um because this sound this looks like what we were talking about when when you guys especially when you in advance of the meeting with with director Frederickson um could we try you know having a quarterly report on the things we're talking about and if that's not enough we can always revisit it and and adjus us as we go this is a new thing that we're trying to do and this might not be the be all end all that we thought it was going to be so um is that information too infrequent accordly basis for you to start with um or you know you know what I'm saying I I'm this I'm trying to to director Francis point we want to increase your workload if anything we'd like to decrease it if we can get the same information um yeah I think the the conversation was to have something very simple and hopefully reduce your workload on a monthly basis and then if we can have the full report on a quarterly basis um I think that was what I think we had talked about yeah is that okay moving forward just to you know I don't I'm no no no trying to get a consensus here of of of uh we could again we can move ahead try it if all of a sudden if we're 6 months out and we're not getting it often enough we can always you know revisit it and and and come back to that but I'm just trying to see how we can move forward from from right here and from this report um uh just a couple of things um first of all with the new Financial system the update the eup far's uh description isn't showing up on that anymore which I think um would help people who aren't familiar with the accounting codes um if that could be done that would be hopefully easy but I if that's a custom report and it's not going to fit or whatever because I noticed the type face is a lot larger now than uh it's not an option in the new Skyward we would have to manually add that but I can certainly put together kind of a cheat sheet that would at least give you um I think from the check register the two that you're going to be looking at are probably the first two numbers which is the fund and the last three numbers which um is fits these categories it's the um object codes yeah um but but there's also building and what fell into ltfm and what didn't and what fell um um I think the eup fars does already have a pre-printed uh cheat sheet that yeah so please don't do any I wouldn't even ask that um I'm used to seeing them over the years but I understand that it looks a little confusing now um it is very confusing it's a lot of numbers yeah um yes so the what shows up quarterly I I pretty much wouldn't even need the the write up quarterly I mean it's pretty much self-explanatory in our board meetings um director Frederickson does go over those differences and has been pretty good with um letting us know when a variance is expected because of something like like last year with the transportation and special ed and we knew 3 four months ahead of time as they were trying to work through the numbers uh so I'm not too concerned about that I'm only concerned about the manual work and if these reports are able to be produced automatically that's fine just spit them out with the normal uh standard reporting format um that occurs my concern is is with putting in the projected numbers cuz it's a linear projection and it's not going going to reflect the volatility that we do have uh when things are paid out I mean the end of the year you know with Summer payouts and and yeah it's and December also um so trying to do a linear projection uh I think is going to be more misleading that's my opinion um because we're not linear so um so that's why um but the July August and stuff like that going through the year that's the exact same number number that we get we just get through through to date month through year to date and then comparison to last year's if that's a manual report then I'll suffer CU I don't want you to go through that work I mean I can add them up myself um but I am concerned about the projections being a little bit misleading yeah the projections like I say the the way it's calculated is previous year times whatever inflation Factor you're building in there so it's not necessarily going to give you um if this is what you're expecting to see in the final financial statements it may or may not be true um just because like I say as we're trying to find efficiencies and cutting some of these cost um it's going to adjust those actual numbers but not the projection because the projection is just a formula based on the previous year can I ask a question about projections you had mentioned that the February number we're going to be it's calculated to be about a million over and now you just said that it's basically a manual calculation that does a percentage over last year why wouldn't if you knew it's going to be a million less why wouldn't you manually put that in so we get the most accurate picture as we can in the projection if you know that that's the case we could do that um but in my 32 years of doing this there is always something that's going to come up so if we're going to be as conservative as we possibly can um I would just let it run out and then make sure that um each month when we get the actuals that we're actually doing a real comparison to see is this what's going to happen um you know I think last year we or two years ago we had a snow plow breakdown so we had to buy a snow plow so there's always something that comes up um I would rather air on the side of um being conservative rather than saying oops now we're going to spend more rather than we're going to spend less I I'm a little challenged by that because as a financial analyst in my role um in the business world you give yourself the best guest month to month and so um I think as a board as a board member I rely on your expertise of you knowing what happened last year versus this year and how does that number project out so um I you know I certainly can change those um one of the challenges is going to be June um June has all of our audit entries in there and I those are going to be absolutely going to be a guess at this point audit entries depending on what new gasby rule there is or um what lease laws change there's just a whole multitude of things in that June so June is the one that's always going to be really volatile yeah that's so I just tended to leave it the way it was so that we could kind of see what happens with June we also have all those other um so teachers can choose to either be paid um through the school year or all year and though if they choose to get paid the 24 payments then in June we have to pay them their July and August payments so June is always going to have um extremely high payroll because we're paying them out um those June and July pay payroll checks that they earned in the current year so those are always going to be um in there um there's also a lot of any of the teachers on call we don't know what those look like yet um so it there's just a lot of variables that again I tend to be conservative um in making these estimates but we could certainly change them up front um and then hope that something doesn't other things come up as we're trying to make adjustments and hence my statement that the projections are I mean they're just linear projections there they're not reflective of reality uh or the the fluctuations that a school district has every month and um what I don't want to see is you know people spending more time trying to figure out why a linear projection doesn't match with reality rather than looking at our real financial situation um I would suggest that um the board members take a look at um the the reports that are in there and figure out which ones they can go without and if director Frederickson could let us know which ones are manually intensive um that would help too I'm seeing a few that are obvious because they're not an obvious financial report um and I would be willing to to do that if that's if that's what the board wants any thank you chair white um board directors so what you're seeing here this evening is from the last time that we came together and then a huddle also with treasur Atkinson and I think some conversation as we talked um with the financial committee possibly I might have been conflating those two meetings together um but here's what I would propose chair white and board directors so what you see here is our initial draft and um I'll probably be repeating a lot of what chair white just said what I heard tonight there are three kind of elements that um several of you have expressed interest balance sheets year-over-year and a percentage of monthly spent those are three things that I've heard from um several of you that you know if there's nothing else I would like to go back with our team um and see what that would entail um whether it's something that could be generated um or if that's something that's going to be manually done um and then adjust any kind of up uh reporting for our next business meeting for you all just to see you know where that would fall but those would be the only three components that I would like to explore to see um the feasibility of bringing that forward and would that generate more work is that a manual entry uh creation Etc so if if that if I'll just ask um chair white if that's the will of the board that we would do that and then if you could just add the actual budget what our budget is cuz I know the budget has changed we've revised it one time so just the actual budget numbers on there so you don't have to reference multiple documents and then you clear I mean that's already on there but yeah I think that's it's not on this spreadsheet not on that spreadsheet but it's in the other right I understand not having to flip and find which document we're actually looking for would be helpful you guys want to take a correct at it we'll take a look and then we'll reconvene like we did before and then just work through some of those details and then bring back kind of a verion to okay I thank you all if there's nothing else good I thank you I appreciate your explanation of all that and I understand now like how difficult that would have been through email so just absolutely thanks so all right thank you next on the agenda is the fast Bridge report again it's report only no action is requested director zush I was going to say good evening to Dr Thomas but he's not there anymore so good evening chair white members of the board um I'm here to talk about our um midyear data which is fastbridge and I'm just going to make this window big sorry um before I get started on going into the data I wanted to talk a little bit about the purpose of fastbridge and what it what it's um what it tells us and what it doesn't tell us um fastbridge is what's called formative assessment data so fastbridge um is a tool that provides us timely insight into student learning um it's designed for individual student assessment at a a particular point in time and it helps us understand um the extent to which students understand certain Concepts it's used um by our Educators to U monitor progress uh for students help adjust their instruction and then identify students who may need additional support um unlike summative assessments which are more of those MCAS that measures learning at the end of a certain point in time um unit assessments would do something similar uh format assessment is really used to guide instruction in real time um the material uh that's assessed in different windows and fastbridge changes depending on um where we are in the year and what grade level you're talking about so the skills that are assessed in the fall window are not the same as what are assessed in the winter window but they follow a natural on average projection of where student skills develop um so just wanted to um talk a little bit about how fastbridge supports our schools so really we use this information to identify early students that may need additional support or have learning gaps uh we also use it to monitor progress um we can see over time as we collect multiple data points if there's a change in trajectory um in one way or the other that might indicate that something is going on in the classroom that we might want to pay attention to and that helps teachers look at that information and make adjustments um it also helps us at the team level it helps us at the school level um built look at this information to determine kind of what's working and what areas we need to invest in further in terms of um instructional support fast Bridge um you've probably heard of triangulation of data uh it's a little bit misleading because it's not necessarily three data points um but fastbridge is one uh data point that we use to track student progress uh we use a lot of other pieces of data as well um teachers use everything that they um qualitatively and quantitatively collect on a daily basis in the classroom um in terms of student progress student um work observations of how students are engaging in conversation um and really using their professional judgment to determine how a student is is doing um it's really meant to be a snapshot in time and it um as any assessment it can really be influenced by various factors um such as the test condition or whether the student feels like doing it that day um the last thing is these are um we try our best to maintain consistent implementation of fastbridge um that requires ongoing professional development um with teachers and staff um they also they have a lot on their plate and um you know we we try to do the best we can with training but as you probably know by now our train amount of uh professional de development time is very small and the amount of things we have to cover is vast so um there could be some variability as well in terms of that Administration um this information is really used to um inform instruction it's not meant to evaluate teachers or students in isolation um in that singular data point it helps us with our tiered inter system or multi-tiered systems of support um and really early identification of students that need additional support either um you know tier two would be kind of an in small group support they may have the same skill gaps as other students in the class or they may have more of a tier three need where they need more one-on-one support um and this also helps us um identify areas that we may need to do more professional development as a district so I will walk through a little bit um I know there's a lot of questions about what the data is showing and what it means so I will um walk through that but first um these are uh our data beliefs we we um have these at the beginning of all of our um data slides that really um the purpose of showing data is to ask more questions and have robust conversation um and they don't really not a single data point will give us an answer even if we really want an answer um we give the screener three times a year it's fall winter spring uh this is the first year we're mandated um to do specific Windows per read act for our reading screener data um so I'll talk a little bit about um a change in our timeline that we had to make um due to that um just a reminder that um I've talked about this a lot um as we Implement anything new uh especially new career curriculum uh every single maybe not every single but it is a very well documented um situation where we often experience an implementation dip so just to remind everyone that when we uh start something new it takes three full years to implement anything um a curriculum it takes three three full years for both students and teachers to get up to speed on how everything fits together and close gaps that may occur during the transition um so just want to keep that in mind um for math we screen students in K through n we also screen students in 10 through 12 as needed um I'll start with kindergarten and first grade uh in the upper leftand corner you can see the number of students screened over the total number of students that we have in any particular grade level uh any gaps you see there are are um you know it could be a student absence we try to make them up if possible uh it could be a student refusal at the mo in the moment um we try our best to screen every single student um you'll see that we got really close this year in most of our grade levels um in the the thing to keep in mind with these reports is that the horizontal um black line across is on the x axis is indicating the cut point between students that are on track and students that are not on track it's a somewhat arbitrary cut point you can actually change the cut point so I can go in our system and change where that cuto lands um we use the default one suggested by fastbridge um so somewhat arbitrary but that's kind of where you'll see the difference between the pink and the purple color in kindergarten um and first grade which is early math and early reading the purple is all one color it's I will I can go into details if there's questions about why some have three categories and some have four um but any student that is or the percentages that are above that purple line um mean that the student is Gen generally on track per this screener uh and then anything below that line in the pink indicates that there's um possibly some risk that needs to be uh followed up on so here for our math uh kinder Garden you can see that in the fall we had 81% of students on track um on their Readiness to um learn grade level content and then in first grade uh we started the year with 71% um and went up to 83% in the winter um director zush before we get get too far into this I have a question about again reading the colors okay um when you talked about the cut scores and I I'm very familiar with cut scores for the MCA um what on a when you say the cut stack when it's on track what is that comparable to like a proficiency is that 50% proficiency or how does that comp I know we can't compare to MCA standards but how does that compare to what level of proficiency are we talking about to be on track in our district yeah so it's it's not proficiency it's um you know it's a it's foundational so it's screening to indicate whether there's some concern about accessing grade level content um but it's based on National percentiles um the um so the high risk is um students below the 15th percentile so that would be that dark pink um and I also have if you want specific numbers of these are um also wanted to say these are fast Bridge reports these are not things that we've created um so if there's some frustration with how it's labeled um that's how it comes out of the system so the dark pink there is um students that are below that 15th percentile uh in the light pink that is some risk and it's um typically uh between the 15th and 39th percentile and then um on track would be 40 and above um in the subjects where you uh differentiate low risk and on track that cut um there the on track or it's called on track for college pathway is above the 70th percentile so here um anything in the purple is 40th and above and that is considered to be um on track to be ready to learn the content for standards for kindergarten thank you or first grade y any other questions with the way these are set up before we get it's related so that that Benchmark line is at 40% even in the grades two and above where there's four colored okay because I think on the family reports we only have three categories provided so where they're where you're showing four color codings and the older grades um what are those categories like how would you classify them um they're classified and I um I can show you here there's that light purple and dark purple and I did receive your question on that um and I looked into it and um they simply state that the family report is really providing a highle snapshot and they have chosen in their family report to simplify it for families so I I I I understand that that's maybe not simplifying it that we have a different um scale on this report um but basically I think for families um in the family report it basically shows in one category if you're above that cutline they're basically saying you're on track you're good to go um and then below is when there's the specific um categorizations for families so for families anything above that line um the family report will say that the student is on track in that area so on these graphs the dark purple is 40% to what range 9 the light well until the light purple oh 40 um to 70 okay thank you yep I have a question okay and I don't mean to stop you I know you're on kind of on a roll so I apologize for just uh going through here but um so let's say if we just look at screener math K And1 obviously it's going to vary individually and all that but if we look at that first graph uh that breaks down kindergarten in first grade in the fall um there was a percentage that may need help being able to go on to the next part of that school year so they could keep track uh and then you would test them again in the winter and the winter is tested on new material that they should that their learning should have learned or are at to know who needs help to go on to let's say more even more advanced uh math or reading uh as it goes so um and you could just out of curiosity could you have a student that scored very very high in one skill set but then didn't get another skill set and therefore these graphs which are not supposed to be summative are um are averaging them out yeah you I mean I think um I guess similar to the finance um you know learning isn't linear either so sometimes a student will get kind of caught up in a particular skill area that would you know be a problem for a while and then they may not have a problem in other areas I think about math you know you may be really good at algebra and really struggle in Geometry those are not necessarily exactly the same so if you're thinking about foundational skills there might be a student that really understands certain foundational skills but struggle with others um and this is um designed to um look at the you know typical learning trajectory of students and you know a lot of students don't fit in that kind of um linear fashion so um and it also doesn't mean if you're in the pink area that doesn't mean that you can't learn material that might just mean that you need extra support or you need some scaffolds or um teachers may need to help you along in order to access that material so it doesn't necessarily mean mean that a student is not going to learn the material it just means that they may need support in doing that until they understand that foundational skill makes sense thank you go on I guess okay okay so for second and third grade um this is what our um data looks like also these are it says no data to compare on the upper right that always causes confusion um I can basically design these reports to have up to five um different um time periods in which I pull data if you don't max out that five it gives us that no data to compare um it's very annoying but it's uh if I just want to show this year's data um in the two periods then it's um it has that default so I'm sorry that that's confusing but um that's what that means it means that I haven't maxed out the number of time periods that I can when I pull these reports um so again anything above the line um is on track in the upper grades in our reporting system and in the teachers Reporting System they see that differentiation between um that dark purple and light purple on the family report it kind of puts it puts them together and just students being on track EXC me uh the major change from kindergarten 1 and then to second and third kindergarten first um that's early math that is administered one-on-one by a teacher or another adult uh the second and above is all um administered on the iPad and that is uh student uh administered and I know that came up a little bit during our finance and Tech discussion but students take all these assessments on their iPads starting in second grade um this is the data for fourth and fifth grade um you can see it's it's fairly um I would say non-significant change in terms of the percentage of students in the at risk categories here um for grades four and five um now we're getting into Middle School uh six and seven um you see that slight decrease um I know we're going to be talking a lot in detail in a little bit about middle school math um so we can go into more detail there um but we might be experiencing a little bit of an implementation dip although I don't see it's not a lot it's not significant um so but that might be part of the reason we also do tend sometimes to see that dip in the winter generally um and then we have 8th and n9th here and then once we get past 9th grade um the tool is available for any teacher that might have concerns or questions about um foundational skills and they can administer those to any students grades uh 10 and above so then when we move on to reading overall our kindergarten first um that's the aggregate of the early reading um and then the aggregate for a reading um grades 2 through nine is on the right um when we look at kindergarten first grade we see that big uh decline in kindergarten from Fall to winter um for those of you who have been here for a while um we know what that is um which is good uh we looked at the we noticed this dip a couple years ago uh where it kind of brought to our attention maybe there is something that we needed to learn more about what was going on there and we talked to our kindergarten teachers and they said basically that our foundations curriculum our scope and sequence and pacing guide is not aligned to our window for winter fast Bridge um they basically said the winter fast bridge is assessing skills that we are about to deliver in terms of uh our instruction we uh took a number of classrooms and after that next unit we screen students again in kindergarten and noticed that um the scores were night and day they went way way way up so last year what we did is we adjusted our winter screening window to adjust to the pacing of foundations and we saw um really good stability in our data the reason we are back now to the original screening window is due to react requirements so we were given specific um guidelines on when we had to administer our winter fastbridge um so here uh this would be you know something that out of context might look concerning but we know from our studies over the last couple years that this is um a kind of a timing issue with foundations and our winter screening window I think as we talk more about react and understand whether foundations will be staying and if it is how we will be adjusting that to meet um full guidance of the react um we'll revisit this and figure out kind of what our full uh curricular package will look like at that kindergarten level director zush how long have we had foundations in our district you know I know it's been here for a while I was going to say five so we're 5 years into the implementation of that curriculum okay okay and then um now we're into a reading which is uh second and third grade again back to those four categories for here still three categories on the um Family reports um we know with our curricular review that we have some gaps in terms of of our knowledge building curriculum which is the vocabulary and comprehension component um that is not um uh currently aligned with um the requirements of the react so that's something that um as we do our full literacy review we will be looking at um that um vocabulary and comprehension which is really the focus of the um the upper grades once you kind of get past um second or third grade that really is an important component to reading instruction and we have a lot of teachers doing amazing work um without the materials but I think we'll um be in a much better situation having those science of reading materials down the line um so I wanted to talk a little bit about what we did with this data uh we structured our winter early release um to really go over this information and uh guided teams and teachers and schools on how to look at it and how to um develop next steps and I just wanted to share a couple examples of some of the things we heard um as that rolled out um we had a good conversation with a teacher who um has done a lot of work to focus on you know students that have those gaps and really looking at those with low scores and how to improve those scores um and this uh after this professional development she really talked about how um it was important to look at the growth that students were making regardless of the category they fell into um there's a lot of different ways you can look at this fastb data this is just the overall um percentiles but you can also look at students growth and you can look at their growth based on their start score so we want every student to grow regardless of where their start score is so it's uh it's a more nuanced look at data to really understand are we making growth with all students regardless of where they started um and regardless of what category they're in we also had a that did a really nice job looking at their winter fastbridge reading data and looking at how it overlaps with the current Ola training that they're getting through science of read or through the react um that's something that all of our elementary schools are going through now and so that school really looked at the trends in their fastbridge data and how it aligns with what they're seeing in the classroom and then also how they can incorporate the components of their Ola training into what they're seeing in their grassbridge data and then they also talked about action steps or areas that they want to focus on um moving forward based on their data and their Ola training and that was something that teams did individually as teams and they came together as a school and talked about that overall um and then another example as a team noticed um that their students weren't scoring as high as they wanted to on math fact fluency so they took a look at their Bridges materials and noticed that the main areas were that fact fluency is being built is during workplaces um and so they really focused on how to take that workplace implementation to the next level in order to build that fact fluency so that's about it um I know there was a couple other questions as well that came in um but if anyone has any questions about winter fastbid data or how it's been used I will try my best to answer them now I yeah I had sent in one more thank you um I um I know this is like half the data right so we don't have the CBM math and the auto reading scores um if I don't know if these are easily produced reports that you can just spit out but um I would love to see that I know that's like the math facts and the phonics and the the fluency side of the tests right um those are um yeah so a reading and a math and early reading and early math are the ones we typically present because those are um kind of a High Lev measure of overall math and reading the other ones that you mentioned are very specific so CBM reading looks at print concepts phonological awareness phonics and word recognition um autore reading looks at decoding word identification and comprehension um some of them are as simple as producing a report others um like the CBM automaticity for math um it's called a g or a general outcome measure and there's different levels for every grade so it's a matter of um the other thing that a lot of these other um components CBM Auto Reading those are also used in different situations to progress monitor so we may use it for every student in grades so for CBM reading we use that for all students in grades 1 two and three for grades four and above we use that as needed and that's up to the teacher um the teacher's discretion on whether they need to track that um progress so I would say it's very those other um assessments are very specific to instructional um feedback uh and they are um nuanced in the sense that not everyone not all students receive them it's kind of an as needed um and then the some of them change depending on the grade level so it's not that there's there I don't have any like there's not any privacy or reason why we're not presenting them other than I think they have a lot more Nuance to them and they're M they're very specifically designed for instructional feedback um so if that's something that the board overall would like to see moving forward um I can produce those reports it would yeah it would probably triple the number of slides um which I'm happy to do if that's what the board would like to do um but again even more so than these other two than the other two that I presented tonight they're very um specific for instructional feedback so if I understand that like just taking like CVM math which is like a measure of math facts influency Etc like they they get a percentage score right so is it is it that you just they don't Supply that for the students like to be able to Output that by grade the same way or I can do not all students take that or I thought they all did um well they do they do but there's a different version of it for different GR levels so they're all different reports depending on the level um and then some students may take there's levels like one two and three it typically goes by grade level it's not always going to go by grade level um so yeah they're they're feasible to to supply for sure yeah I mean I feel like it would be interesting to see just to kind of see what areas of you know where where we're at grade level wise right I don't know if anyone else cares well this would be to me would be a perfect example of some of things we've been talking about maybe starting to do in the future which is pre-recording these presentations so that we have the information ahead of time and it's a much more high level discussion at the board table instead of taking an hour here we can do it our own you know due diligence ahead of time so um maybe moving forward we can talk about that if we if the board I have that coming up at a study session the possibility of these pre-produce things and and this would be a perfect example of where it might be useful yeah other questions no I would I would just agree that you know we heard during our strategic planning process that one of the highest priorities of our communities was academic excellence and challenging rigorous relevant construction so I do believe that we could take a deeper dive into these scores um I just want to say that for me um I'm very thank you I appreciate your honesty and your transparency in this process I some of these scores are really difficult for me to accept and to look at as a board director who is ultimately responsible for student outcomes in our district um the biggest concern to me obviously there's some things about middle school math that we're going to learn in the next presentation um but the reading scores I mean if a student can't read and I if correct me I'm wrong 30 to 40% of our students here are struggling in that at risk category um that is very challenging to me so I would like to know um two things um I'm wondering that coming out of our strategic planning process of last June July when we knew that academic excellence was part of what was a loud cry from the community were there any changes to um teachers plans smart goals built plans um can you give any examples of what was really done to help to put the focus on academic Excellence um to help support um the Improvement in fastp scores specifically the um so the yeah the um strategic plan was adopted starting July 1st I believe all of the School Improvement plans were built um in direct alignment with the Strategic plan so all the categories that are in the Strategic plan were the categories of the um School Improvement plans School continuous Improvement plans skips um that is the same for the um Department plans so every uh goal setting process in our entire District was from July till a till August September 1st um perfectly aligned with the Strate IC plan and the outcomes um also because of academic Excellence being kind of the one that raised to the top as the key priority that was risen even further to the top so um departments and schools were asked to identify those academic outcomes at the top and then identify areas in the other three three categories how that would then support that academic goal um I think in areas such as reading we are doing extensive work this year to train teachers on um the science of reading um I understand the you know the frustration um but also we can't implement we we also don't have clear guidance you know on on what our options are in terms of implementation and we couldn't Implement reading this year it just wasn't you know we we're implementing reading but we couldn't Implement a new reading curriculum this year um so I think um our teachers are doing some really great work in terms of their professional development that's the focus um we're doing that simultaneously and really deepening the um implementation of our math curriculum we know that that is a big investment that we made um to purchase Bridges it takes three years to implement so while our teachers are you know learning science of reading this year they're in year two of implementation of bridges um it can't all happen at once so I think we're very we've been very strategic on how we're rolling out um the academic Focus areas and um tracking that progress really carefully towards um we're we're tracking implementation really carefully because that is um really the best outcome for um academic Excellence I'll just was go ahead I have one more question but you can go ahead and then I'll follow you just to add a little bit to this to um for so in the fall the skip plans and deip plans are the ones that we reviewed with you they were also in my midyear as an artifact for just your point of reference so you can go back to that and look at those templates to see how we've elevated that front and center reading is clear across the state across the country and I'm I'm remaining cautiously optimistic that with the redact reboot um or whatever it might be called restart reset uh that we might be get closer to some guidance on when we can go ahead and move forward with an approved curriculum the challenge aside from the magnitude and load we're already in a implementation cycle but you know when we land uh what would actually be approved because what we're finding now some of us ourselves included when we purchased some early phonics curriculum that may or may not be reimbursable you know with redak funds and so once we don't want to go out and purchase new curriculum materials until we absolutely know what's going to pass the sniff test with with mde so we're cautiously optimistic that with this rewrite we're going to get more clarity that we can go ahead and then go into the market space and start looking at options for an overall comprehensive um uh literacy adap uh literacy curriculum for our district based in the science of reading thank you that actually tees up to my second question so you know we all felt really good about foundations it's been around for a long time it's an excellent curriculum we're hoping that we don't have to change based on MDA um uh mandates so if it's an excellent curriculum then what is contributing to the declining scores have you been able to identify um what's what's contributing to the scores can you speak to which where you're talking about declining scores um all through our reading scores they're all from Winter to to from s from fall to winter pretty much every single grade was declining and so what is contributing to that is it um I mean I don't know I'm not an educator I can't say so here I'm seeing the kindergarten dropped which we knew was um the timing issue um first grade was up a little bit second grade up third grade even and then fourth you see some decline so again foundations is in that um foundational Reading part of um the science of reading one of the gaps that we have in foundations is phic awareness which is one of the foundational pieces um it has so basically there's I don't the reading rope has I don't I'm thinking off the top of my head around eight components um foundations has a number of them in one of the sides so there's the foundational skills and there's the knowledge building skills foundations hit almost all of them in the foundational skills it has some gaps in terms of pH pheic awareness and we're aware of that um as you go up in grades it's we're lacking in the vocabulary and comprehension components so that's why I think you're seeing a little bit once you get into like that fourth and fifth why we're seeing a little bit of a drop there um but in the lower grades um other than that kindergarten um it's looking around the same as it has been which is um not great cuz it's right above I mean if that cut score is 40% then I mean I'm not trying to paint a terrible picture I'm just saying I would have expected both hands so fundations doesn't carry the comprehensive approach of literacy so it's one aspect of it so until we get that component which will be coming with what will be approved we're we're only doing a portion of the strands that um Jay-Z or Dr zush just mentioned so while we're holding time in slight improvements you know some of our younger grades we need that comprehensive literacy curriculum to round everything out and so we don't supplement with that our our our staff do supplement um materials but not all the materials that we are having and getting trained in are premised in the science of reading so it's going to be a complete shift of what we're seeing across the entire State because everyone is sitting in the same space relative to what their patterns have been and just kind of flat and so that's where this big investment here in our state of Minnesota has been around the react so that we can bolster that across the board so yes I think our staff are bringing in additional supplemental materials where they can um and if I'm bringing in something that might be different than what you're bringing than what you're bringing we don't have this comprehensive literacy curriculum that can hold it all that's rooted in the science of of of reading so that's the the missing element I believe director ainson which is the biggest elephant in the room right now that we're all clamoring for and just wanting to move forward in I appreciate your transparen with that so thank you Dr Thomas and addition to the timing of the test in addition to the timing of the test that's the kindergarten aspect that was we already acknowledge that anomaly but just in general um every grade is subject to the question at hand um which is why there's been this push from districts to get this react where it needs to be so that we can go to the market to get the missing components of our comprehensive literacy curriculum director Johnson uh director zush this kind of uh goes off of director Mason's and some of the questions that I asked as as well with those other slides would that also show once we get science of reading react all those would that show if the future curriculum is having improvements in all of these areas as well because you mentioned some of the phonics things right vocabulary recognition those types of things would that show that what we're choosing is making improvements in all these areas what did I um I would say possibly with the caveat that implementation takes three years so we are yeah so if we're starting with a new curricular resource or we're trying to supplement foundations with a new pheic awareness supplement we may not see that right away because there is um a lot that goes into implementation obviously we would like to see it immediately we all would um but that's not usually the case when you start something new correct yeah I I if I may director Johnson if I can just uh I want to make sure I'm understanding your question because you referenced uh director Mason's question around um some of the fluency comprehension measures that are not unilaterally administered to every student yes so it would not give us a it would give us a view it wouldn't give us the same holistic view because it's not every student at 90s something per aren't taking it so um again I would say those assessments are going to be extremely granular for what I see and maybe what you need and maybe these six others in my class and I'll and I'll track and progress monitor that probably have a lot of conversations with families in that regard unless we choose from a timing standpoint to administer another round of assessment suites with two or three other measures which again now going to become a testing time frame issue out of instructional time that data wouldn't be universally um kind of generalizable because we wouldn't have enough n fact uh end counts in there to say yep it's it's making a difference we can talk about it from an intervention standpoint I think that's where it's best used okay and well D director zush said so there's one of them that only K through three I don't remember which one you said that one they I'll take it but then four five and six it's only as needed so you could use judgment only present the K through three because they all take it yeah can you clarify that sorry so all students do not take Auto Reading they just all take a a uh you want yeah which ones um Auto Reading I have as grades 4 through n and then 10 to 12 as needed I but all students take it right there's not like if you're over 80 some per on one you don't have to take the other like they all take both right the way I understood it um no they um Auto Reading is a component okay I'll I think it will help if I back up a minute um a reading a math early reading early math are um the highlevel components of those subject areas in fastbridge there's what's called um the FastTrack package which basically says if we give students this package of Assessments which includes earlier a and then a combination of some of the other ones that produces a report for our teachers that's called a screening to intervention report and that takes a comprehensive look at all of those combined and provides really specific targeted actionable next steps for teachers so what gets packaged in that fast trck package depends on the subject area and depends on the grade level so it's not that we have CBM for everybody we don't have Auto for everybody because the package of what gets put into those um FastTrack combinations vary by in fact CBM I believe starts in the winter in in one grade level I can't remember off the top of my head Jen's probably in the back leg screaming that first grade thank you um first grade it starts in the winter so we wouldn't even have CBM for fall in first grade so how these packages are designed for reports to provide to teachers for instruction would change over time so these are the ones that we have consistency across grade levels those other ones again I can present them but it would be you would see CBM for first grade in the winter it'd be blank in the fall and we'd have so um again there's nothing that we can't report about those but they are specifically designed to provide that screening to intervention report for teachers in the specific time frame in which they happen so not every student takes Auto not every student takes CBM those are specific skill sets that are um assessed at different points so that teachers have actionable steps on what to do with the information but you're not selecting students it's just the grade isn't taking it at that time or well it's mostly and for students in higher grade levels that are still showing gaps some of these are used as progress monitoring so if a student still needs support in a certain area we know that they need to be um their monit their progress needs to be monitored over the course of you know every week for a six- week targeted intervention some of these measures can also be used as progress monitoring measures so they're not uniformly given because it could be used for a different purpose depending on what the student needs and so in Upper grades um there might be certain assessments that are used specifically just for students who need progress monitoring in that area Dr V um so thank you very much for this um my concern is that the fast bridge data that we have in front of us given everything that you've said about it over time as well as this year is not supposed to be used the way we're actually interpreting it here anyways it is not supposed to be meant to show if PE if if kids are reading um or doing math or whatever it is a teacher instructional tool to try and figure out after new skills are being introduced throughout the year if the students are needing extra help or they're really getting getting it and I would assume that any student can go from 0 to 100 and back to zero again depending on how they learn so I I I question why we are looking at this data and instead of just getting a summi of report from the built committees about where they see and interpret the data because every student is going to be different so we can't really take the averages and students learn it different Paces um so I just question using formative data and a summative report by a whole grade level um is there um perhaps a better way um for for there to be metrics on how to understand sort of like a financial report of where if we're on track to meet the end of the year if we have the resources potentially to do the intervention or or if the if the instructors are learning enough about what they need to adjust in the curriculum now and I and this is just my experience as a parent I can tell you that every grade level seems to have its own little culture too sometimes you have you know classes as a whole that tend to behave a certain way across the whole grade Etc and uh whatever so I I would assume that the instructors would understand how to normalize that um but I don't know how easy it is I mean we we can't say if I'm introducing a new skill and let's say one student doesn't get it at all who normally excels and they happen to increase let's say a purple percentage that doesn't really tell me where they're going to be after a couple more you know uh you know instructional help help happens and then all of a sudden they get it and they jump over the hump and then the spring from what I understand test yet new SK skills um so I guess is there a better way for us to understand and gauge the progress we're making towards that academic Excellence throughout the year so so um I I I would I would share this kind of how we started this evening this is a formative tool that we are reporting to you all for your awareness clearly this is a practitioners tool okay this is not something that our board of education is going to look at to say we're going to make key decisions based upon this this is why this is a report only and that we give this to you as we are receiving it um I will say that the cumulative effect of looking at fastbridge is we want to make sure that we are seeing um percentages of our students being ready to acquire new higher level skills from one window to the next and to a couple of your points uh and Dr zush mentioned this as well there could be a particular unit or a particular course if I'm in secondary algebra versus geometry that I knock it out of the park you know with algebra but maybe geometry gets too abstract for me and I just disconnect and and I go down well that's a conversation that we can look at at the classroom level at the school level or at a grade level Etc to start making some adjustments but as a board again what what I would encourage you all to be looking for are what are the trend lines that we're seeing of skill acquisition ability of our students to acquire new skills and I think to um comments made earlier um about well what our teams doing with that which is part of what we'll talk a little bit about you know with uh a a math update um that's where the real magic begins to happen but I think for us in our transparency to the board into our community we want to show generally at at the aggregate level how our grade level is doing with their ability to acquest with that new skill attainment knowing there will be Peaks and valleys in their Learning Journey because it's not linear as couple of you've mentioned as well to the budget um but that's what I would just encourage you all to be looking at with regards to to this data then our state Benchmark obviously is our MCAS Minnesota comprehension or comprehensive assessment to see what is that summative and so this is an assessment for learning MCAS are more of an assessment of learning and so that's where I think we can begin to look at those Benchmark proficiency measures year-over-year and again a cohort I think you just name named this two or you know one grade band might be a tough grade band that year right so next year's fourth graders compared to this year's fourth graders might be better connected engaged so their scores are higher because you're not necessarily comparing the same cohort you'd have to look at Fourth to fifth um but then your skill levels are different we're assessing higher skill levels so it's not a true Apples to Apples comparison which then goes back to our legislative platform about do we have the right assessment Suites in the state that's truly capturing the learning of our students and there are many who are saying hm I'm not sure we do so so to not belabor this um I think it's important for you all to kind of get this aggregate over overview in this formative like how our students you know acquiring skills throughout the year and then have discussions about our MC which as you all know are a point in time and to Dr zumbach's point will also pick up noise if I'm stressed if I'm hungry if I'm whatever but generally speaking that is our measure until something else changes in in our state so I offer that for your consideration in this dialogue tonight as well as any Futures that we have around fast Bridge there really isn't another tool that we could give to the board other than this is your situational awareness not action um but probably a lot better managed also with some of you when you've asked individual questions or some sitd Downs I know a couple of you had a a huddle as well um so I think that's probably more beneficial in general but we want to make sure that we are sharing where we're at you know with this because I think you all have asked some great questions tonight which is getting to some of the Crux of the issues that we're looking comprehensively of why are students in our district and generally speaking in our state not performing with regard to you know literacy and and MTH skills and and and how are we how are we responding to that and right at the tail end you made the point that I've been thinking about since we discussed earlier this week around this it's the my frustration as a board member is exactly what you're talking about and what Mary was talking about is I I'm I'm dying for an accurate snapshot in time that we can share with our community because my first meeting when I got back on in October was was all about the frustration of the MCAS and how disconnected they are from standards and everything else and do they really paint an accurate picture and the consensus was probably not and it's nobody's fault but that's my frustration as a board member is we don't I find it hard to believe we don't have an accurate um normed assessment that we can take to our community and say this is how our kids are doing that's my frustration and so to your point is there a better way we can get this information I'm I would love that well we have to have something that's that's spend many many hours our teachers do assessing in fact we I've heard a lot of complaints from teachers of we all we do is spend time assessing kids and I'd rather just teach and so um yeah I mean what is the magic answer I mean and and do we need to I mean I personally as a board director I'd like to see an academic update everything month I'd like to take a deeper dive into this I'd like to look at it by school I mean and then it's really not our job to really as a board to understand the why of the implementation of what's going on in the district but I think as a board we have every right to ask what are the solutions that the these teachers or the admin are bringing forth to help support our teachers and our Learners within our district that's what I'm looking for as a board director and that's why I asked the question like what are they doing is it less iPad time is it less seal is it less like what is happening in the classroom that's different than what they were doing last year to help our Learners succeed understand any other comments um no I would just say that I appreciate everything that um director zush has done um obviously learning is not linear doing it monthly is not going to help the situation uh but um um I I would just ask that if we don't have a metric that we actually get um you know the um triumphs and struggles of uh of our Educators so that we know we're allocating the resources for that intervention and also helping those students that are doing well um to continue to do well um and potentially that's not a an factual piece of data we can ever pull to because it's it's too um involved and and contains too many variables especially in the situation that a student or a cohort may be in ETC um but since they talk about this already at the built um and they're doing it at the individual student level that maybe just getting that um together would would be a little bit more informative and also if if we are struggling like you know when the new math standards come in new science standard ards come in things like that if they are struggling if we're doing our job as a board to make sure that they have the help and support that they need um in order to make sure that students are graduating from each grade with the necessary skills well and again as a reminder um in terms of our school resources we have reading interventionists that work at K3 K2 K2 K2 um third fourth and fifth we do not have reading interventionists that is something that teachers have to do during class and while they're managing other things and we do not have math interventionists so from a resource standpoint um just wanted to bring that forward again that kindergarten first and second reading is the only area where we have specifically allocated interventionists so that is another factor that just wanted to put forth um director in Bush Mike with that comment that you just made that there's in uh intervent specialist K through two is it is that something that is necessary for o other grades is that something that the is that something that so um director Bolan this this is a a conversation I've had with many builts in my built Tour on the second half of the year um and again when you take a look at our K2 compared to our intermediate 345 you can see some differences between how fastbridge is uh uh being uh the the skills being acquired in in K2 because we have that early support so I am hearing consistently across many of our schools having that intervention support at other grade levels multiple grade levels would be absolutely critical um so because when I'm thinking like I appreciate all of the information in the reports we've we spent time together during the week like I appreciate all that you've um put into this and the thing that keeps stirring in my mind honestly is um you know kind of goes back to the academic achievement msba conference that you and I attended Dr Thomas um I as a board member I'm thinking how how do what information do I need so that we're off so that we're directing in a way that best supports our students and so while you have spent so much time and I'm so grateful for it that this last sentence that you said is what I need to really what I need to know because how do how do I help how do do we make the decision to make sure resources are are are re put there or you know so I'm thinking of like what do I need for governance um and so uh yeah I just I really appreciate understanding that where our intervention lies and where it may be needed and then I think that's a that's a that's the board discussion right how do we help in this season of where we're in cuts and all of these things you know how are how do we do that and I think that's I feel like maybe where that I want to have further conversation all right if there's nothing else thank you Dr zush and we will uh I'm going to suggest a five minute little recess here thank you director ainson beat me to the punch that if you back here at 8:23 thank you