none of those in favor of oh i'm sorry miss candy would you please call involved alt i chester i career i miller i chat thank you next we will start the information portion of our meeting and i'd like to invite ricky roy to join us we will be receiving a report for read for the record welcome down i'm not hearing anything no we're missing sound my do you want us to learn that'd be here thank you um we appreciate um i know uh as part of this report that he always shares how many people participated in read for the record and dr battle i know i saw you participating and there were any other community members that supported grief for the record so we'll look forward to being able to see that video [Music] next i'd like to invite lisa writer executive director of business services and dennis bogamine uh with both of um clinton washington we will be um receiving a report on the product for fy20 dennis and welcome thank you chairwolf board director superintendent battle tonight we have with us robin pickle our 191 director of finance and dennis boukevin our principal at clinton larson allen the firm which conducted our 2019 and 2020 financial audit this summer in fall robin and i are available to respond as needed however at this time i will turn the presentation to dentists while i prepare the slides for viewing thank you lisa thank you everyone for inviting me um i would much prefer to be there in person with you um but the times being that what they are i'm assuming everyone can hear me fine thank you for the head nods um i always like to start by thanking the people who do the heavy lifting with the audit robin and her parents finance team um and lisa of course um i think it's fair to say i did not check with robin before i say this but i think it's fair to say that no one would choose to do an audit virtually um i'm hoping that by the time the audit rolls around again next year that we are back to doing in normal and in persons and it's just not the same experience as doing it in person it's a lot more work it's a lot um a lot more burden i think on the business office staff um and so we would hope to be back to normal so we really appreciate all the extra effort that just had to put into that audit this year um much like my wife who is a schoolteacher um she would much prefer to be in her classroom as well but you you make the best of the situation right and make the best of the situation and that's what they did the business office rose to the challenge and we we really appreciate all the hard work as i said so tonight what we're going to do is review the audit results as lisa said what we do is as you recall um we take the high points from the executive audit summary our executive executive audit summary is our in our opinion the the highlights of what we think um we want to communicate to you as the school board as your auditor we we really want to use the executive audit summary to highlight what we think uh are insightful commentary and things that are timely relevant insightful commentary that you wouldn't get otherwise so hopefully over the years you know lisa always helps us draft you know in that insightful commentary to help you know in terms of making it relevant and easily understood and visually interesting and things like that because we really want to help you tell the story and hopefully you have a good way of communicating that to the public so what we're going to do is have lisa move this slide here and we're going to do is go through the audit results and then the financial results and things like that so to the extent you have questions or things uh i know someone's going to ask you know about questions at the end but to the extent something comes up as far as commentary or questions as we go along i'm perfectly fine if you want to interject those as we go along as well because if something comes into your mind it's more than likely something that has occurred to someone else as well so feel free to do that if you don't mind of course the main thing that you're hiring an auditor to do is to come in and give an opinion on the cafe itself of course the district for years has held it held itself to a much higher standard than you would have to by putting together a comprehensive annual financial report that's an acronym that we call the kafir you submit that to the as both certificate of excellence program through the asbo [Music] foundation we fully expect that this year's submission will once again qualify for the asbo certificate of excellence and financial reporting as it indicates here for purposes of whoever keeps the minutes and always like you to note that we've issued a clean or an un unmodified audit report it's as good of an audit opinion as we are able to give any minnesota school district and it's as good as opinion as you guys are able to get and then because we're required to follow governmental auditing standards we have to give an opinion on what's called yellow book compliance there's two different aspects to that yellow book opinion there's a compliance aspect and an internal control aspect um we had no compliances uh issues to know um you know we've got recommendations around how to deal with some of these things so when you look at that list of existing initiatives what we talked about and what made sense to us is a recommendation to continue doing all of those things and the reason for that is because most of those things are funded and administered by other entities and so when we talked uh last time one of the big goals was you know this idea that we would be leveraging outside funding and other administrative capacity to do as much as we can in burnsville and since that's really what's happening with a lot of these existing initiatives it makes sense to continue to do those we as we looked at that list there weren't any that we felt needed to come off of there necessarily because there's demand for these things and you know they're not requiring new resources to maintain so they're providing good benefit for residents um they're leveraging those other entities and we're not having to add resources to continue to do them so you know for those reasons we thought it made sense for that list to continue to maintain those things where there is an opportunity i think with these and we'll talk about this with the sort of new initiatives is to uh include these in an expanded marketing effort so that what we are doing is making sure that there's greater awareness that all those things that exist out there are there and that we're driving more utilization to those programs for your residents so getting a bigger bang for the buck just by making people aware that they exist so i probably should have put a red stop sign on this one but is this would be an opportunity to talk about those existing initiatives and whether or not that concept makes sense to include uh in the plan on a going forward basis or if there are things that you all saw on that list in your packet that you didn't think we should be continuing to to work on so this would be a good opportunity for feedback from the commission i guess sure can't go ahead guys to me the key is promoting them not taking them off because i'm sure there are lots of people who could utilize what's on that list that they don't know about it and how do we get in touch with the people who need it to make them aware of the program great and building on that i agree with the commissioner's comments in addition to that some of these require a little more coordination like the community development block grants that would be something we would initiate our staff would initiate that'd be interesting to see because those are hugely beneficial at 50 percent discounts on of the base cost that's amazing i wasn't aware of that and that's all about reinvesting in the the burnsville aging housing stock we're right in that sweet spot and the other ones like the loan home improvement ones the home improvement partnership the investment partnership ones those i was reading through those and those are wonderful at face value they look really interesting so there might be some thresholds i would be curious if either one of you are aware are other cities taking advantage of these is our utilization rate equal or higher or lower than some of our other partner cities do you have any feel for that commissioners i would say as far as cdbg goes we have a waiting list so um that would have been my guess yes the need exceeds the funds that are available and so marketing has been very minimal for cdbg and starting in 20 this year the council has put all 100 percent of its cdbg allocation into home rehab uses purposes it used to help fund some youth programs some recreation stuff but they made that change last year with some um just kind of switching who gets funded from what nothing was cut but out of what bucket of money it comes from so also we do not have our own so we have this long-standing relationship with the dakota county cda they are our housing department more or less so they administer the section 8 vouchers they own property they maintain affordable housing in the city they do our cdbg so historically we have done kind of these other regulatory types of things so other cities had are have their own active hras in-house if you look at st louis park you look at brooklyn park you look at other other cities um that jason works very closely with too i'm sure so they have more robust programs because they're administering these programs they have funding that they can leverage on top of their cdbg funds or their own levy that they choose to use for that purpose right because they they are doing that our economic development authority can undertake housing activities but in the past we have chosen not to use it for housing programs because we relied on the cda so that's part of what this discussion is when we think about what we should be doing and doing more and meeting unmet needs and we'll get into the resource piece later but other cities i believe are doing more and have more because they've they've made that a priority or they they are at a different place than we are these are mostly older communities too i would add i don't know if you want to add to that with your experience no i think that's good and some of these this mask thing some of these i'll be glad when we don't have to do this anymore um so yeah so you know i think that that's right i mean i and and on the utilization of some of the other things from minnesota housing or even the cda i mean one of the things we can look at is where is that utilization rate you know folks that want to access minnesota housing dollars don't even need to go through the city they just can go right to them to do that so you know we don't often know but we may have a way to find out about that if they track you know by municipality um you know how much of is is being utilized and that might even be helpful what i wrote down here is a measurement tool as we think about this right are we are we increasing that you know by virtue of our efforts um marketing these programs and i don't know if we can do that but it's something we can look at the point of marketing is no sense and if there's a line already no sense in making it longer just frustrates the the um the citizenship true yeah i know that's a good point other thoughts about that so it sounds like we're kind of going in the direction of maintaining those existing initiatives and marketing kind of um being the big thing that would be a change not a change but an additive i guess i'll call it to that okay and again always feel free to just stop me mr chair yes uh commissioner behind you had a commenter question i can't believe you didn't see me [Laughter] you know this that we're talking about specifically is about home improvement and there's so much here that's overwhelming so for our conversation tonight can we just focus specifically on the ones related to home improvement and there's only about a handful of them it looks like from what i can see um these yes yeah yeah so these are are the programs that are specific for home improvement as opposed to housing development that we have in our comp plan so when we talk about the cda administered so they administer our cdbg program we get a little under 300 000 a year for that the cda also has a home improvement loan program that they use some of their resources they like the city can do tif districts housing tif districts so they have kind of different pots of money so that's one source for their program these are all income qualified so you have to be low to moderate income to qualify for these kind of depending on which program you're applying for same thing with mhfa home rehab loan those are available through multiple vendors i'll say but this cda is our main vendor you know when somebody calls and needs some housing assistance what do you have we refer them to the cda we don't refer them to this bank or this nonprofit we just and that's part of the marketing that we're talking about where we know we can improve on to to give folks more options and to get some of that more of that money actual cost that they were incurring happened with both employee salaries and employee benefits and they got to the end of the year and it failed them miserably and they plunged their district into stature operating debt that did not happen in this case but because you know the it the opposite happened where you ended up better off better off than what you needed to maybe have but i would argue any day of the week that the situation is better in this regard you'd rather come off better than worse off so it can happen both ways like unfortunately because of the amount of time that it happened from when that those situations had happened i couldn't google and go back and find you know the historical reference to to provide but but i know what has happened um and the district isn't that far in terms of how far you know neighboring district wasn't too far away where that it happened but okay next slide um food service fun um and we're gonna look i think there's another slide related to the actual meal service but um significantly impacted uh in terms of the number of meals but the actual outcome itself was actually pretty good in terms of the amount of funding that was available for the meals that were served so you can see that the actual outcome of the fund itself was actually pretty good it's pretty pretty stable in terms of the outcome was actually surprisingly better for for what the outcome was related to kobit 19. and then the outcome for the community service fund was very good and that really had nothing to do as as i understand it related to covert 19 just because as you'll recall the community education program really has made strides in terms of turning that around as you'll recall we've discussed over the years programmatically making some changes to make sure that the program offerings were in line with what people were asking them to provide and then making sure the costs are lined up with what you know the program offerings were generating the revenues and things like that so obviously that had turned around very well um regardless of what happened those last three months whatever of the fiscal year so very good very good turnaround in terms of the community education program so um capital projects funds kind of on a self-sustaining basis doing as intended um and then the debt service fund same thing you know you you levy what you need for debt service requirements and then there's mechanisms and places to make sure you don't accumulate too much fund balance and give that service fund the other funds the internal service funds are working as intended to keep your insurance rates very stable for both dental and health benefits the retirement benefits all those things reflect very good proper planning to keep things you know as a release valve relief valve for the general fund so everything's working as intended so it's all good to see in terms of the general fund historical five-year perspective on the next slide here we go um just kind of looking back you know you'll recall that um as the district's enrollment has declined that the board has had to make those tough decisions and as you'll recall i've told you one of the things i've enjoyed watching over the years is that you haven't been afraid to make those tough decisions that you've had to right size things and you know you've made the tough calls about when to make investments your public has been very supportive of you in terms of you know supporting you with the referendum but you haven't been made you haven't been afraid to make those tough calls as enrollments declined you've made the tough calls with the buildings you've balanced out making decisions with when to reduce fund balance you've had the ability to trust the numbers in terms of the budget to actual outcomes and things like that so it's all been a balancing act and so you know all i can say is just keep that up you know trust the numbers and make keep making those tough judgments that you have to make and um there's not much else you can say you you have good outcomes and you have to continue to to make those tough judgments as they come at you in terms of the enrollment information over the last five years it just reflects that the open enrollment continues to be an impact and but again you've been reacting to it and making decision decisions as you need to to right size things as as needed that's an important element of any school district is right-sizing things as those judgments need to be made the next slide is just a five-year historical perspective on the revenue sources and i was beginning to wonder if i was ever going to see a period of time where i could put together a five-year graph where there were no accounting gimmicks being reflected in the five graph this is the second year in a row where we don't have any accounting gimmicks from the legislature reflected in the graph now i would have bet you last year i would have said um i might get to retirement before we had any accounting gimmicks but now covet 19 might make me a a loser in that bat um because we don't know what the legislature is going to have to do we don't know in terms of you know balancing the state's budget because of the percentage of the state's budget that is education we just don't know you know in terms of how fast the state's budget's going to recover and what they're going to have to do because it's such a um easy way to go as far as withholding you know whether the you know the tax shift or the withholding of aid and things like that so it's going to be interesting to see what they come up with in the next legislative session but um but i thought i think that's interesting i always like to point out that i i generally think that people find it interesting that the true percentage of funding that comes from the state i think people perceive it differently and i realize you know sometimes people would like to say well still tax payer money regardless whether it's coming from the state or the local taxpayer but i think people get my point though is that that whether it's coming from my local pocket out of my real estate taxes that i pay in my home versus the state i mean at that point but i think people understand the point of making is i think they feel it's different than what it really is when it's coming from the state um but anyway um and then the next slide is what i was making the point earlier in terms of the the breakdown of the of the budget variants on the expenditure side so if you really dig into those details you can kind of see it here as far as the 5.4 million or the 4.09 percent the capital of 866 000 of that right off the top is strictly timing differences on capital expenditures and then a million of it or 1.1 million of it is purchased services which is more than likely um timing differences as well related to a lot of it covered 19 things that simply just didn't occur at the time because of the timing of things that didn't occur with all the things that happened with distance learning and whatnot um and i've heard maybe the percentage could be like a 60 40 kind of a split kind of a thing but but who knows but i'm guessing you're going to see when you do the budget update for fiscal 21 the mid-year budget update you're going to get a more detailed breakdown of how much of that you're going to be able to recapture in terms of that budget update and get a better sense for how much of that can be taken back into the budget yeah all right so the next slide is the food service fund meals served and you can see there what i was referencing earlier in terms of the huge drop in the number of meals served but um we're totally related to the impact of colgate 19 but again remarkable in terms of what the balancing act that that the fund was able to do in terms of the the impact on fund balance you know keeping it on such an even keel and balancing out the expenditures with the revenues that were available i realized the the funding for some of the meals with the summer program and whatnot was a little bit higher and stuff like that but i think they did a good job of maintaining a good balance there so um and then we do provide the breakdown of the full price reduced price and free meals there which that did include the breakfast program but it's relatively constant you know with what it had been in prior years the next slide is just looking at expenditures per adm and i know it would be interesting to be able to compare fiscal year 2020 to other districts but again that data which is profiles data won't be published until next year by the department of ads so the apples to apples comparison for 2019 is in the middle column there for burnsville one of the byproducts i think of the implementation of gatsby 84 unfortunately is that it's grossing up some of the numbers in fiscal year 20 unfortunately um i think one of the things is like i think maybe that's like district and school administration and certainly lisa or robin can correct me if i'm wrong but i think that's one of the numbers that got grossed up in fiscal year 20 unfortunately that's one of the numbers you wouldn't choose to have grossed up if you had a choice and i could be wrong but at least isn't that where like flex benefits maybe get grossed up unfortunately um the flex benefits falls into that category yes so both revenue and expenditures increased for these yeah so that's unfortunate um because that's um that's not where you would choose to um you know through no fault of anyone's you know you wouldn't choose to want administration or whatever doctor you're aligned to get grossed out just because you had to report that that way to the department of ed but anyway um but anyways the good news is every district in the state um for comparative purpose next year everyone's going to be reporting it the same way so it'll all be relative you know that all districts are reporting it the same way so that'll be the good news but it kind of sticks out this year when you're the only district reporting it's not an apple stopless comparison that's the only reason i wanted to kind of point it out your district didn't all of a sudden invest in administration or something that's why i wanted to point it out um i think the other one i was going to point out that always kind of jumps at me is operations and maintenance because you have you're kind of your grandfather in or something for ltfm or something right so you're going to always have a higher number on that line because you're allowed to to do things that other districts aren't able to do in that particular category but um anyway but i still think it's still interesting to kind of point some of these things out but all right next slide is just to say thank you for allowing us to to serve the district it's always been a great working relationship that um our audit staff really enjoy working with your your team of people and we really appreciate it so with that that's what we wanted to review with you so i guess i'll turn it back over to you guys great thank you very much dennis um board numbers are there questions or comments dr schatz uh thank you i appreciate the report it's always um really comforting and exciting to know that we are really being so uh fiscally responsible and uh i agree a huge shout out to our business department our accounting department for all the hard work that we do they do that it's um i know our district finances are in really great hands and that is especially in these uncertain times that's a really great place to be and i'm excited to see that uh student accounts uh activity accounts are not mentioned this year [Music] this is i i always appreciate the um the narrative um thanos that you and circle together um it definitely um brings the numbers tonight and and helps to tell the story that that might be hidden in all the numbers so thank you very much thank you [Music] human resources we will be receiving a report about all the moments good evening locked battle members of the board more numbers can hardly contain my excitement as we move in through all of this each november we bring to you an enrollment report that reflects our october 1 student accounts which were mandated to report to the state it provides them with are meals free and reduced students of color especially that frame reduced a number of different things the october one count is a head count it is the actual number of students that we have and and that is in contrast to what we talk about when we talk about average daily memberships or adms or even some of the numbers that roll into our end of year numbers which includes those apms and looks outside of just k12 so the october one count is a head count what we'll do is we'll look at our population the composition of that look back at prior years and look at enrollment trends as a whole our population for october 1st 2020 was 8127 for early education through grade 12. if we look at just our k-12 numbers that is your 76-16 number that we're looking at and this is a breakdown by grade level for elementary all the way up to grade 12. grade 12 is always i'll point this out always a little bit higher as we have seniors who are returning to complete the credits needed to graduate so one of the things that we experience as a result of that is a drop in enrollment after first semester that's just built into the numbers as as a whole also the other thing that i want to point out is our kindergarten enrollment is at 610 students that is about 45 students fewer than what we have been enrolling over the past few years and that's a national trend we're seeing that in our neighboring districts as across the country and families are holding on to their kindergartners and their first school experience that they can for one more year which is pretty much the way we anticipate that the other thing that i want to point out is starting with grade four for purposes of staffing we were keeping track of incoming classes of kindergarten and we're able to build in projections as far as rolling up for staffing purposes starting with grade four i have data that shows that for each grade four grade three grade through grade one we had 660 kindergarteners enroll so if i had 660 kindergarteners enroll by the time they're at fourth grade i've lost 140 of them this is reflected in our open enrollment issue that we will discuss our show in a little bit but each grade level after the students come in i lose on average 30 students per grade each year so again we talked uh briefly about our fall enrollment end-of-year enrollment just i'll point out one of the numbers that we did talk about last spring with our budget was 76.06 that was our end of year enrollment that we were using that didn't include abms that was just k12 for budgeting and staffing purposes we're at 76 16 right now again we're going to see probably a dip of about 50 about 50 seniors typically at the in the first semester so we are probably going to end up somewhere around 75 60 75 70 for an end of year enrollment again just a recap of the numbers this is more budgeting a recap here i'm not going to get into the budgeting unless lisa wants to come back to it we'll speak more about our projected enrollment at a later date when we get into those budget conversations but this is just how the numbers play out here as well opposition of our families i have another chart and a little bit that will break this down a little bit differently but these are the raw numbers over the last again six to seven years we've had five thousand students of color and that number has remained pretty well flat each year 5 000 students the number of students that we are losing is in our white population here over here this is a breakdown of your buildings we will have a little bit more conversation when we start talking about variances as to the breakdown and how it's different from last year but this takes a deeper dive into the specific race and ethnicity groups special education has sat around that 15 percent pretty much across the district again that's a very stable number for us lep our english language learners district david is 19 we expect a higher number at the elementary within their first years of academic language beyond social language by the time students reach secondary we expect them or hope that they are moving forward and moving on frame reduced um frame reduced this year it's an anomaly for us we are down a lot i believe by almost 1200 off top my head as far as of families being served with free reduced meals a lot of that may have to do with the number of students that are enrolled in our virtual academy our online programming for families that aren't coming into the school buildings may not see the need to apply for additional services for free and reduced meals and therefore aren't applied but that is that is an area that we have seen a speed decline in this kind of range of looking at our long-term information i want to point out in 2009-2010 our resident total was just under 10 500 students our residence in 1920 was 10 537. so the pool of students in which we have in the barnsley and savage area is actually slightly increased again where we are losing our numbers as you can see between the residents attending the 9200 to the 7 700. we're we're not retaining them we're not keeping him here and again that i point that back to our kindergarten numbers when our kindergarten class size is stable but we lose students after that point folks are making choices after that point in time you can also see the steep increase over the years by nearly 1600 students attending elsewhere an increase of sixteen hundred students i should say students coming to the district has also increased so over that 10-year mark we were at 503 we're at 5.65 back in 12 13 13 14 we saw a real big increase part of that is because we're one of the first districts to offer um all-day kindergarten without additional charge that is a bubble class and it was nice to be a forefront runner on that one so again typically with most districts you see a usually a balance of students coming in and students exiting the district it's very close and a lot of that's around jobs day care families whatever they're usually you have about the same amount in and out us it's a significantly different whoops sorry breakdown of where our students are attending as far as school choice here charters makes up is a growing portion actually over the last couple of years and other districts are being tuition down the vast majority of our students are going to isd 196 our neighbors to the east with following up with prior lake then bloomington and lakeville are significantly less but more than the other districts miscellaneous could be private schools charter schools and such stable here's a breakdown even more of where the students are going again just to point out when we have the 1920 we do an october one count to where we report to the state but the information is being cleaned up and come compiled from all the districts and that happens all the way through december so when we're looking at our enrollment out and where they go that data is a year behind residents attending non-public schools are private schools about 828. again that number is a little bit higher but fairly stable over the years looking at our ecsc programs voluntary pre-kindergarten and our school readiness programs ecsc is stable a little bit of an increase vpk this year because of much like our kindergarten is down a little bit school readiness because that is a fee based program has steadily seen a decline as well especially with the option of a state funded ppk available to them enrollment over the two years in our elementary buildings again we closed mw savage and soup trail students were redistributed to the other buildings our largest buildings harry bishop in valley william byrne all saw fairly significant increases in their enrollment sky oaks stayed fairly flat vista view bed neil ron pretty stable within their capacity as a whole the challenge this year with building capacity again with covid social spacing fortunately in that case we have virtual academy which helped offset a lot of that high school slight decline eagle rich and inclined both equal rich and nicola we saw significant increases your five year trend again the the the number of students in which we have living within our district are is fairly flat we are losing students by choice open enrollment is by choice i talked briefly earlier that our students of color over the last few years has remained right around 5 000. so just above this line here all down would be the the breakup of your different students and your white students is what is declining overall and special ed fairly stable even with decline in enrollment around 15 percent um lep students also just kind of bumps up somewhere between 16 to 20 percent is fairly stable as well freeing reduced meals again you can kind of see that significant drop here from 4 300 down to 2 900. i said 1200 is close to 1400 students families that are students that have not applied and that was a race around the track for enrollment numbers it was a good race thank you stacy board members any questions comments you might have to wave at me because we have so many people in the uh director miller i suppose yeah i'll um um first a couple of clarifications uh please see if i go back to slide 17 pie chart so um you would just put the gun around being the largest and when you wrapped up with the miscellaneous other 179 i think you said charter pulp private which actually doesn't meant uh franklin heard you wrong but that actually if you go to the table on the next slide the 179 is a standalone category of miscellaneous other uh i don't really need a whole explanation and just curious a couple examples that would fall into that is just any number of because those would be true public schools those would be public schools right if i said that those were part of the private schools that is those are those are where students are reported to other public schools okay uh then on the charter block below i'm just a little curious about aspen academy that seems to have significantly grown in the last five years is there a back story to that and then maybe you're not the way when they completely enter that ah is there a specific population there's some driving force or something going on there that that's something we need to be worried about or address directly or it is located near us it is in ireland yeah okay so it's all right and i thought that's the one it's one on 13 okay so pulling from our savage residence morning okay um so going back up to the uh the the grade level table bar chart table uh slide five i guess and you mentioned the 771 grade 12 is unusually high that that's typical as you have some returning students is that typical of the unusualness of it because i'm showing if you take the population bodies before that running an average of 570 so um you know we're good uh a couple of uh 100 above the average is that is that pretty typical or is it your bounce back usually more like 50 or something yeah you have the students the seniors who are returning for credits also starting in 10th grade 10th 11th grade you have not only the high school you have the alternative high school so you're you're also attract attracting potentially seniors from other districts as well that are in credit recovery but i think it would not be fair to say that the 771 is digging all those outliers those outside impact events it's still off that rank 12 is still a higher population than the following rate is that correct well as far as the student count this year yes but each year it is your 605 number next fall will be probably closer to 700 as well that's that that 1100 and 605 will increase as well yeah i understand that but it won't increase to 77. right yeah i'm probably not that hard well last last year was 768 and last year's 11th grade was 647. so it's very similar yeah okay so i i mean the all right well then the point i was going to make is as we talked sometimes about potentiality of we i know we settled this conversation a few minutes ago but eventually meeting another middle school just i again this chart tends to prove that um you know we're the grades that are coming after the ones that are exiting our high school are down and we have a lot of ground to make up probably even if we were just to automatically stop um open enrollment issues tomorrow uh we still have uh this is natural attrition is going to happen in this system thank there um the last thing i want to this is a comment uh oh point out um go back down to what was it the ethnicity of the open enrollment slide 26. so we see this every year and i think it's just merits again for anybody that is actually listening or watches this later on to point out the fact that um we have an open enrollment problem obviously um the declining number is is in the ethnic the white ethnicity category in fact if you look at the um what they call black not hispanic category and the hispanic categories there there's growth in those categories and if you look then back up to the and you don't have to go to the chart for states but if you go back up and look at the high school ethnicity breakdown you'll notice that it's heavily not heavily it's more white than a lot of our elementary schools so for all the doing bloom that i tend to talk about i do want to point out a little positivity here that as our um the ethnicity ethnic makeup over all of our student population is changing as they grow up through our programming the one the the mix is heavier with the ones that are growing in attendance in our district and not in going out so there would appear to be looking at the numbers and stemming of the bleeding at some point in the future maybe not as often as we would like to see but something if you follow my logic on that that's just a statement for everybody all right i think that's all i have to say thank you director miller director thank you uh thank you stacy um it's always such a interesting important um really important data for not only for us to know for our staff to know but our community at large as well i have a couple questions about the um so one sort of uh maybe they're more general questions but we talked about a couple of times about how this year the numbers are the numbers are what they are and they're um and they're off or off trend or unusual because of the pandemic course and specifically you called out the free reduced lunch numbers and so i guess my question not only maybe about that those numbers and maybe about whatever numbers is overall but how did how does how will this year affect our our funding i guess for next year i mean how is that going to be how's that going to work because it's such an unusual year and even for enrollment as you say it's a nationwide trend that the kindergartners are staying home and so how do maybe two questions one is how does how do we how does it affect funding for next year um from our governmental bodies and also how it does um how to how does the board figure out how you know how to calculate those numbers um you know for funding for internal budgeting purposes for uh for next year two like really simple questions for you um they both sounded like they had a common theme around the money so i'm going to turn it over to lisa oh good morning uh so with regard to funding the impact for the compensatory funding as a result of our numbers for free reduced being down under current law it will be problematic for us there is conversation around that and they've asked for enrollment projections for the november forecast for the legislature so we we know it's on their radar they understand that this is something that's just not isd 191 it's it's statewide um it's indicative of our current environment we're calling i'm sorry i didn't catch the second question fully well it was more about um you know you know we as the board then as we set our coming into budget season we're setting some um setting some budget numbers around our expected enrollment and things like that and i guess this is where stacy i'm gonna loop you back into the conversation about the um how do we figure out you know staffing you know how do we what should we be projecting for enrollment numbers for next year to expect those kindergartners to float back into first grade you know things like that and i'm not you know of course expecting crystal ball you know for you to know what's going to happen but what can we be thinking of to to put a little great work around that well with the assumption that we are going to have a covet free experience next fall could be looking at a number as close as 700 for kindergarten enrollment if you have uh the pandemic still in effect i think you'll be looking at a kindergarten class very close to the 610. i i again i i based that on the fact that our kindergarten class has been fairly stable around 660. so the students that we lost this year are going to age out they're going to have to come back or return to school you know that that opportunity to send them with their five you know or early six that that's going to expire the the second bubble is going to be for those families then if we're not under the covet experience that i would expect them to to jump back in get the kids back into school or get kids to school because that's just what we've experienced in the past so we could swing anywhere from around 610 students to close to 700 for kindergarten next year okay that's very helpful and i think it's really you know great for our community to kind of have and on the top of their heads as well that you know a lot of these numbers budgetary enrollments staffing all of those things um we may not know um what we can do with that until kind of well well into our budget process and well into you know the spring summer issue of next year and so it's um we'll have to of course we'll be doing the best we can but important for our community to remember that um that would very heavily impact um what we're doing in the next few months so thank you stacey and lisa dr valley you wanted to make the comment yes thank you chair alt um director schatz as uh lisa shared there are conversations uh centered around now how to hold us harmless if you look at the demand for our community meals we know that we have food insecurity and so i believe through our legislative action um and so grateful that we have a legislative committee so some of our uh organizations that we're a member of such as amsd have already started the conversation and working with us and other districts um because it would be a reduction in compensatory and based on the community uh need we don't think the numbers are accurate with those that would actually filled out the application we believe the need is there so i would offer one strategy is through a federal as well as state legislative action the whole district's markets thank you very much or provide some relief dolph said it thank you thank you thank you director uh any other questions board members do you know hands up um i'm gonna dovetail uh director sassy just with a question um so when we talk about free and reduced lungs our minds automatically go to the meals that are provided to students what other services do families qualify for when they qualify for the career reduced lunch if i may um so when we know that a family is free to reduce eligible they receive a letter um when they are eligible for free or reduced meals and with that letter they can utilize that letter throughout all of our programming for waivers for fees and so that that's meaningful to individual households and assist them in that process as a district those numbers are oftentimes utilized for funding of title federal funds as well as our compensatory state funds and so they become kind of the base and crux of some of that other additional funding that we receive and it's imperative that um something be acknowledged with regard to the impact of covid on this year for all of the schools in the state of the desert because it's it will be very impactful for for districts and particularly for ours and i would also i agree i completely agree that you know the legislative conversations need to happen at the state and federal level i would also say that um you know we have some local control as well um i know that you guys hear me hear me okay um it looked like i was dropping out um that you know i remember i don't know if it was two or three years ago um there was a concerted push to really encourage and welcome families and just completing that application in all of our buildings and it was very successful in you know identifying you know previously unidentified youth um and making it more of a norm and i would say you know since the the we can influence legislative decisions and we can also um you know add to what we're doing in terms of the conversations that we have with families and letting them know it it helps you know it helps to feed the children and it also um supports our our overall school system and so um you really do need regardless of whether your child is attending well now um at least at secondary it's all virtual but whether you're taking advantage of the free meals there still is a very good reason for for each of our families to complete the application even if it's just to be told no sorry you don't try that's my one plug um with that thank you very much stacy this this is always a really interesting report here with him uh next returning to dr battle and we are going to receive a report about vision 191 thank you chair alt directors of the board um tonight i will share an update about vision uh 191 funds and we'll have aaron tinkelberg start the screen sharing um i love research and it was wonderful to research the history and learn more about the foundation for vision 191 and so tonight we'll go to the presentation purpose so tonight lisa ryder and i will provide an overview of the continuation of vision 191 we'll share background the history of progress areas of focus and we'll give you an update from last year this year and going forward also a process for recommended projects and ideas for continuing the work specifically in product in academics as well as projects so on the next slide we just want to remind everyone this was a graphic that was used in some presentations so vision 191 was a plan to redesign our district to meet the needs of today's students although the referendum was about money for building and technology the changes to our schools were about meeting those needs in two major ways first was ensuring that each student was prepared to succeed in the future we now know this is part of our mission uh future ready and doing so in the context of the whole family and support from our wonderful communities that we serve we have this now in our mission community strong um it was adopted a few years after vid vision 191 was won next slide please so we have to uh recognize that the two referendum questions were very specific um it was much more uh than about buildings office space and technology it actually included elementary middle and high school educational programs to support learning at high levels so those were the primary three areas and so we look back on the referendum questions so there was a question for the community to support funding to realign grades to be in k-5 6-8 and 9-12 repurposing the senior campus which was in our diamond head education center we had the senior students here and then adding classrooms at burnsville high school to accommodate all students in one building 912 and remodeling elementary schools next slide please then we move on to also in question one was to build an activity center efforts for high school for um extracurricular and community activities also to improve security at our schools and to relocate programs and offices to provide a more effective and efficient space and so all of the central offices were spread out through the community and with the referendum they all are housed now primarily in dining head education center moving on to question two there was a request for approval for 2.5 million per year for technology to equip classrooms with resources that will allow teachers and students to personalize learning so you're really getting at that tailoring for each individual student also there has to be as we all know now how much we've learned from coded you have to have ongoing training and support for teachers for using instructional technology in their classrooms um and lastly to ensure district-wide infrastructure meets the needs of the big schools moving on um looking back at the vision 191 journey so i thank board members and members of my team and other staff who gave me history lesson um so february 2015 the voters approved the referendum uh 2016-17 those building improvements were made the consolidation of those central office support programs to diamond head 2017-18 was the launch of the high school pathways the middle school model and the wonderful elementary maker spaces as well one parent of a kindergartner share with me maker spaces that's where the magic happens um 2018-19 uh training for non-licensed staff for the technology and the launch of district-wide projects for our culturally proficient school system cpss next we move on to a update for this year last year we launched the pre-k-12 pathways started at that work and this year is the first year of a three-year plan um last year we involved our community at a community department marnita's table um where we had a lunch and learn what was the after school learn with burnsville high school students and we had a wonderful community wide event where we had seniors two toddlers all come together one night to share their commitment to the children and family as you know our wonderful high school students are so committed to community service um still continue the pack meals from brain power um and then we have a very strong partnership with burnsville chamber that has continued and this year was the first year the vertical education network held its first ever america resource fair and we had to uh really applaud our voters again for the technology levy approval um we were somewhat well poised to respond to covet 19 in comparison to many districts across the state because we had a one-to-one learning device for a high school and middle school students and a two to one for elementary and i say it we're well poised because what we found from covet 19 it did illuminate some inequities and so we did need to um purchase um learning devices for elementary students so we would have a one-to-one living in a instruction in a virtual environment we also found that some of our full employees did not have the tools to work remotely um we also found the inequity of access and so that's why i would say love poised um so without that levy um i think we would have been in dire streets last spring on next slide please um also um wanted to share one more thing about the um if we can go back one more i'm sorry um just the launch of the pre k12 pathways uh wanted to mention that a really big part initially with division 191 there was the hope to backwards map the pathways to elementary and so last year with our launch launch of the pre-k-12 pathways we've been able to start to fulfill that problem and so we are organizing our k-5 schools in four pathways visual and performing arts math design and engineering health well-being being in social emotional and entrepreneurship and full implementation will begin in 2021. um we are redesigning our middle schools to have evidence-based practices um the adoption of common schedules including a win time and specialist schedule that we were unable to do this year due to the social distancing and health protocols we needed so we have been using those specialists for our hybrid department at the high school we are developing developing four new excuse me new pathways advanced manufacturing cyber security criminal justice law enforcement and corrections and education we are on track for our pathways implementation as of september and i and as you know parents and staff are excited to bring support to our advanced learners then and other rigorous curriculum and literacy math for all um with that we can move on to the next slide and i do believe i'm going to turn it over to lisa writer thank you dr battle the process that we've used for recommending projects we had buildings and office space ideas that came about from staff and a group then to review each idea so we basically went to our our leaders in our departments and and buildings and asked for them to seek um concepts and ideas of what it was that you know knowing that the purpose of the review and comment that was approved for these this bond issuance and what it is that was still maybe needed that might have been overlooked typically think of it when you build a home you build your home you get it built but then you start to realize some of the things that might need to be adjusted or fixed and so those are the things that we were kind of let's go back to and what is it that got this kind of thing that made sense so as those ideas came forward we then apply them against the review and comment list to see is it is it applicable here or is it something else we need to address either through ltfm capital means or or other means and so with those that required a group to review those and that was the executive leadership team the review and comment i mentioned it was a report a very long report that gave all the details of what it was we were planning to do with the 65 million dollars that we asked for in the bond issuance and so that review of comment was originally submitted to the commissioner of education minnesota and the purpose of that was for them to to sign off on it essentially approve the fact that this made sense for them and and that we could then go forward with our election and and um with the voters approval then continue on with the with the whole plan so as you see listed on this slide is a number of the various different things that were included in there in summary form um we go to the next slide as of october 29th 2020 um our audit findings is complete that i took a look at what was the cash balance as of october 2nd and so that's what you're seeing here in the bank for this particular fund was 1.9 million dollars so that's there's a little bit of the line between the audit because that's june 30th ending but i wanted you to understand how much is actually in the main guest of october deck engine so that's what we have remaining in our vision 181 funds which is the remaining class from the um bond issuance that was folded on in february 2015. next slide so the the conversation then rolls to you know we have 1.9 million left and um we've basically gone through what i would call two rounds of reviewing what it was that was necessary as we wrapped up at the high school and i mentioned this an analogy to a building a home when we first finished up in in may of 2017 i reported to the board at that time what it was that we knew we still had outstanding projects and there were some major projects at that time um to the tune of about 1.4 million dollars that we needed to address so that was round one and that got taken care of and then um the round two is where we implemented those conversations with principals and department leaders to identify what else and that's where you found things like middle school furniture for example elementary media soft furniture that those that didn't get that um have an opportunity additional security cameras i can't tell you how many times we as we finalize things and then as we shifted um students around and now even as we moved um and closed two buildings the the need for certain cameras in certain positions and such is it's just an ongoing review and so that's continuing so those types of things are what i would consider from two so here we sit now it's um 1.9 million dollars as of october 2nd and what you see before you now are the recommended projects that we have identified for you at this time some of which you will see are actually in process so those are essentially the the first three for sure yes at four actually would be surveillance cameras as well but you also see that there's some ask us next to uh a few of the items those are items that are recommended by our director of operations properties and transportation dave lake who is also in attendance tonight and can speak to any questions or details we may need and then you see that there is some rows are colored by green and some are kind of a rose color right so the the light green is referring to if this weren't a project completed with the funds remaining in the vision 191 dollars then where else could we address those issues and needs and they would the ones that are in green would not be eligible for long-term facility maintenance ltfm and so we would need to look to our general capital funds to make those things happen and the things that you see down in the rose-colored area those are areas that ltfm long-term facility maintenance may be of ability to use those funds but in some cases if it's new you can't do ltfn then so then we have to be looking for federal funds if it's available to us also included on this screen is a link to the review and comment so if you go to the review comment you've got the full book there then on this link but if you go to page 12 that's where it begins to break down exactly the description of what was included in the review and comment initially and uh page 15 tells you kind of the budgets that we laid out so why do we have these funds left over these funds are left over because of a few things one is interest earned all along the way right secondly it's dollars that we didn't spend because we were able to come in under budget and so it's a good problem to have but at the same time that's why they sit here right um and i will say that we've delayed decisions of what to do with this in the past year simply because of the conversations and the decisions that were in process by the board as to which buildings would be closed and so we wanted to make sure we understood that too before we wrapped these phones up so what you see here is a list of recommendations that we believe and in the second column i guess the third column is the one that says rnc reference is the review and comment reference and i'm referring to pages 12 through 15 on a review and comment and under which number or letter do that does do we believe this particular project falls under for eligibility to utilize these funds and with that i believe the next slide is a conclusion to our report that concludes our report thank you both members any comments or questions [Music] all right thank you this is a great review and summary and it's good for our community to have that brief um refresher and the explanation as to why we still have these funds so thank you both very much for pulling this together next we return to dr battle's report on district 191 [Music] 2019 related educational and public health guidance issues [Music] back to that thank you chair-offs and directors of the board tonight staff and i will share information about our summer programming where we piloted key components for our fall month launch for classroom instruction also i will share information related to our two counties data dakota and scott county our dashboard for learning model and decision making process our covet 19 dashboard for our our confirmed covet 19 cases and quarantines for students and staff additionally i will share details about our transition from hybrid to a distance learning model and staff will share plans for activities and athletics first we will have a k-12 alternative learning center summer programming presentation from jason sellers and two very special guests teachers ashley grabbing belongs and i'll turn it over to jason sells thank you dr battle uh bourgeois and uh board directors i'm going to present my i'm gonna share my screen now and present um what should be in your board packet already the first thing i would like to say is that across the state of minnesota the governor is recognized today as community education day without the support of director umhofer and the entire diamond head education community education staff being there throughout the early part of the summer to have parents come in and pick up curriculum kits yield calls and be able to handle registrations so our programming simply would not have gotten off to the great certain that we did secondly and most importantly you should know that none of what we did this summer we had ever done before we were flying the plane and rebuilding the plane as we were flying it uh and i want to give a special shout out to all k-12 staff that participated in working to support our students this summer their dedication and their willingness to improve their technological savviness really made a substantial difference in moving the bar first first and foremost if you take a look at the first slide this is the k12 summer program data this is the high level overview of all programs that we offer this summer through our area learning center in turn in terms of the schedule you'll notice that there was only one change in schedule mde articulated that we were not able to start targeted services that is k7 summer programming until july so you will see in the schedule column that the only change in terms of amount of time that we had to abide by for providing summer program for our community was really in the k-7 summer program so we went from our typical six-week program to a four-week program all other programs remain four weeks in terms of enrolled students you'll notice that there was a little bit of a decline in uh each of our program areas and that was expected but what i will tell you is if you were to compare our numbers to any district around us we more than double and in some cases quadrupled our summer program student enrollment totals compared to districts in europe the third column represents student outcomes i wanted to make sure to give you the comparison between 2019 and 2020 because i want to show that our teachers were able to work with our students and have very similar levels of average increases in math and in literacy according to assessments in the curriculum that we provided in our eighth grade stem program although we weren't able to do field trips and we weren't able to meet in person we still have 85 students that generated 76 credits there will be additional credits that are generated throughout the course of this fall as they complete some of their youth service requirements in terms of our 912 credit recovery program we had about 60 fewer students actually about 50 fewer students and we earned about 194 credits there are currently 200 students that did not finish in the summer program that are in our fall semester credit recovery program with courtney flobeck jackson and they started this past monday so they had the opportunity to finish those credits the demographic slide i wanted to highlight was the case stuff and i think this is particularly important given you know some of the information that had provided forward earlier um our demographics reflect the demographics that you see in those earlier slides for summer please note that in terms of special leg we're right about that 15 and in terms of students of color our numbers very very much replicate the numbers that stacy provided earlier one thing that we do see a very large spike in summer and an after-school targeted services as well is our esl population registering for those programs this summer we had around 11 students that spoke spanish only across four different grade levels we ended up parents were going to disenroll those students from the summer program because they literally were sitting there we got them on the zoom classes they couldn't understand what was being taught or said but we were able to hire one of our district teachers who actually speak spanish and she taught the class in spanish to those students and families to stay in front of school weekly attendance data i felt like this was really important to include we wanted to know so of the people that are going to enroll in registering the summer program how many of them are actually going to show up we built a very specific summer school war room and my administrative team were housed out of the abe offices where i live in the summer and they were assigned to different grade levels that administrative team supported teachers and students by being the ones that contacted parents when students hadn't logged in teachers were only responsible we took care of all the administrative duties make sure that students showed up and if you take a look at the numbers what you will see is that we had a very high level of active students in every week that attended across the grade levels so that was something that we were very surprised to see but they told us that we were being successful in how we were supporting teachers and students and families and giving them class we do always do very significant surveys of our summer school and our after school programs we not only do student surveys we do parent surveys and we do staff surveys i've included the case study program's new survey feedback here these are just a couple of the comments one of my favorite comments was the student that indicated that you know i really like them my teacher helped me because she helps me not quit when it's hard and dr battle attended a class or two this summer and she can tell you that teachers really had those high expectations really went out of their way to support them the other thing we focus on and after school and summer is teaching math and uh ela literacy through science through experiments through hands-on standards align engaging curriculum in terms of the parent survey feedback we received a lot of really positive feedback we received almost no negative feedback and i think this was in large part because of that war room that we established around our administrative team supporting families and students with any questions they needed i can't tell you how many hot spots and chromebooks we delivered to people's homes showed them how to use them made sure that the parents understood and the students understood so that they could hop on make the 10 classes i also want to make sure that rachel burton and the technology team without their assistance this summer building that plane as we were flying it we would have never had some of these results one of the pieces of feedback i actually know the parent who gave that last comment there although this is an anonymous survey they actually did type their name into the survey but i can tell you that this parent does have high expectations of our school of our staff and of their children and so i was really pleased to receive impact you can see from the summer program survey feedback from students that most students felt like they had a really good experience did you like summer school um a very high percentage of students uh indicated that they did uh how much do you how much do you think you learned an even higher percentage in a kid that they learned a lot and did the teacher make things fun for you that's really what we try to do in the summer we'll try to make learning fun because we can try some out of the box things in terms of the parent feedback we had about 60 parents provide feedback the feedback was overwhelmingly positive anything uh higher anything as a three or higher is something that is quite positive and we feel like we're living in the fours and fives and based upon the fact that honestly we didn't know how it all was going to go this summer getting those types of responses from parents i can tell you our team met and reviewed every single response from students parents and staff and we were overwhelmed with that we also did include a question around parents why did you register and there was a large number of parents that registered because they felt like in the spring how work was pushed out to them because that's how we were able to do it in the spring they really wanted more time with the teacher they wanted more time students wanted to see their classmates and they were able to do that in the summer and with the support of the season department we were able to help pilot some of these features and sort of be the guinea pig so that in the fall they could take some of what we did and learn to help implement learning uh even better for students in terms of the sixth seventh uh sixth seventh grade student summer feedback that's here did you like the stem science class again we continue that stem science team through middle school students overwhelmingly um like that approach we did learn four main lessons um and these lessons were obviously shared with the executive leadership team and i want to thank personally the executive leadership team um we didn't know if we were going to have summer school the timetable that was given was very short and mde didn't give us much time to get ready for it and the parameters and constraints around how we can offer it were um we're challenging and so we learned first that making sure that we have a consistent schedule for students to show up uh that was important that that had to be sort of you know sort of carved carbon stone the second is we had a massive effort with my team to create the curriculum order all the materials put all of the materials into one bag including chromebooks and do multiple pickup opportunities for students to pick up the necessary students there are necessary materials to learn this included simple things like pencils and paper but also include all materials and resources science experiments the third piece um is that our curriculum team uh of 191 staff develop different grade level hands-on science-based curriculum we did that because we wanted students to be active in their learning we wanted them to advocate for themselves and that was something that students and parents alike both call out in the surveys and finally rachel horton and her team supporting us in supporting the families to make sure they had the materials that they needed in order to access plastic we're very fortunate tonight there are two teachers who are joining us this evening ashley graving from vista view elementary school she was a kindergarten teacher in summer and leanne blondes who's a nicolette middle school special education teacher was a sixth grade teacher in the program i'm going to i'm going to stop sharing my screen so that everybody can see them and then they can share with you what they feel their experience and steve's experience will be hi i am ashley grieving this year i am teaching kindergarten at vista view elementary last year i was kindergarten at sioux trail and before that i was at sky oaks in fourth and second grade so i've kind of been all over the place um thank you for inviting me tonight i don't normally teach summer school in fact i haven't taught it since 2006. so it's been a while but i decided to teach it this summer for many reasons but the one that intrigued me the most was that it would be virtual i could speak for a long time about how awesome summer school was but i'll try to make it somewhat short for you first of all jason had a team of teachers who developed the summer school curriculum which made planning for summer school a breeze he also had staff to help contact and communicate with parents and families when it was necessary secondly i was placed as a teacher for 15 kindergartners going into first grade 13 of those were students i knew from sioux trail which made building relationships and connections with them virtually much easier thirdly each student received a curriculum pit which had everything in it that my summer school students needed including paper packets learning worksheets and other activities play-doh glue sticks pencils and even freezies for a project i was so nervous about teaching kindergartners online the distance teaching and learning we did in the spring was okay but many of us worried that we weren't really meeting the needs of our students the prospect of teaching online was intriguing but i worried that i wouldn't be able to keep my kindergartners engaged in learning online for two hours every day i quickly learned though that teaching online could be very similar to teaching in person for example just like in the classroom students thrive on regimes we had morning meetings each day we played learning games and we created and followed online routines and schedules that made our session successful i found that classroom management is just as important online as it is in person i was still able to use things like my call and response capiche capache and counting backwards five four three two one zero to refocus my students attention lastly while in person relationships and connections with students are really important i learned that you can still create though and maintain those relationships while teaching virtually when a student shares online they get the teachers full attention without the typical interruptions that happen in a classroom one thing that dr val didn't mention when she talked about visiting my classroom was that one of my students spilled her freezing when she was on her way to put it in the freezer for our liquids and solids project she was crying and upset and even though i couldn't physically hug her i was able to use my online relationship with her to help her calm down and help her determine that we could work together with her parents to figure out a solution for the freezing most importantly i learned that when we teach online our students and their families are inviting us into their homes which creates even stronger school-to-home relationships i really enjoyed teaching summer school it was planned out well it was organized and it was so eye-opening to have the experience that well virtual learning and teaching isn't what any of us want to do it can be done well and learning can happen and be very effective so dr battle and the school board and jason sellers thank you for inviting me to share my experience here tonight okay let's see [Music] all right is it my turn yes leanne we can hear you but we can't see you oh i turned on the video oh boy were you able to see me earlier yes but we can hear you if you want to go well i will go maybe the video is lagging just a little bit um okay i'm on a landline so i thought it would work a little bit better all right so thank you everybody for letting me um share tonight this is this um was my fifth fourth summer doing summer school my second year under jason's leadership and i have to tell you that every year i've had a great experience but um the reason why i wanted to do summer school this past year was to really get good at being a digital teacher during the school year i'm a special ed teacher so i have a lot of different responsibilities besides just teaching and in the summer i have the opportunity to to do a lot more teaching and i really really love that but what worked really well this past summer um and this just echoes a lot of what has already been shared is the the leadership of jason and all the administration um before we even got started jason was very open and he pulled the teachers together he trusted us to give input on a structure and asked us what would work well and then i had the opportunity to develop my curriculum so at the middle school level um was a little bit different it was my second year i had the same curriculum um i jumped up a year with the age group but we all put our heads together to figure out which kids we had the year before to make sure they had different curriculum and then we developed curriculum that was very meaningful to the kids and also very interesting so there is a lot of room there um what was fantastic is i had to have all of my summer pre-arranged pre-planned put together a syllabus and then every family came and picked up hard copies so the kids had the opportunity to do paper copies of work or the work online and i put everything on schoology so they had both um and we were able to do that together but the the great part about that for me is that i had to plan in advance and that was fantastic um it was mentioned that we had a lot of administrative support every single period i had somebody in class with me double checking my attendance i put it in the computer but then those phone calls home live during class letting parents know that their child was not logged in was fantastic so i didn't have to worry about that it was it was being done for me plus i had that other adult presence in the class and it helped to provide more community it was just it was really really wonderful with the class structure i was able to put together curriculum that was very functional for the students and interesting but functional being that they were they knew up front that the things that they were going to do in the month that we were together were projects that they could take with them and use in the future so we did we did a research project we wrote an essay we did a lot of different activities and all this was their own work that they could use for future projects and other classes and i think that meant a lot to them a lot of the kids really put in the time um we met online every day so we talked about the synchronous instruction that was key these you know we were all uh starving for a community um last spring and so when the opportunity came up in the summer and i think that the kids i had were old enough that they knew that they weren't they were going to get credit for being there for just being there but they actually put in the effort and there were kids doing work outside of class and had the most amazing projects that they shared and essays that they wrote and research that they did outside of our time together even though as long as they showed up and they were trying they knew that they would be successful so this meeting online was was critical to building community but then building that community inspired the kids to work harder to learn more to build their skills and build their knowledge um something that was very helpful for me as a teacher is we were not given uh parameters or requirements of what we had to do for our schoology pages um i was a little nervous about that but first i wanted to become really really proficient at schoology and i thought this is my perfect opportunity and i'm going to invest all this time so i really have a good handle on it um and then i wasn't required to load up a whole lot of information for these kids we did all of the assignments together but i was able to keep the pages very simple and easy to follow so the kids had an opportunity to be successful and know that they could be successful wasn't overwhelming i work with sixth graders at nicolette and it's this is sixth grade is very hard and they're moving from um you know they're using schoology for the first time going from seaside to schoology and most of these kids i walk around the classrooms that i co-teach in and they don't even understand where to check their missing assignments or their grades and there's so many amazing elaborate videos and projects and things on all of these schoology pages and the kids it's just a little bit overwhelming so what i really tried to do is keep it simple in the summer and interesting but not overwhelming and i think because of that the students really felt like they could be successful um let's see what else oh the relationships and expectations that i had with the students i think what was key is that the students knew that i wanted them to be successful and as long as they were there and trying um they were going to find success um and i i feel very very confident it's saying that every single one of the students i work with felt that way by by the time that our summer school session was over um when i put assignments up i allowed them to have choices of what they could do different opportunities to do and they could do things on paper or online they did it on paper they could send me a picture or just hold it up to the screen i also really wanted the kids to present and work in groups and they had those opportunities um uh and i think that it you know everybody's at a different level so i had students that didn't want to stop talking and they had their cameras on all the time and that were sharing all the time and then there were kids that were terrified to turn their cameras on so something that i did was i would give them um extra extra credit or forgive some assignments if they turn their cameras on to participate um and that seemed to help a lot and they had a lot of different opportunities in how they were working um for each of these assignments and then i remember one boy and i still to this day i don't know what he looks like because he just was told me he sent me an email and we ended up talking after um the class on zoom he was terrified to turn on his camera he wanted to percent present but it was just a huge barrier for him so we worked together and he shared his stuff and i read what he wrote and i think by the end of the summer he felt like man he just got another step closer to feeling confident on camera in front of others and um yeah i just i can't say thank you enough for the opportunity to teach to be part of this i feel like the summer was a success because um there was just so much support and everybody felt like there was an opportunity to get something out of it and then to be together so that synchronous learning was just was just huge and wonderful uh the last slide of the presentation i won't present because i think it's probably a little bit uh more worthwhile to allow um board members to potentially ask questions of the two teachers i would just like to say two things uh to to end the first is um i have an amazing team and they come back every summer and every summer we have gotten better and better um you know last summer we had around 1500 students in our program this summer we had around 1100 people that's saying something and it was a different type of summer program but i think if you were to look in detail at the student surveys the staff surveys and parent surveys you're going to see a lot of really great positivity the second thing is um uh just like every single uh other summer since i've been here we were able to generate more revenue than cost uh so none of our programs uh k-12 across the district um with that i'd just like to thank the executive leadership team for being able to be here for all directors so chair all i have several more topics for my covet 19 report so at this time if the board would like to ask jason or our teacher some questions and then we'll go on i think that makes sense yeah i see director chester's here yeah thank you chair oh i it's more just a note of thanks um my daughter participated in the summer program this year uh in summer school she had a really good time um the first thing was a bit overwhelming because she was going into second grade and having to go from um [Music] to a chromebook and go on to zoom and do synchronous learning but i think the model that was set up for this summer really helped prepare her and other students in elementary school for what was going to be expected in the hybrid model for distance learning because she knew you know she was an expert in zoom by the time you know after the end of the four weeks and and had a had a wonderful time she loved the the not only having the chromebook but the so here's what's gonna happen in week one packet here's the packet for week two let's look at what's coming up for week three that she really enjoyed um being a part of that and i enjoyed having her participate in it and in addition another big thanks needs to go out to the many teachers in our community ed programs for project kids in the child care settings because my daughter was also in the summer project kids program and to have the benefit of staff helping guide her on her days there while during in summer school was a huge um uh a huge benefit and complimented um you know for as me as a parent you know being able to vote for when she was home on other days so thank you it was a wonderful wonderful opportunity and you know it didn't feel like you were building the plane while you were flying it so thank you director chester uh director can i quickly just piggyback off of what she said um as a teacher the project kids staff were amazing in helping out the students that were project kids they found quiet spaces for them they made sure that their chromebooks were working and they had headphones and everything that they needed and if they forgot something at home they quickly found paper or something that they could use instead so i just wanted to pick you back off of that and say project kids was fantastic in helping out on their side of it i raised my hands [Music] also um thank you i have two daughters too one of them is sitting next to me in this office and they both are in project kids even now and they are going to sue trail on mondays and tuesdays and they're giving them on on thursday and friday and i just have to echo all of that they've had so much help and it's been um so rewarding they were also in summer school so they were doing their classes while i was teaching and i can attest to the numbers going up from parent-teacher conferences that we just had last week um my little daughter next to me she went from being at about a 30 percent in math on the national scale up to 65 and that means a big jump both of them are making a lot of progress in their reading but i mean that was fantastic to hear because i you know i'm on one end of it as a teacher and then i i get to hear the other side as a parent so both everything that happened for summer school and project kids has been amazing and supportive first thank you jason and to you too um for coming tonight and giving um this reported you know once again i am blown away by what we do um not even just in the summer but you know but for our kids day in and day out but this is the very definition of a program that is set up to make everybody succeed from the students the staff the teachers everybody the families everybody and so that is um no small accomplishment and the fact that you felt like you were as you said you know building the the plane as you're applying it find the planes you're building it either way either way it's a bad situation but you sounded like you pulled it off with amazing success and you have families and students who have as much positive feedback as you do teachers that are participating in the program that really says a huge amount so thank you all for all the work that you've done thank you director korea yes thank you um hats off to our community education department in my opinion it's the best in the state of minnesota so thanks to our community education department that we have these kinds of programs and jason and the teachers who both came tonight and who talked this summer i i'm a former teacher and of course my yardstick is longer than some of your yardsticks in terms of measurements of what we are doing with students i can't believe i mean it's it's amazing to me what what we do with students now but the program this summer will certainly help teachers this fall as we go into distance learning we have a better handle on it now than we did in the spring when all of a sudden it happened i i was very impressed with the reports um this evening so congratulations to a job well done um it was amazing so i very much appreciated the report and that's my comment so thank you thank you director courier any other comments um i have just a couple in terms of the positive feedback i know there were conversations that i had with families out in the community and heard student stories about their experience in summer school and it exactly um relates to the positive feedback jason that you shared in your report and the exuberance and enthusiasm of the parents and the students it really um it was really reassuring and it was great to know that um and i appreciate hearing um mrs graving and this bronze from you both about what a great experience it was for you because we know how important summer learning is for our students and to have a level of i think um director scott mentioned that everybody's successful there's positivity you feel supported both the adults and the students and i'll be curious jason to see how this you know this past summer's experience might translate into next summer's experience regardless of whether we're still dealing with hovid or not um you know i i i know that you and your team are very creative and um i don't want to ask you the question now i'm just putting it out there um that you know we'll be looking forward to seeing what happens um and i guess just one question um for uh both ms graven and mrs bronze um is there some you know the um you mentioned you know the the the carrot um and the stick method of getting students to turn their cameras on um with i think it was you that mentioned you know giving um encouraging students to turn their cameras on is there some have you already started sharing is there some mechanism for you to share because i think what i'm hearing is you know kind of a lead conversation that that you both as summer school teachers um could have with colleagues in terms of this is you know the collective ones this is what we learned and oh by the way this work um oh go ahead liam because that was you oh okay um i for yeah that was me so i what i would do is i was giving extra credit i just laughed because you know these kids they they were trying i mean i was telling them percentages but i'm pretty sure as kids going into 8th grade that they knew that they were going to pass the class and then the grade um was not a factor in their their gpa but um i did like we i think we were telling them that they had to turn their cameras on to participate but i know that we can't really really say that but i gave extra credit or i forgave a missing assignment a small one like a bell ringer or something like that um i just would like excuse them in the grade book and then they would see their grades go up just by turning on their cameras and participating and i think that that would be a great conversation um to have with other teachers right now as a sixth grade teacher i have to say i've i've got amazing participation the kids are all turning on their cameras and they want to hang out and they are are talking and everything and i don't see that with the kids as they get a little bit older i see a lot of muted microphones and cameras off and it just really brings my heart because you know it it goes hand in hand i think with effort and just you know really being part of a community so i do think it warrants a conversation i guess um um in terms of the learning from you know from the summer and maybe teresa this is a better question for you you know how how are we translating to learn you know what's been described by our teachers into learning for a larger group well actually uh chair alt the four learnings that jason shared with you they actually were embedded in our launch for this false instruction so for example um we're continuing to see the importance of providing materials and as we have now moved to distance learning from middle and high school we do have teams of principals and teachers taking a look at that so yes those four learnings um primarily the synchronous learning was uh as the teachers shared was really key and so some surrounding districts they are still in asynchronous and we've been hearing there's a big difference by having a set time in our district and i think as we built our our distance learning 2.0 we really did learn from the experiences and the successes of the summer um you know there were many many people including people at mde who said well first graders can't be on a on a zoom for 45 minutes that's insane but these teachers have just said it works and how well it works and they really you know it really helped us roll out that synchronous connection and our teachers are saying that is part of what keeps our kids connected to the teachers and to each other to the students i think the supplies and providing kits for students is another lesson learned we have our art elementary art and music and music teachers who have put together kits for students during distance learning so all students will get the kit and they will use those materials for their lessons for art and music middle school electives facts and other areas have put together kits for each unit for the students to pick up and they are using those at home and and i think the um the excitement that jason described about kids getting their kit and looking at it and then working together online to complete the tasks we're super successful and we want to help replicate some of that so um every student will get a distance learning kit every student will get the art and music tips um with just some of those things that we can continue to update so yes we we really built 2.0 based on the success of these speakers and um the experiences and tried to learn the lessons of things that didn't work very well thank you mr pearl i can probably i can probably respond to the question we had about next summer um under in cooperation with the executive leadership team we're getting ready to launch byc and pals now that uh looming in the horizon could potentially be in all this concerning district once that happens we are getting ready right now to be able to launch and so launching in january for byc and pals after school target services everything that we are doing for those two programs is based upon what we did this last summer they'll be essentially mirror programs uh both what we did learn and some of the things that we know that we did well in areas that would get better awesome that's great to hear thank you um thank you all um all presenters this um has been a great portion of our commitment report her first chapter and um we'll just look forward to another update um after next year the next one and we'll turn it back to you after battle thank you so it was really important for us to start off with that very hopeful energized um successful presentation of what we did in the summer because the next part of my report will be sobering and so um today we did receive from minnesota department of health the latest confirmed cases for dakota county and scott county so dakota county has 49.35 and scott county has 60.75 and it is expected that next thursday's report will once again indicate increased case numbers the recommended options for learning model based on these 14 day case rates is elementary and middle high school and distance line as you know last week i announced that middle and high school students would transition to a distance learning model as of november 19th due to planning days for staff there will be no school november 16-18 for middle and high school students including those involved in 191 birth tour cap these changes include burnsville alternative high school and the best transition program i do want to share a bit about the required part of the district decision making process and that is a mandated consultation meeting with our state assigned regional support team bianca vernik our regional team coordinator met with the cobit 19 advisory team on friday october 30th and explained the key questions that guide the consultation visit first we are to use county case data and school district data in concert the team would ask us are you seeing transmission in a specific grade school and their activity step two is their community spread look at the percent of positive cases as an indicator of community spread and five percent is the threshold step three what are the key aspects of the implementation of the new learning model and so as we thought about transitioning middle and high schools to