We are starting. I'd like to call to order the school board uh regular meeting March 18th, 2025. Uh first up is our pledge of allegiance. So, first up is the approval of the agenda. Um, could I get a motion and a second? Second. All right. Moved by Swore, seconded by Martins. Um, any discussion? All right. Um, all in favor say I. And all oppose say nay. Okay. Um, the, um, agenda is approved. Um, first up, we have a public comment. Um, is this is an opportunity to, um, for the public to comment on items. Speakers shall register by completing the public comment signup sheet, state their name, and will have between two and four minutes depending on the number of speakers to speak on a topic. Uh the public comment section of this meeting shall last no longer um than 30 minutes. And um just as a reminder, uh board does not usually respond um in the moment. Um but if they request a response, um the superintendent will um respond. So we do have one person today. Um my name is Miriam Janichek. I'm a parent of kids in the 622 school district. I am here today to request discussion about 622's engagement with and use of MCA assessment data. I spent over two years working at the Minnesota Department of Ed in the statewide assessment division under the direction of Jennifer Dugan. One of my projects as a public engagement specialist was to instruct the public on the purpose of the MCAs and encourage school districts to use the data appropriately. However, the CO 19 pandemic significantly hampered these efforts. I support our statewide standards and assessments and believe in the principles of equity that undergur them. However, one can have too much of a good thing. Minnesota academic standards cover significant breadth and depth of content which doesn't necessarily reflect the realities of how much content kids can digest each school year. There are too many academic standards to write a reasonable length MCA to assess each kid's standards aligned public education. Instead, students answer a very small number of questions compared to the number of questions it would take to demonstrate their knowledge of all relevant standards. Therefore, the MCAs require large groups of students to take the test so that aggregate data can be used to evaluate school districts. MCA results are a reflection of school district curriculum and instructions alignment with Minnesota academic standards. That is all. This is important to understand because every bit of data generated by the statewide assessment is about the district's curriculum and how well the instruction at the district level is teaching a curriculum aligned to Minnesota academic standards. The data is not about individual student learning. It is not about individual teacher efficacy. 622 generates a lot of data that reflects those two things, but MCA data does not. None of us control the legislature or the interpretation of legislation by MDE. However, the school board can set the goal of improving understanding of and actually participation in the MCAs. First, educate 622 families and community on the purpose of the MCAs. With school scores popping up all over Zillow and other easily accessible and searchable websites, we should all be invested in telling an accurate story about our schools using appropriate data. Second, use the district's authority as an independent school district to create an optin culture for individual MCA scores. Students receive individual scores because of legislation, not because professionals in the assessment field think it's a good use of data. ISDs have the responsibility to dis to distribute test scores. So 622 administration is uniquely situated to mitigate inappropriate use by limiting the distribution of scores to only families who feel strongly about seeing results. Third, the school board can prohibit the use of MCA data in the evaluation of individual persons, students, teachers or administrators. Even though MDE provides districts with this drill down data, I cannot emphasize enough that it is not appropriate for individual level use. Finally, return to static SCR uh Scantron testing rather than tablet-based responsive tests. A testing format that selects the next question based on a student's previous answer does not reflect the generalizing purpose of MCA participation. A static test is an available option would save time uh instruction time by not requiring the same practice as a tablet-based assessment and would and would facilitate a much more equitable testing experience. If you have any questions about anything I've said tonight, I'd be happy to answer them. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you. Um next up we have our consent agenda. Um, this consists of routine items that are acted on in a single consolidated motion without board discussion. Board members have the option of pulling items off the consent agenda if they wish to discuss them or consider them individually. Um, does anyone want to pull anything off to discuss? Okay. Um, can I get a motion and a second to approve? All right. Moved by Martin, seconded by Livingston. Um, any uh discussion? All right. All in favor say I. I. And all oppose say nay. All right. The consent agenda is approved. Um, and then we have our reports. So, our student um school board representatives. Hello everyone. Um, I only have a couple updates for today. Uh, you know, spring break, cut out a chunk of that. So, I was in Mexico soaking up the sun. It was wonderful. But we'll get back into school. So, North Drama is having their spring play, which is Peter and the Star Catcher, The Neverland You Never Knew. Um, one of my good friends is, uh, one of the leads, so I'm super excited to see that. Uh the dates are April 3rd through the 5th at 700 p.m. and April 6th at 2:00 p.m. So if you're interested in going, definitely go. They're amazing actors, all that stuff. Um our knowledge bowl hosted um the Norlander Metro Regional knowledge bowl. So that's super cool. I did not know that was happening, but that's awesome. We have a new volleyball girls head coach. Uh her name is Georgia Tilton. Uh so that'll be super exciting for them. We've had the same coach for a long time, so it'll be an adjustment, but I'm sure that she is super awesome. Uh last on this list is support DECA uh with the Deca Burger. So they teamed up with Max. So if you don't know, Max is so good. It's right down the street. and $3 from every burger will fund student meals at their Minneapolis event this March. So, go to Max. Um there there's no date, but that's okay. So, uh other updates, uh we have prom coming up. We have um I'm personally having hosting an event tomorrow at Farmington for my Capitol division student council. So, I'm excited about that. That'll be our like that's like an election type of process for that event. Um but yeah, oh we have coffee house acts going on hosted by NHS and student council together. So that's like a talent show. Uh you can audition. They already happened uh pre-spring break and now it'll be in April that everyone will perform. So that's always super fun. Some even the teachers perform. So, super fun to watch. Super exciting. It's after school. Um, yeah. Any questions? Yeah. So, I just have to for the rest of you say tell you that Cece crossed the red line to help me figure out the scores for the Tartan games because I couldn't text Kaden because he was a little busy on the court playing to ask the scores. So Cece was coming in clutch for me when I'm like I had to leave. What's the score? Find the score. So um I appreciate you um finding a way to tell me what the Tartan scores were cuz that was very I like couldn't find it anywhere and I was like I can't go to bed without knowing. So I appreciate that. Of course. And also Tart for those of you who don't know Tartan basketball did amazing this year. I think they lost their one and only loss in section. So that's so awesome. I wish Kade was here to talk about it, but that's okay. So, yeah, we have a great They have a great basketball team. I just wanted to add one thing, Cece. Okay. Number one, I did try that burger and it's delicious. The Deca burger. Yep. But um I got a text message from some folks involved with boys volleyball and it was the start of the first official Minnesota State High School League boys volleyball ever. So that was exciting and I know I was involved in that and so was Christine and a bunch of other people. So we were excited to Yeah. Well, that's awesome. Yeah. I know we have a pretty good boys team at our school. So yeah, that's great. Thank you, Cece. Um, next up we have um, Superintendent Oh, Assistant Superintendent. Do you want to say anything? No, Christine, I'll turn it over to Trisha to introduce. Good evening, Chair Yang, Superintendent Tuchio Sorio, and directors of the board. It's my pleasure to have several of our elementary leaders here with us this evening to highlight much and all of the remarkable work that's being done with all of our kindergarten through fifth grade students and families. So, please join me in welcoming our three of our elementary leaders here. We have Kenny Newbie who's our principal of Justice Alen Page Elementary. We have Travis Behringer, principal at Cowan Elementary and Sunny Sha who is assistant principal at Eagle Point Elementary. uh Chairperson Yang, Superintendent Tuchio, members of the school board and uh Superintendent's cabinet as well as our student board representatives. Good evening. Thank you for the opportunity to share with you tonight. Um just to double check, am I good on the All right, perfect. Uh our goal here tonight is to provide you with all the highlights of the elementary school focus on our strategic plans for the 2425 school year. Uh we are in also intending to provide enough time to be able to address and follow up any questions that you may have. Uh following our presentation, our team will be sharing the microphone. So we'll jump on and off as we go through. And I'm going to begin with a visual of our school district um strategic plan before starting off with the goal number one which is um academic achievement. So this is something you all recognize and we're going to go pe uh point by point as we move through here. So in the area of academic achievement, all students will successfully meet academic standards. We want to highlight a couple of those areas um especially around the areas of uh literacy and numeracy tonight. So you may have heard over the past two years the the acronym uh CKLA uh which is our our instructional resource stands for uh amplifies the company and stands for core knowledge language arts. So, if you've ever kind of wondered what those uh those letters stand for, that's what it is. Um, very much in line with what our uh speaker spoke uh just a little while ago talking about ways that we assess, right? And is much more than uh our MCAs, but for instance, in the area of CKLA uh in assessments include uh reading comprehension, words reading and isolation, fluency, word recognition, dictation, grammar and morphology, and end of unit assessment. So, those are all built in as part of the work that we do here. Uh, we want to shout out Caitlyn and Emily, our district literacy content coaches who really assist our student I mean our teachers uh and therefore our students. But things like creating slide decks to walk teachers through administering, collecting and analyzing assessment data. Uh, spreadsheets that are created in collaboration with our um research evaluation and assessment department to collect and analyze CKLA assessment data. Um, kindergarten has assessment datas for each skills unit. And then a reminder that the district teachers of reading are engaging in comprehensive literacy training through Minnesota's read act this year. We've begun the third and final cohort for this year. It's been a tremendous undertaking by our teaching and learning department. And at the building level, we appreciate the collaboration and the planning of available staff learning times to make this happen. Uh when we talk about some of those uh stretches into year two, really looked at how do we maximize the professional development and the assessments that are part of this so we know what we're instructing and what their students are are gaining from that instruction. So district professional learning on using literacy assessment data to make decisions and provide remediation support during our win time. Just a reminder that our win time stands for what I need time and it's a 30 minute block that exists for every grade level in every school in grades K through five. And all students receive content that is tailored to their needs during that block. Examples include additional practice time, evidence-based interventions, multilingual uh learner support, special education instruction, advanced academic instruction, and more. uh building professional learning on uh creating and building language, speaking and listening skills and then also using our data to inform our instruction. That's really been a focus of year two in the professional development piece. I'm now going to step over uh to the side and Kenny will take you through some of the math information. All right, thanks Travis. Once again, Kenny Nubbie, the new principal at Justice Island Page Elementary. And before I get into this, just want to say uh we're having such an awesome year at Justice Island Page. I'm so happy to be part of the team. So, thanks for letting me join the team last summer. Moving into math, uh, similar to what Travis covered, there was some of the different math different ways that we evaluated math and our and our growth within math. Some of the different assessments that we use, uh, the another acronym up at the top here is we have MX18, which stands for math expressions, which is the curriculum resource that we are currently using. Some of the assessments that we continue to look at for um to look at both our student growth and and to look at how we're doing as a system include our curriculum based unit assessments within MX18, our daily formative assessments on a daily um basis within the classrooms and then within our FastBridge suites looking at the early math assessments for our young grades and then our AATH assess assessments in the intermediate grades. We've been doing some professional development doing in the area of in the area of math discourse across the district this year as well. Want to give a shout out to Samantha Connor who is our district math coach uh content specialist. Uh when we look at math discourse and the reason the why behind that, one of the reasons is we've we've had a as you may know a tremendous growth in the number of multilingual learners within our district and that continues to rise. This focus on math discourse is providing students with opportunities to have discourse in the area of mathematics. um it's not just about can you calculate but also can you can you ask questions can you explain your thinking can we work collaboratively and we've seen that the work of um this is is making a difference in our classroom so this is uh kind of something we've been sprinkling in throughout the year and math is getting around to all the different schools to work on this professional development and the work that we're doing here is good for all students in our classrooms we also want to highlight some of the work that we're doing with our ML program with the co-eing model that we've implemented. Uh so ML co-eing partnerships have helped to provide strategies to to develop the academic language skills of all students through practice in reading, writing, speaking and listening. Also, our ML teachers provide input to strengthen the equity uh of formative and summitive assessments by providing needed supports for our ML students. These supports include things such as pictures, word banks, graphic organizers, and sentence frames. Teaching techniques include a lot of gestures, panamime and facial expressions. Kids participate actively in their learning with body movements, gestures, and making choices that help students who are still developing their English language proficiency show what we or show what they know. And as we know, u when we continue to implement all these things in our classrooms, these are good for all these strategies and methods are good for all students and it's great to see the work that they're doing collaboratively with the general classroom teachers. And I'll turn it over to Sunny. Perfect. Hi everybody. Um, my name is Senresa Sha, but I go by Miss Sunny at school. And before I start, I just want to say like we have the best job. So, thank you. I just think being able to hang out, work, lead, teach elementary kids is so awesome and fun. So, thank you so much. Um, goal number two of our strategic plan is about so postsecary readiness. Says all students will graduate fully prepared for post-secary success. And we know that we are really key to um building the foundation for them to be able to do that in a successful way. So we also know that none of this even matters if our kids aren't at school, right? So attendance is a major major priority for all of us. We know that Thank you. Um since the pandemic, this has been a huge challenge nationally and so we've made this a huge priority in our district and at each of our elementary schools as well. So some of the things that we're really working on are early communication with families. So reaching out right away. Um many of us in our elementary buildings pushed out materials before school started as welcome home packets about the impact that that is made on our students when they're not at school and how important that is. Some people did we had teachers send postcard cards over the summer, making sure that um students were ready for the first day of school, making sure they were feeling welcomed right away. Some of us sent out videos relaying the impact as well. So, it's about really early communication and then sharing with our families the impact of what happens when students do miss school. We also want to make sure that students are feel like they belong in our schools and they're a really important part of our community. So, when they're not there, it matters. So, reaching out when we do see that kids are absent, even the first day right away in elementary, having teachers and having adults that are close to them reach out right away and say, "We miss you. Is everything okay? What do you mean?" And then the next step is really identifying getting to the core of what is the root cause for their attendance because that varies for every different family and then intervening as we're able to and monitoring progress as we go. On the next slide, you can see that our trimester 1 um efforts paid off a little bit. We want to do more, but we definitely the efforts that we've identified are working. Each of our elementary schools also has um attendance as a key priority in our school improvement plans as well as each of our teachers sets a goal around attendance to make sure that we're really doing that in a comprehensive way. So when we think about goals three and four, the safety and security and the social emotional learning at the elementary level especially, those go hand in hand. um social emotional learning. Some of the uh things that would be uniform across all seven of our elementary schools would be things like a community building circles uh and and a social emotional learning menu uh as you see on the screen there that uh uh teachers have access to that can either progress through them in a systematic way or bring in when needed. uh all school morning meetings or all school meetings uh where the entire school is able to gather together in some way shape or form to feel that collective um u unity in the school and um really being proactive about students supports. Uh it's it's easy to set up situations that they are reactive when something has already happened, but when you can implement a proactive approach, um students feel more comfortable with uh the work that's being done. Positions that work very closely with that are our behavior intervention specialist, social workers, and support staff for sure. This year we continued our work with our school climate survey only we made a big change and the change that we made was previously our school climate survey had been anonymous. Students filled out this information. We took that information and found out okay we've got this percentage of students who are not feeling collected or connected with with school and then we said we hope we know who they are. It would sure feel bad if a student says, "Yeah, I'm going to tell you on this survey that I don't feel connected at school. Okay, it's been a day, it's been a week, it's been a month, and no one's checking in on this." So, we made this adjustment, and um by doing that, it allowed us to follow up specifically with so all of our schools. Once we got that information back, we identified who were our students who were high-risisk based off of the the survey and what was our plan to move forward. One of the things that uh we asked ourselves is, is this a student that we already knew about and already had plans in place or is this something that surprises? We don't like surprises. Um surprises don't feel good at all. It's like, oh my goodness, we didn't know about that this student was feeling this way. The good news was some of those questions can be tricky and when you ask them about a specific question, the answer that they had was very specific. Well, yeah, that one time on the playground when I saw the student fall off the swing, that's not safe. Like, oh, you're you're you're right. You're right. And allowed us to really make some adjustments to that. So in addition to that, we could look at what are the trends that exist in our buildings. What specifically should we target across buildings? What should we add into our times when we gather together as as school? What of the SEAL menu items should we make sure that teachers are using uh in order to address some of the needs that we're finding out of that? So, that was the big piece and something I wanted to mention um because we've done the school climate survey before, but this year it was different and we felt collectively like we really had more actionable items that we as leaders and with our teams could [Music] take over it. So, this is a a PSA from the Weaver Theater Action Team just again showing ways that uh how it looks and baby sounds to be safe at Weaver. Been there a few times. I've never heard this on the playground, but uh apparently it work. So, you got students that are volunteering um to show what it looks like. Um that was a 22 second video on what kindly play looks like on the playground. Careful. Start. Yeah. The next slide is going to be um highlighting some of the work that we've done with our breathing coach Natalyia Gaston. And this is something that's uh been embedded in different levels across our schools uh throughout the district. Um at Justice Silent Page Elementary, we've been working with her for a couple years now. She's come in to do some professional development with our staff about the importance of breathing and how that helps our work. Um she's done some individual classroom um sessions as well modeling this for teachers and teachers continue to use breathing techniques throughout their day um at during transition times to start the morning out um other times of the day just to do a nice reset get kids minded or you know in their mindset ready for learning. And so we just have one of the awesome things about this is she sends out regularly throughout the school year different uh videos of students modeling different breathing techniques uh to all of our schools and we can share that out with teachers and they can use that as they'd like. What's really fun is she does a really good job of having students throughout the district modeling these things and actually coming up with some of the new breathing techniques that they can model. So let's see here. Maybe this one won't work. I guess that video didn't work, but it was just another short 20 second video about um a kids demonstrating what breathing techniques can look like in in our classrooms. you can model for us. Yeah. Um, our schools also partner with a program called PlayWorks. And Playworks um is a an organization that comes in and works with our recess and um behavior staff. Um, and it's really a way to be very intentional about what our students are doing at recess and what skills we can teach them through play at recess. So um we found that at our school it's really helped to build leadership on our recess staff. They they approach recess in a much more intentional way. Um and the other thing that it's done is really so every when the coaches come in they provide they have just tons and tons of games and they will actually do community learning times with teachers where um teachers and classes will take time out of their day to learn games together um which is just really important the importance of play and bringing joy into the classroom so that students again are having opportunities to enjoy each other feel like they belong. Another thing that they really do is teach problem solving. So, the coaches are great at teaching um the junior coaches who are students in our buildings um how to support younger students when they're out at the playground. If a if a disagreement arises during tag or during soccer, how to teach them to work on some of that problem solving together. It's also provided a lot of leadership for our junior coaches. So again, these are fourth and fifth grade students who um have a mentor in the building that's a staff on site and they meet probably once a month and they learn skills. Um they oftentimes it's students who we may not always see in leadership positions, but they really gravitate towards supporting other students. Um and they just shine in these positions. Oh, and we as a district have been recognized as a blue shirt district um for prioritizing play and our collaboration with playworks. All right. So, goal five is the equity and inclusion and this is foundational work for us at the elementary level. Feeling welcomed and included as valuable members of our diverse communities in our schools is a primary focus and embedded in all of our work. The following slides show a list and some visuals of several experiences and are not meant to be all-encompassing of our equity and inclusion work. So, please know it is it is what we do. And these are some examples of what it can look like when it's pulled out separately. So thinking about family engagement events and um the guidance that were provided by the office of educational equity monthly our American Indian education department um you see in the next picture you'll see some of what that looks like um our CKLA unit reviews and additional um resources and continued collaboration and input to improve the the units and then also our cultural liaison. So on the left there you see uh Robin uh storytelling as part of the American Indian storytelling that experience that our students have. Uh the middle one uh that large snake around that child's neck um title one family night. Uh I can say that was not a cow that looks like weaver in the background there. And then the examples of uh multicultural nights again as experiences as part of the work that's happening around the equity inclusion which doesn't happen in instances it happens in all of the work that we do. So with that we want to provide an opportunity to answer any questions that you may have. Um, we've highlighted some of those things that we've been focusing on this year, but if there's anything else that you want to learn more about at the elementary level, we are here to try to help as much as we can. So, ask away. I've chaperowned a couple of events. I have a kiddo in Eagle Point. So, thank you for all the work you do with the age group that you guys have in your buildings. It um it's a lot. So, and I just had a little second grade class. So, thank you so much for your your sentiments that you said, Miss Sunny, of just you you guys love it. You love it to lead. You love to teach. You love to support. So, thank you for what you do. It's very evident walking into uh Eagle Point. But just wanted to share um my experience with some of the stuff that you guys presented on um the social emotional learning and how you guys really take an approach of it isn't one fits all. And so I think that's really important for the student and their families that you guys are really going to come and meet them where they're at and support them in whatever that might look like. And so, um, I've gotten to experience that with my son. So, I just appreciate your guys's efforts and being creative and doing that because I think it really does make a difference to the families. Um, because sometimes they're just at their wits ends and don't know and they want to support their kids. And so I think you all having the subject matter expertise and your amazing coaches behind you to help you with some stuff too, I think um is a really great opportunity for collaboration and just support to the students and the families. So thank you. Um yeah, thank you for the presentation. I think it's very interesting that kids don't necessarily know how to make friends and they need to be taught. I I my uh prek grandson at Weaver, I watched him one day march up to a kid and go, "You're not my friend." which was true, you know, because he didn't know the kid, you know, he was just stating the fact, but it's not the best way to make friends, you know, and and so I, you know, you just can't assume kids know uh, you know, how to be thoughtful, how to be kind, how to make friends, and and really parents, this is their number one thing. They want your their kids beyond just getting through chapter seven of some book. They they want the kid to be a decent human being, a good citizen, and um and have good relationship with others. So, um so I'm I'm glad to see that you have that emphasis on social emotional learning. And um um the superintendent always talks about uh her emphasis on school culture and I I just think it's so important. I mean, you can walk into any one of our schools and within, I don't know, a short period of time, you get a feeling about if things are working. So, um, yeah. So, anyway, do you still have a that buddy system where the fifth grader and the first grader um support each other? Do Okay. Okay. I think that's kind of a uh sometimes these kids can learn from each other, too, you know. So, thanks. and expanding on that into that junior coach area. Yeah. So, some of those students when they put on that purple shirt or the vest or whatever, they become celebrities out on the on the playground area. There's nothing cooler than a fifth grader who wants to engage first graders in a game of tag. Um, and uh that's a really cool thing, right? I also want to thank you for uh the work that you guys do. We know that early childhood is a foundation for lifelong success uh basically. But I wanted to know so these kids, some of the kids that you're working with were preschoolers during the pandemic. How how is that experience working with kids that the Maybe we're not even in preschools yet. And yeah, how is that? I I can go first and I can say it is noticeably different each year we move from the pandemic. This year is different from last year, which was different from the year before. And I think more and more of our students are um are coming with more skills because they're further away from the isolation that occurred during the pandemic. So, that's something that we've noticed. Um, and uh, it feels really good. Yeah, just to add to that, I was just thinking this actually this past week, um, you know, co seems like it was just yesterday, but when we think about it, our current fifth graders were in kindergarten in the spring of 2020. So, we're already getting to that point where a lot of our kids, you know, were just being born or, you know, in those preschool programs, whether it was in the district or in daycarees or whatever. So yeah, it's definitely um it's definitely made an impact, but we are seeing I think I think we're coming out of it. Um I think we all really noticed. Yes, we know that there's a lot of data that shows the how the how far how much ground we lost academically, but just in our buildings and with being with the students, I think we noticed exactly what you were saying, um, Miss Livingston, is the that the lack of kids just being with each other and everything they learn all day long with the help of adults coaching along the way that happens in classrooms all day long. That's what we noticed the first year back is like, oh my gosh, these kids don't know how to make friends. They don't know how to solve problems. they really and so it feels really good to be gaining traction with that. Thanks you guys. um how is letters going and also I was just kind of interested in this slide with ELELL elevation and the kind of spike in ELLL learners and um how long does it take in elementary school before your ELLL learners I mean I know you kind of use a pushin model I think is what Christine said instead of pull out so how long do they remain ELLL like typically I can speak to that too if you like. So yeah, if you don't mind, I'll jump in. Um, just because I've been helping to co-supervise our EL program. We, in fact, we'll bring Ibrahim in one of these days. I was just thinking it'd be good for you guys to hear from him. He's doing a fantastic job. Um, so to be clear, um, for elementary, we've adopted Corola, not letters, as our training for the Red Act. Is that what you were talking about? Oh, yeah. I guess corola corola there was a couple different choices of which readact training you would do. Okay. Yeah. So I wanted to add to that. Um we have had some use of letters in middle school. Um but in early childhood but not in elementary. So these guys here wouldn't have as much experience with the letters. Right. And and not alphabet letters ls the assessment tool. Right. So the Yeah, that that letters it is one of the options. Um, and those of our teachers that had participated in that previously did not do corola which is similar which the same thing only that's every district had a choice of three different training modules to follow. Okay. And we chose corola not letters. Yeah. Yeah. So um when when I mentioned that our third cohort of the readact work so we're ch we're using corola to satisfy the requirement for the readact um and so our summer cohort is completed our winter or fall cohort um just completed and what three four weeks ago our uh spring cohort has up and running and um it's a lot of work um and it's really affirming to the work that we put in last year with doing um the implementation of our CKLA or the uh that comprehensive curriculum piece. So they really go hand inand and it is going well. And then another question was the EL elevation that is a data warehouse that houses um information regarding our ML um student population, our access testing data and so on and so forth. So, it's it's um yeah, it's just a data warehouse and that so that snapshot that you see on that page um is a screenshot from that program and it's just being acknowledged that that's where it came from. Okay. Yeah, I have a follow-up question on that if I could. Uh it that that graph I I couldn't quite understand what it was trying to tell us. It's it's that many students who are in the um ML program. that it was 29 students just a few years ago and now it's 229. Am I reading that right or is I I think from the training if I remember the slide correctly the numbers that they have in the red boxes are just showing the different times that our our overall population has jumped and um I think the the one that was staggering to us was that 79 students and that was just within um I think it was from the beginning of the year to to the midpoint of the year when this was presented to us in December. So, um I don't know the I don't know if this is this is we Okay, so this is just one school's data point. So, that that was just used for yeah, just an example of what that could look like at one school. And just to give you a context, um I just pulled it up in front of me. In the 2122 school year, we had 253 students. Um, [Music] and now we've just enrolled 625 this year alone. We'll get a full comprehensive report for you, but we have our numbers are staggeringly increasing by building. And so, um, we will get a full report and bring Ibrahim in to talk with you about that. Um, our elementary school with the highest ELEL population, and that's English language learners, by the way. We have more recently districtwide started using the term multilingual learner. So we use ML. Um statewide it's still considered EL but we feel like multilingual is a little bit less deficit mindset if you will because multilingual versus you're trying to learn English kind of a thing. So we'll get to a comprehensive um report on how many students we have by grade level. every every student who's in our ML program is also assessed on the um access test which tests their WEDA scores. It's a whole another database that's separate from also their literacy scores. So um we'll bring Ibrahim back and do a better presentation so you can see a little bit more of where we're at with that as a district-wide picture as well. But I will say this explicit instruction in literacy um that comes with the Minnesota Read Act and the Science of Teaching Reading is very very good for our EL students and they're doing really well um in this new model. I just kind of back up again and and echo the the thanks for all the work that you do and um the slides. I kept trying to zoom in and it just kind of goes to show how much data that you have that you look at and the different ways um and again the um attendance efforts are really appreciated and seeing that um improvement is awesome um I don't know it's just it's just everywhere these days and you know to know that they're having hearings hearings at the capital about it um kind of really goes to show how everyone is paying attention to this now. Um I I'm kind of wondering and this is um my son was sitting behind you for a while until he had to leave. Um but he's an ECF so you'll get him soon. Um but he's also working on those sort of breathing techniques and so I was really I was hoping we could see the video. I wanted to know if it was the pretzel or the star and if that's the and it's cool that it sounds like he was going to keep getting that kind of um instruction because whenever I tell him to take deep breaths, he does not want to do that. Um lion's breaths are the ones that work for him. Speaking of notes one sizefits-all. Um and then just on the like academic achievement again. Um it seems like there's different ways to assess and that you aren't looking at MCAs for example as to how your students are doing but you are assessing them through um I think there was a graph about the the more standards uh the visual standards aligned math test and also the I don't know the CK CKLA assessment. So, um, all the different ways that you you are assessing individual students, right? And Oh, absolutely. Um, yeah. Is there can you say a little bit more about that and um how often and then what those results mean if it's just a okay, that's where you are and now everyone's moving on or whether there's that helps decide what they're going to do during wind time or if there's other kind of interventions or anything. It's definitely the second of what you just talked about. Um, very much so. So one of the things that we know um is a uh is a design of the MCA testing is it is um it is data that we get well after the student has left that classroom. So the teacher that proctors the MCA test will not have the data for that group of students. It will come later. So it is it is not something that they can make a an instructional decision upon based off of what they're experiencing with that student in that year's MCA. We very much use that as looking at our um overall curriculum and and achievement um uh because you can't use it as an individual piece um and we also know that there's variations in from year to year of the MCA. So, we rely much more on the day-to-day uh formative assessments, the you know, the give me a thumbs up, you know, if you're totally uh understanding in the middle if you need some more help or know if you want to come to a small group. Those are examples that are much more helpful for a teacher's um uh instructional practice right there. things like uh end of unit assessments for a CKLA really helps even in that one really helps a teacher know okay next time what do I have to what do I want to focus on even or differently or compare with my colleague and say wow you got this result I got this result what did you what did it look like for you what did it look like for me those are the those conversations that happen in those collaborative team experiences um and then and then also there's those um point in time checks, those those um uh universal screeners is what we call them. So fast bridge when we talk about that that's done three times a year. It's done in the fall. It gives us a point uh in time which never excludes the conversation of the teacher. They are part of that that data. So student performs uh it shows this on an uh on a fast bridge classroom performance is showing something different. that classroom teacher has much more uh background knowledge and understanding of that student than that test did. And so we reconciled what's a surprise. Remember I told you before we don't like surprises, you know, like oh my goodness, it showed this. How do we how do we make sure that that um uh becomes a part of that student's experience and we can get them what they need. Anything else? Okay, thank you. Um just one quick follow-up question. all the effort and money and time that's gone into the uh the the new um reading um plan cola the curric there's the curriculum and then there's the training that the state is offering because we did also adopt a a new CQLA was our new literacy curriculum a year and a half ago you might remember two springs ago you were here approving that purchase and then um what followed after that was also the statewide reading training through the Minnesota Read Act Right. And and um and as you know, we're you know, our test scores are in need of improvement. Are when do you think we're we'll see some results as a result of all this time and effort and and um money and um and commitment, you know? I don't know. Any prediction? I think we already are. That's what I was going to say. I mean, I think we already 8:50 tomorrow morning. come on over to walk you over and show you what it looks like. But um you know how then what does the measurements look like, right? And then um when you implement a new program uh you typically have some um call it an implementation gap or dip. One of the things we noticed about our implementation expected dip was our dip was pretty pretty flat for last year which is a good thing. So when you totally redo um the resources the teachers are using the way in which they uh provide that instruction and the students experience in receiving that instruction oftentimes you see a little bit of a downwards before you start moving that way upwards and then I mean you can look at all of the implementation data over time and a lot of times it's s it's summarized down to typically a five years but we're seeing we're seeing differences much quicker than that. Okay. Okay. And any comment about teacher buyin to this? For sure. Huge. Oh yeah. I would say um there was a lot of trepidation, right? Can you come to the microphone, Sunny? Thank you. So um there was a lot of trepidation I think initially. Um some teachers don't you know change is there's a lot of change and so they were like this is more change. I will say that I feel like collectively we are over that hump completely. like um as we've been doing mid-year check-ins with teachers, all of them are saying, "I am so much more confident in my in how this curriculum works. They're seeing the impact on their kids." To be able to go into classrooms across a building and see what it looks like in first grade, second grade, and the through lines is is remarkable. I would invite any of you to come to any of our buildings and see it. It's really impressive um what students are learning. But I think that the teacher buyin, we I feel like we've turned that corner completely. they are they see the impact um and I think they have the confidence and the skill now the the learning curve of the new curriculum is behind us and I think we're well on our way and I would say I you know Tim our union president is right here I'm sure he could tell you the same thing because we have talked we talk a lot about this with our meet and confer with our teacher union and um it's been it's been a really heavy lift but I can't tell you how many times um teachers have stopped and some teachers who you might think Wow, this is going to be a really big change have said they are seeing so much more success in their classrooms like kindergarteners last year really being on benchmark like the whole class or almost the whole class by end of kindergarten. And that trend um I think as long as we keep moving this work forward, it's going to make its way up to, you know, those those MCA testing years which begin in third grade. Not that we measure everything by that, but I think that, you know, um it's going to it's going to take a little time, but we're going to get there. And I want to correct something, too, because I had mentioned about the EL population. Those were just new enrollment kids each year. Um thank you to Andy who pulled it up for me. Um in the last three years, we've gone from 15% to 18% to 20% of our student population is um an multilingual learner, if you say. So, um like I said, we'll do another follow-up more in depth for you on that as well. But um there's some really good work happening in that department. I just have to add um getting the homework sheets home with my kiddo. Um the reading for him has been remarkable. Like it's been really awesome to watch him progress. Um the math is too hard for me. Like I don't know how to use chat GPT. And I am like chat GPT tell me how to solve this. and he's like, "Mom, you can't do that." I'm like, "Don't school me." But it's been really fascinating just to watch my son like absorb it all. And he they went to the cap a couple weeks ago and he was so fascinated by that. And the westward expansion right now is happening and he's like, "Or trailer, blah blah blah." And I'm like, "I like the game." Um, so I just commend your teachers and all of the work happening in your schools because as a parent who's watching it come home for the last three two years for sure. Um, it's been really cool and we just finished up parent teacher conferences a couple weeks ago too. So even hearing how the teachers are talking to parents about like here's where your kid is and and how they're just communicating that with us I think was really awesome too. So it wasn't um it it was they were there, now they're here, or we can get here a little bit this way or that way. And so I just really appreciate how the um curriculum and the changes are being embraced by staff. Thank you. I have one question and then I'll let you go. Um so Sunny, during your part of the presentation, you talked about attendance um and you know, calling and finding the root of why individuals are not um coming to school. Have you found like a theme on why folks aren't coming? Go ahead. Yes. Students experiencing times where they aren't unhoused, it's hard to get to school. Students that are um in transition from one place to another, um it's really hard to get to school. um families who have um not access to the basic things that they would need to um food to feed and to transport students um are um are on our list. I mean that is there's no surprise and we look at our students that are primarily the ones that are um uh attending less than 90% of the days. Uh that is that is a theme that we find throughout our schools. It's really hard, right? And it's not a surprise because we know our families and they express to us what you know. So what things can we do to help? Um those are really hard. Those are really hard and we lean on the resources that our social workers and our community um um sponsors can help us uh uh provide for our families. But that that jumps out right away as soon as you start looking at that data. That's what you see. Thank you. So, I'll end with um I know we as parents joke about um how there's a lot of challenges in the elementary school, but um as my kids have grown out of elementary school, they look back fondly on their their years. Um so, just want to thank you for supporting your teens and um your staff at at the elementary schools and making it a great experience. So, yeah. Thank you. Thank you. There it is. Good morning, district. [Music] All you got to do is just make a butterfly and put it on your chest. When you breathe in, tap tap tap. When you breathe out, tap tap tap. We're going to do this four times. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Breathe out. Last one. Breathe in and out. You want to wave? They're not even I know, right? All right. So, uh, we have Superintendent Tujer with, um, the Superintendent reports. Yes. Just a couple quick items for you. Um, thank you again to our elementary team. We appreciate you visiting us this evening. I got to mention they work so well together. They are so interconnected and I love that. Um, the first item I want to mention real quickly here is just um policy updates. We had a review of um some policies for revision at our study session earlier this month. Um, one of those items has since been removed. Um, we after some discussion realized we didn't necessarily need to make a change to that 614. So, I don't have that on my list for tonight. We're going to stick with the policy as it sits right now. Um, so I'm just going to read through this list. As you remember, whenever we have a policy change in the school district, we need to read a three formal readings of that new policy proposed language. The first of these readings for this batch of policies uh took place on March 4th at our study session. Tonight is the second formal reading of these and this is not a night where we're taking action on these. That would happen at our business meeting in April. Um and so I'm going to read through the list and just um for those watching from home, you can certainly check this all out in our board packet and see what proposed language is changing. Um but for now, I'll read you a summary of that as well. The first batch I'm going to share with you are some policies that have some language changes made to them. Um, and they include the following. Policy 413, harassment and violence. This, um, basically updates the definition of disability to reflect the amended Minnesota law, Minnesota statute 363A.03. The second is policy 512, school sponsored student publications and activities. um it basically removes some language that's potentially at odds with Minnesota statute 121A.80 student journalism and student expression. And so this basically by taking this piece of language out of here actually um hopefully helps to reduce potential confusion when implementing the student journalism law that exists. Policy 519, interviews of students by outside agencies. Um, this basically just up updates our policy to include reference to statutory interview information in article 3A found in Minnesota statute section 260E.22 policy 701 establishment adoption of school district budget. It adds explicit authority for school boards to use reserve funds as needed. Of course, that always existed before. Um this just sort of formalizes that um in some explicit language as well. Policy 721 uniform grant guidance policy regarding federal re revenue sources. This basically um updates the grant guidance equipment definition and small purchase procedure dollar dollar amount. And please note that even though the federal government has increased the dollar cap for small purchases, Minnesota law still keeps that cap limits that cap to $175,000. Um so that that cap isn't changing for us. Um but it does reference um that small procedure dollar purchase dollar amount. It also adds cyber security requirement um which establishes internal controls uh that the school district must implement and that change is reflected in current statutory language. So this this basically aligns us better with our current statutory language with regard to uniform grant guidance policy. Additionally, we have do I need to have those? Oh, we're not voting on these because this is information only. Sorry, I'll keep going. Um the following set of policies have very very minor just grammatical or technical updates that are more formatting and they don't change the content and these include 516 student medications 606 textbook and instructional materials and 606.5 library materials. It just updates correct article numbering and statutory references. Um, policy 615, testing, accommodations, and modifications, just updates a reference in there. And policy 621, literacy, and the read act. It also updates a statutory reference that was in there. Um, and please note that the 2024 Minnesota legislature renumbered the ReadAct statutes. And so that's part of the reason for the statutory update is that the number of the statute that was referenced has changed. So with that, um, I'll take any further questions or comments. Again, this is a second of three formal readings. I have a question about uh policies in general and the testing. I was I was uh last week I was at uh the uh the MSBA um uh day at the capital. So, uh, Nancy and I were at the capital and we attended a hearing where, uh, they were talking about replacing the MCA with, uh, ACT. So, um, so that might might come or might not. So, we're going to change the policies here too, right? Coming basically, Nick, every year we change policies. We do. And you know, it used to be once a year um we'd sort of get this email because we have there's attorneys at the Minnesota School Boards Association that sort of pays attention to um statutory references that exist in general across schoolboard policies and they used to every year send us an email about you know May to kind of update all the changes. Well, this time this lately it's it they kind of come in batches. We tend to get a group of them sent to us like in in June and then when they send them to us, our team digs into them in references to make sure that there's nothing in conflict with what we're recommending to the board in in bringing forward. So, we don't just take what they give us and say, "Here, let's adopt this." We try to look at that and go, "Okay, is this something we agree with and bring it to you for review and all of those pieces?" And uh in recent years, it feels like it's been coming in trickles all year long. You know, we've had some like in June and we might get another batch sent to us in September. And right now we got another batch in late February that we had to jump on too. So it it used to be kind of once a year we'd go through policy changes, but now it's it's whenever um we receive notification of of statutory updates um through Minnesota School Boards Association or and or when we have something fundamentally that we choose to um make a change to because of some things we've have taken upon. For example, we did one at one time student dress code. there was nothing that changed from MSBA didn't send us anything. We were noticing some questions and and conversations happening around how unclear some pieces of that were. So, we made that initiative. You might recall a year or two ago that we brought forward that one. So, sometimes it's because, you know, something triggers us to look at something differently and go, "Wait a minute, this is kind of confusing to people or we notice something that comes up and it's like this isn't quite reflecting." So that's when we might bring to you one that um isn't due to statutory changes and whatnot, but things that we want to see just because as a school district we're looking working on those areas. Okay, great question though. And it's it's confusing because they do kind of come out at random times during the year. Um, you know, as as long as um Charlotte brought up that that hearing that we attended about um um this bill that would change um you know, substitute the ACT for the MCAs. Uh one thing that came out there, there was a lot of discussion about opting out of the of the MCAs. Um, but what I learned and it didn't come up in the hearing and and uh Josh Downey from Minneapolis public schools, I met him in the hall and he was like, "I wonder why they didn't talk about the federal requirement that because there was one committee member who was very verbose about how every single student should take the MCAs without, you know, without opting but but that nobody brought up the fact that apparently there's a a federal law that says you don't have to I mean there's a certain percentage that can opt out. Is that right? Yep. Yeah. Okay. You you need to have 90% um ideally 90% taking it and we've you know in recent years districts all over the place have really seen a dip in that. I will say um we've really been working this year to try to um ramp up and as our public speaker said earlier today really helped families to understand the importance of this as another measure. I mean, um, we've done a few things and I don't know if you want to add anything because I know Andy has worked a little bit on changing with with our department of research evaluation assessment. Um, getting more uh, rescheduling when we take the MCA at secondary in particular. You want to speak a little bit about that? There's been a lot of work going uh, to try to really help increase participation rates just because if we're going to spend the time to offer it, let's try to get as many students taking it. So, and and as we heard earlier, it's not about measuring individual student achievement. It is about measuring cohort achievement and the success of the system, but it's still another data point and I do think that um you know those are all fair questions to be having. Do you want to add anything to that? Sure. Um well I think a number of things that uh we're trying to do is first increase engagement with the ex exams themselves especially at the secondary level you know in terms of students that would whe they choose to opt out or they're there but they're kind of opting out as they're taking these tests. So trying to find meaning for our secondary students and purpose to take these these exams having it connected to their classrooms. So instead of taking it in a gymnasium, they take it with their classroom teacher. Looking at the timing of when we uh take those exams, have they um at least had access to all the standards that they would have in the exam. So it's not about just um what's the most convenient time to test, but really are students the most prepared for the exam? And then all the alignment work that's happened in teaching and learning to have our curriculum aligned to the standards. So that it's really a a celebration of knowledge is really what we we're hoping to have. Mhm. Okay. Okay. And with regard to the issue of whether or not, you know, we've been having these conversations as a school board and within our own leadership as well about that notion of a profile of a graduate, you know, what do you really want a graduate to be able to what skills do you want them to have upon graduation for post-secary readiness? And you know, we've had some very engaging conversations um in recent days and weeks and months um across um school districts across the state have been really looking into more more ways to holistically measure that. I think the ACT for students who do participate in that can be more meaningful. There was a period of time post pandemic where universities were kind of pulling back from using ETSs, but there's there's a a shift back towards, you know, bringing more of that focus back to ACTs for some universities. We're starting to see a little bit of an indication of that. And so just trying to I think anytime students can know where they're at with skills um whichever purpose whichever exam they use to get there. Um, and I think one thing we, you know, to be honest, would love to do someday is maybe consider the pre-ACT. There's a cost with it, but that gives students um earlier than 11th grade, they can take that in 9th grade or 10th grade to give them a sense of how well they might do on that ACT, which can also help guide, you know, our practice sessions and information days and Saturday study sessions or however we want to arrange that. And so, um, that's something that I think we're going to want to, you know, continue this conversation with for sure. Yeah. All right. The only other thing I just wanted to mention is that we're continuing to work through our um you know, our budget uh reduction process. As a reminder, um we are facing an estimated $10 million budget shortfall for the next coming school year. Um for reference, we have about a $240 million overall district budget. So that kind of gives you the context of that. Um we're working through as you've been seeing in our study sessions, we're going turning over every stone to try with a fine tooth comb to first look at where can we find efficiencies. Uh energy efficiencies for one, right? We're moving in a lot of solar panels and we're trying to do different kinds of ways that we might, you know, find savings that don't directly impact classrooms. Um, out of that proposed 10 million, we have identified um just under three million likely coming directly from schools. The rest would come from district-wide resources and services. Um, a lot of what we've been focusing on is how do we get really really granular and and really data driven in building our master schedule. And a a portion of that savings is coming from a direct shifting our middle schools from that 8 over2 schedule to a sixth period day. The eight over two um in many ways is great for kids, but it also teachers then um have less student contact time with students during their day, which means you need to have more teachers to make that schedule work. And so in an in interest of not raising class sizes, which is our goal to not have to raise them, um we're we're having to explore other ways. And that's one of the ways that of that just under three million that we're looking to come from the schools. You know, a good 800,000 of that is just simply the middle school master schedule going back to a sixth period day like we have at at high school. Um and the rest we're trying to get very um as you all know from our our board retreat and our work session, we're trying to get very granular in the way we look at that. And so please look for um another formal update on that at our uh April study session and and then at this business meeting in April, we'll we'll walk through um another update with slides on where we're at with all of those. But we're continuing to kind of work through uh all of the bargaining groups have to be notified of layoffs by certain dates per their contract. Our earliest group is our teacher group and so that's why we had to start with our teachers first. But in order to do that, we had to sort of map out where all the buckets might come from so that we could be able to work through that and we're working through the teacher bidding process right now. Um and so as we work our way through these other um bargaining groups, we'll be we'll be talking about that again at our study session in in a few weeks in April. We'll go into more granular detail again and then we'll do a formal update um at the business meeting in April as well. So, and of course continue to advocate at the legislature to fully fund public education in any way that they can. I know it's tricky though. It's very tricky this time right now. Um, Christine, I know we talked about in our check-in, but do you have an idea on when we'll know about compensatory at the legislature or, you know, we we don't. And just to clarify the the question at hand. So, we know that our compensatory funds, which is a state fund, we receive that based on the number of students qualifying for free and reduced price lunch. Well, when the state went to free meals for everybody, it became trickier to get families to turn in those forms because if you're already getting free meals, unless you see other value in doing so, it's trickier to get those turned in. But we've worked really hard to do that and we've continued to do so. Um, however, the state changed their guidance around how they measure which students are qualifying for free and reduced price lunch. Previously, it was based on those forms that families turn in. And to be clear, even when families turn in that form, they're self-reporting their income. But even then, there's a very strict audit process with that. Um, and so even with, you know, with the federal food dollars that come our way there, you there has to be there's random audits pulled, families get randomly pulled where they have to submit all their paperwork, their pay stubs, and all these pieces. So, there's a lot I I want to be clear that that self-reporting is not just free free, anybody can just sign up. There's a lot of uh accountability with that, too. That being said, the state has moved to a system of direct certification, meaning the only way they're qualifying folks right now is if they are signed up through county resources for um food resources, for food insecurity resources. And what we have noticed is that of the let's say 68% of free and reduced students that we have um a a good number of ours are only coming through the paper forms and not that county services. We're trying to dig into the why behind that. Some of it might be immigration status. If you're not documented in the country, you're not necessarily going to um you're not going to be able to eligible for those pieces. And so, um, one thing to know about our school district is that we are disproportionately impacted, probably more than most, in regard to the difference between the number of our students who are direct certified versus those that we collect forms for. So, in the governor's budget proposal, he's proposed that we actually count um we continue to to grandfather in using the old system and put together a task force for one year that helps the state better figure out a way that we're going to measure uh socioeconomic status of our our families in public schools. Um if the governor's proposal makes its way through, and of course that's got to be carried through, you know, the House and Senate in order to get through to law. Um it's tricky to know when that might be decided. Um if if it doesn't come that way. We are slated to lose about $4.5 million in our compensatory funds for next school year. And so um it's a big deal for us and we've been really trying to spend a lot of time talking to lawmakers about this and and um help people to really understand the issue. But as far as when we'll know, I I could turn to Nancy and ask that question. After all your years in the legislature, it it could happen in the 11th hour. It's probably going to be an issue that pops up through the omnibus bill at the very end for all of the committee hearings that happen. A lot of times, unless they decide as a legislature to pass that through earlier and sign that bill into law before the end of the legislative session, it could be a little while. Is there something you want to add to that? Sure. Um, when uh Charlotte and I were at MSBA day, the uh the leadership in the Senate uh seemed to be um gravitating away from that registration certification to the back to the forms. Yep. And so I went I told Senator Kunish, um all right, but take a look at those forms because what I'm hearing is those forms are not as easy as as one, you know, would think. Um, and she's like, "Well, I thought they were really," and I said, "Take a look, you know, and and she so she told me that she would." So, and the forms wasn't a perfect system either. Yeah. But in our per in our situation here for all of the heavy lifting it takes to help families fill out the forms and understand the forms and all those pieces, we've gotten pretty good at that now. and and so um it's yeah I've been hearing good things uh that there's definitely some support at the legislature for the governor's version of this especially if it in includes you know a year-long study to form a better a better solution. Um and so we've been you know kind of hopefully hoping that that's going to come through somehow but you never know. Right. Right. Right. So, um I mean your your past efforts to have uh um staff, you know, stepping up and calling people and really uh um you know, you telling parents how important it was and all of that, you know, that that we can't not do that. Needs to be um Yeah. because um yeah, it's it's a it's significant and it's important for families to remember too that that form we think of it as a free and reduced lunch, but it's educational benefits form because it also if somebody qualifies for reduced price or free price meals, which of course now it's sort of a moot point because they're free anyway. Um it does also qualify a family for reduced fees for athletics, for graduation, for all the different kinds of things that you might have fees for. So, we try to really encourage families to still fill it out and and it's been working, but um it's definitely very concerning to have that kind of system shift when it's not the the the direct certification system isn't working for us very well right now. Great question. Nancy, can you can you share what like our viewers what they could do to help reach out to our legislators or Oh, well, sure. I mean, you know, It's go to the internet and u and uh find out who your local state senator is, your local representative and and then the members of the of the house education committee and the senate education committee. Absolutely. Um there's a there two separate there's the finance committees and then the policy committees and uh yeah we uh we need to engage and everybody needs to step up and and to be to be clear most of our elected officials if not all in our area have been very supportive of this. Um and so I really encourage people to pay attention too if you've got friends and family who live in a different um residential area with different elected officials. They, you know, we need all the lawmakers in the legislature to be aware of this. And so any connections people might have even outside of our district, please keep making those as well. And if people aren't sure who to call, they can call our office and we'll help you figure it out. And that's all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Um, so we're going to move on to our action items. So, U for finance, uh, Minnesota statute 123B.02 permit school boards to receive for the benefit of the district be the quests, donations or gifts for any proper purpose and apply the same to the purpose designated. In that behalf, the board may act as trustee of any trust created for the benefit of the district and for the benefit of pupils thereof. Therefore, the director of finance recommends the following resolution. Be it resolved by the school board of independent school district number 622 that the school board accept with appreciation the following contributions and permit their use as designated by the donors. Sherry Wallers, 20 pairs of youth gloves for winter items for kids in need. Um Rachel Cavigan, um $500 for North High band activities. Um the Minnesota Vikings, $14,000 for Titan High School girls flag football startup costs. Stillwater Elks Lodge number $179. $1,500 for the North High Robotics Club, Knights of Columbus, $500 for Gladstone Meals on Wheels, and then the memorial donation for Tom Carlson, $2,225 for the North High football and wrestling. And there is a list of the um individual donations for that um on board book. So, um the total fiscal year for 2425 monetary contribution is $62,311. Um could I get a motion and a second? Second. All right. Um moved by Natardi, second by Anderson. Um any discussion. All right. Um all in favor say I. I. And all oppose say nay. All right. Um, that carries. Um, and then next up we have from human resources. Good evening. Thank you. All right. So, tonight I'm bringing forward two resolutions. Um, the first resolution is for medical insurance budget rates for 2526. So, in July 1st, 2025, we will be starting the second year of the district's two-year agreement with Blue Cross Blue Shield for the district's medical insurance administration. The district's insurance committee is made up of members of each bargaining unit and administrators. We have evaluated the utilization data, consulted with the district insurance brokers and considered options regarding the utilization of the district self-insured health fund reserve balance. There's a final recommendation for an overall budget rate increase of 10.3% utilizing $0 from the self-insurance health fund reserve balance. In addition, the insurance committee is also recommending a change in the HSA health plan to increase the deductible from $3,200 for single and $6,400 from family to $3,300 to single and $6,600 to family. This change is needed to maintain the deductible status as required under the IRS regulations. I'm recommending that the following resolution be approved for an overall 10.3% increase to the current budget rates for the July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026 period. Could I get a a motion and a second? Second. All right. Moved by Yanner, seconded by um Livingston. Any discussion? Yeah. A question just to make sure I understand. Um when you said and then zero dollars from the the health reserve, does that mean that we're kind of passing through all of the cost of the increase or is the um correct? So the increase will be passed on to um all policy holders to move forward with and this was discussed by our insurance committee. Nikita sits on it with us as well. Um and we have our representatives from all of our bargaining groups and and the reason for that is that it um that reserve is now not quite it's a separate separate from our regular fund balance. Right? So this is a different one. Um there's and if you keep taking from the reserve every year, which we have done for quite a while, it starts to get down too low where you can't cover the recommendation is to have available like three months of coverage costs right in that reserve. And we're getting closer and closer to that. So the point is about just keeping that reserve where it's at right now. It's certainly something that can be revisited again. But um but that and that recommendation came through the whole committee. Yep. I just I just want to acknowledge that that's a lot and we understand that and wish there was a better system. But thank you for the work of the committee and and to look at all that. Any other discussion? All right. All in favor say I. I. And all oppose say nay. All right. That motion carries. Thank you. And then the second resolution is in regards to the dental insurance budget rate for the 2526 school year as well, calendar year, I'm sorry. So the district determines the budget rates for the self-funded dental plan each year. And again, the district's insurance committee has evaluated the data, consulted with the district insurance brokers, and considered the district's self-insured dental fund reserve balance. The final recommendation is to maintain the current budget rate of $16.30 a month. The recommendation, excuse me, includes utilizing $66,000 of the self- insurance dental fund reserve balance. So, we are recommending that um the resolution is coming to the board for approval for a budget rate maintain to maintain the current rate of $16.30. 30 cents per month for dental insurance for the period of July 1st, 2025 through June 30th, 2026. Okay. Um, could I get a motion and a second for that resolution? Second. Okay. Moved by Swore, seconded by Anderson. Any questions? All right. All in favor say I. I. And all oppose say nay. All right. Um that carries. Thank you. Thank you. Um next up we just have to set the um next school board location and agenda. So we um have the date and time set for April 14 15th work study session, but we need to set the location and the agenda. Um, so I recommend that the April uh 15, 2025 work study session take place in conference room 202 of district 622 education center to start at 6 p.m. and contain the following agenda items. Um, construction update and incoming summer projects, 202526 capital budgets, superintendent check-in and board check-in. And then there will be a close session to immediate immediately follow that. um as well. Um could I get a motion and a second? All right. Was it Was it you, Julia? Okay. Martins's. Um and then Yenner. Um any discussion on this? All right. All in favor say I. I. And all oppose say nay. All right. Um and then now we have board communications. Julia. Um well, as I said, Charlotte and I spent the day at the Capitol um uh for Minnesota School Board Association day at the Capitol and um it was it was interesting. The governor addressed us as well and it's uh it's good to have a governor who was once a teacher. He's very supportive and uh he talked a lot about the cost of um of uh uh what do you call it when people want request information freedom of information requests and how uh that kind of ties up uh offices they have to spend hours and hours and hours and it's expensive and and um so he's supportive of um of uh of addressing that issue in a in a in some legislation. So to make it less expensive for the districts, that's one thing he talked about. Um let's see. Otherwise, it uh it was good to uh uh to talk to the you know the leadership of both parties in the House and the Senate and um I think just kind of showing up um is kind of what the day is all about. So um um yeah, all in all it was a good day and it was a beautiful weather that day by the way. So that helped a lot because uh we had to you know the state office building is under construction. So so it um um so all the uh house of representatives people representatives are in the centennial building which is a little bit of a of a hike. So anyway, we hiked around all day. So it was good though. It was good. We have the most beautiful Capitol building, by the way, in in the United States of America. It is fantastic. So, thank you. And the lead architect on the redesign is one of our 62 parents. Yeah, I'm going second what Nancy said that the day uh the lobby day at the capitol was great. It was so nice to walk in there and see so many uh people. It was standing room only when we first met in the morning and we listened from uh the presenters the the uh like uh Nancy said both the Senate and the uh the House uh finance committees uh were able to talk to us and I I got to talk to uh all my um senators and and well one senator and uh representatives and uh so it was it was really good to uh walk around the building and see all these people who care about education. Um what Yeah, it it felt really good to work in education. Yep. I don't have anything either. So, um just going to future board meeting dates. Uh April 15, 2025 for our work study session. April Oh, and then the close session afterwards. and then April 29, 2025 for the um next business meeting. Um could I get a motion and a second to um close the meeting? Second. Right. Moved by Swar, seconded by Martins. Um meeting adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.