00:00:11,270	Good evening. I’m Josh Hager, president of the Bismarck school board. It’s 515 on Monday, February 9th. I call this meeting to order. Welcome to those of you who are joining us both here and also online. You can find our agenda and follow along online on the School Boards tab at Bismarck Schools.

00:00:30,500	Doctor Cher, would you call the roll, please? Mr. Hager here, Mr. Eastgate here, Mr. Lee here. Mrs. Peterson here. Miss Prescott here. Doctor Faulkner, would you lead us in the pledge? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

00:01:07,300	Item one CBS mission, vision and values. The vision is to empower every learner to thrive. The vision states together are strong relationships. Build inclusive, collaborative, and innovative environments that create, agency and inspire a passion for learning, excellence and discovery. Values are inclusion, excellence. Innovation. Leadership.

00:01:32,130	You’ll also find a link in the agenda to the Strategic Plan. Item two is to adopt the agenda. What are the wishes of the board? I move, we adopt the agenda. Second. We have a motion a second. Any discussion? Seeing. None. Doctor. Share. Eastgate. Yes. Lee. Yes. Peterson. Yes. Prescott. Yes. Hager. Yes. Takes us down to item three. Focus on success. Aspire.

00:01:57,500	Um. Good evening, board members. Nice to see all of you. Tonight we have, um, some information about our literacy training for secondary teachers. And I would like to bring up to the podium Mr. Rachel Schaffner, who will introduce our teachers tonight. Hi, Rachel. There. It’s on. Thank you for having us here tonight.

00:02:22,100	Um, tonight’s focus on success is based around secondary literacy. And I’m going to talk a little bit about the aspire program that several of our, um, VIPs, educators and other members of engaged in.

00:02:46,700	So, um, kind of a description of the program with 85% of public curriculum on average, um, being delivered through text literacy remains foundational to success across academic disciplines. Aspires supported educators and embedding literacy best practices into instruction, enabling students and upper elementary, middle, and high school to read, think, and communicate effectively across all subjects. Um. This is based on the science of reading, and it’s a professional learning.

00:03:11,700	Um, solution designed to meet the needs of all educators working with adolescent learners from content area teachers to Ela educators to interventionists, instructional leaders. And it provides scaffolded, research driven professional learning. So that’s kind of an overview of the course. And now I’m going to get into what it specifically looked like at PS.

00:03:33,270	So part of our purpose of having this PS cohort was to increase knowledge of literacy acquisition. Consider the implications of what this could look like at the secondary level. Identify information in implementation and application opportunities. So we in total had 19 participants, eight teachers, three instructional coaches, two administrators, two coordinators and four LDI members from across the secondary portion of our district.

00:04:00,370	The contents represented were Ela, science, math, Social studies, special Education, Ell, Avid and Indigenous Education, and the teachers. With us tonight to discuss further about their learning and what they have implemented are Emily Todd and Brianna Sorrels from century. Um, and they will share with us their learning and classroom application.

00:04:23,870	I would also like to thank Mary Palmer from Century High School. She is also one of the Ela portfolio holders for being here tonight. President Hager and school board members, thank you for inviting us to speak tonight. I’m Emily Todd, and I’m here with Brianna Sorrells to discuss literacy at the secondary level.

00:04:51,200	Last spring, we we participated in the Aspire Literacy modules as presented by Mrs. Schaffner. And although there were many takeaways, we agreed that the most thought provoking piece was the development of strategies to improve all students literacy. Um. Aspire identifies three stages of reading development. Grades K through three are learning to read and developing fluency decoding skills, basic comprehension, vocab skills.

00:05:14,030	Grades four through nine are reading to learn, so that involves using those earlier skills to acquire knowledge and think critically. And finally, grades ten through 12 should be reading widely, synthesizing information, and reading difficult texts.

00:05:31,700	But what we’re finding is that students at the high school level are often still working on some of those learning to read skills, and some students struggle with vocabulary, with stamina and with speed, with finding main ideas and with overall comprehension.

00:05:53,700	And so our guiding question has become how do we support secondary students when they need to read to learn, but they’re still learning to read? Um, so a little bit of background about us, in order to work on pushing literacy across content areas, um, two years ago, we created a class at century called Global Literature and Culture, and it meets the standards of ninth grade English and ninth grade global studies. The goal is just to blend them together.

00:06:10,100	So we knew to notice that students were struggling to connect content as they moved from class to class. They don’t connect themes. They were struggling to connect information. So we began brainstorming a way to start to close that gap for them.

00:06:27,870	And so like, for example, how can we get them to see the themes of Renaissance life while they’re reading Romeo and Juliet and not viewing them as two different chunks of information? Um, so that’s just one unit. There’s another unit, for example, on the screen that’s the one we’re in now. So World War one and then studying like the dark side of human nature.

00:06:44,330	Um, our goal in this course is to naturally blend stories they are reading with the era of history in which they come from. And through this, we’re finding that students have more access to vocabulary and the reading and writing process, both what that looks like in history and what that looks like in English.

00:07:06,170	One of the focuses of our course is improving student vocabulary. Aspire research shows that students need to know 90 to 95% of the words in a text before they can actually comprehend the material. Um, all of the classes at century have incorporated in English.

00:07:28,370	Classes at century have incorporated a vocabulary program in order to help students increase their vocabulary, and it requires students to learn the meanings of morphemes and word parts and apply that knowledge to other unknown words. Once students learn the word part, we then encourage them to use the words in context, and then we practice the words with both global studies, common content and English content for added repetition and application.

00:07:44,100	Um, on the screen, there’s an example of one of the slides that students would experience. So if they learn the word part, casts means to fall, they should be able to predict and apply that knowledge to other unknown words rather than just learning one particular word like the word casualty.

00:07:59,130	Um, ultimately, that’s our vocabulary goal to provide students with the skills to access new vocabulary across the content areas, not just in our English class or our global classes. All right, so moving beyond vocabulary, um, just getting students to engage with the text in particular, a longer text that they typically would see in high school as they transition from middle school.

00:08:24,070	And we’ve come to notice that students don’t do well when you hand them something and say, read this. And then that’s all. And so aspire has reading and stages that focus on what you do in pre reading. So before students read, during reading and after reading.

00:08:40,130	And so pre reading strategies would take place before a students read a text. The goals of a pre reading strategy are to activate any prior knowledge. Provide context to the story or the historical document they’re going to read, and then most importantly giving them a purpose for why they’re reading it.

00:08:54,600	So what they’re looking for when they’re reading, um, as students begin to read, we often give them a task to do while they’re reading. So whether that’s a graphic organizer, whether that’s annotation, whether that’s vocabulary, mark confusions, Mark questions, what are they doing when they’re reading? We found this helps with student focus because if they’re not

00:09:12,730	doing something physically, they struggle to do something in their brain. Um, and then after students have finished reading, they’re asked to reflect, summarize, analyze. And although their task isn’t until they’ve finished reading, it’s really important we’ve learned that they know the task during the pre reading phase.

00:09:33,970	So they know like what their ultimate goal, what their ultimate purpose is come the end of their reading. Um, examples of pre reading during reading and after reading strategies are up on through the English lens at least are up on the screen right now. So on the upper left there’s some pre reading questions. And this is one strategy.

00:09:58,030	Just asking students to activate prior knowledge about traditions for this particular story. And then they can make predictions about what they’re going to read before they even access the text. Another example up on the screen is for the Raven Poem. And that’s a during reading strategy where they’re annotating the text.

00:10:13,500	And like Emily said, we give them specific tasks before they start annotating so they know exactly what they should be looking for. So in this case, they were summarizing each stanza and then marking different examples of Gothic literature and Edgar Allan Poe’s writing. And then the bottom item is an example of a post reading task.

00:10:31,100	So this is what they need to prepare for as they’re reading. So they’ll take what they’ve read. They’ll answer some questions about it in preparation to talk about it in a Socratic seminar. Um, the seminar is going to ask students to combine different stories that they’ve read, combine elements of history.

00:10:46,100	Since we are global and English combined, and actually talk about it using textual evidence from what they’ve read. Um, and then just some examples so you can kind of see it through the history lens.

00:11:05,300	Um, because I know a lot of people view English or literacy as an English thing, and we’re really trying to make sure that students see it as in all content areas thing. And so, um, before diving into World War One, students engaged in pre reading strategies about overall themes. And so they were asked questions about like what makes a country the most powerful and things like that. Or is blind loyalty a good quality or a bad quality.

00:11:23,530	And so just getting them to see the themes the world is experiencing, but maybe at a more like they can relate to it in their life a little bit more. Um, these questions often have no perfect answer. They’re just starting to get students to brainstorm what’s coming.

00:11:42,700	Um, on the bottom left, you can see an example of student annotation. So that’s just a reading in terms of what caused World War One. And so they’re they’re reading for basic summary, um, understanding comprehension as well as vocabulary. So terms like what is an assassination? How is that different from just a killing of someone and things like that. Um, in the upper right.

00:12:02,070	That’s a primary source reading. So that’s straight from history. They’re looking at what the leaders of the time said in terms of causes of World War one, so that when you can see the student is summarizing a little bit more and taking those chunks of information, and then on the bottom is a post reading

00:12:16,230	strategy. So after we learned all the causes of war, how can they start to summarize that chunk of information? And then we also have students like reflect kind of big picture on here are the things you should know and should be in your paragraph. So they can kind of self gauge their understanding.

00:12:37,100	The final element of literacy that we work to address in our class, in order to improve student literacy overall, is writing. Aspire states that researchers have found that when students write in content areas beyond the Ela classroom, they’re more likely to retain and interpret content on a deeper level.

00:12:56,370	So we guide students through three main processes for writing, planning, drafting, and revising. The planning phase involves using graphic organizers, writing thesis statements, writing topic sentences, the drafting process requires them to then put this into a cohesive piece of writing. And then finally, students will receive feedback.

00:13:15,570	Feedback that might be from their peers, that might be from me, that might be from both, um, and then they revise their writings to make them to make improvements and to make them better each time. Um, the historical essay prompt on this slide is an example of a topic students see in our class.

00:13:31,100	Students receive the topic weeks in advance so that as they’re reading, they can be out. They can always have this in the back of their mind and think about what different sources will help them to plan their essay and to to prove what they’re trying to write about.

00:13:45,000	Um, so then they plan, they write, and they revise their essays in order to answer the prompt. And then this slide includes a recent example of an English, um, style writing. So for students filled in the graphic organizer to plan their writing.

00:14:03,100	So they had to come up with their thesis statement, come up with their evidence and how they would defend that evidence, and then they would actually draft their paragraphs. So on the right is a draft of a paragraph, and then I’ll give them feedback, um, and pass it back to them. And then they make changes based on that feedback, trying to improve their writing every time.

00:14:19,770	Um, ultimately blending vocabulary, reading and writing instruction has been our focus in order to help students feel more confident in their literacy skills across the curriculum. Um, thank you for your time and we will now stand for questions. Board members, questions, comments. Uh, Mr. Lee. Thank you, President Hager. Um, I just I love these combined classes.

00:14:40,600	Uh, so can you can you maybe explain to me, um, how this differs from American pageant? Is it is it something you mirrored and brought it down to ninth grade or. Yes, absolutely. So, um, that’s a part of our inspiration was American Pageant.

00:14:56,500	So we saw a lot of the connections between what they were doing in global studies, like studying the Russian Revolution. And then I was in my English classroom teaching Animal Farm, and it just seemed to make a lot of sense to bring those together. But yes, it certainly mirrors the idea of American pageant. Yeah, it’s fantastic.

00:15:12,130	Um, my brother being a retired teacher, I saw his grammar take go up by leaps and bounds because of Mary Palmer. So, um, it was shocking. Uh, but. Yeah. No, but really, I my kids have gone through pageant, and, uh, my brother, having taught up for many years.

00:15:27,770	Um, I’m just a big fan. I think it makes a lot of sense. So thanks for what you do and the presentation, I appreciate it. Thank you. Mrs. Peterson. All right. Thanks, Mr. Hager. And or President Hager. And, um, thanks, ladies, for bringing me back.

00:15:45,630	You know, obviously, anytime that we’re talking about literacy and secondary English, it warms my little my heart. Um, I think my question is actually maybe more for Rachel or Mary, but just wondering and maybe you guys, because first of all, I just appreciated all of what you shared and what an echo. Um, Mr.

00:16:01,230	Lee’s comments about the the way that it’s modeled kind of after American pageant and seeing the similarities. But my wonder about the aspire course and maybe you can start and if they need to back up is obviously it had really good participation. Is that going to continue or are we you know, you you guys obviously took it and ran with it with a course.

00:16:14,970	Is there more of an expectation for additional um, secondary folks to participate? Was it one and done, or are we going to continue to offer it, you know, throughout throughout for other teachers to maybe learn from from you to. Take that one. So this course. And opportunity came through.

00:16:33,170	We took it through seek the um Education Association on the eastern side of the state. Um, it was funded in part with closed grant money. And so now that that is no more.

00:16:52,430	Um, I don’t know, as far as if a formal course will continue, but I definitely think the learning that happened from the members that took it will definitely continue to spread throughout the district. Um, I don’t know, to be honest with you, if seek is offering it again or if it’s an opportunity that could be just taken on their own.

00:17:08,200	Um, but this was work that started with the closed grant, so we wanted to take advantage of that, which we had like great response and a good experience. Thank you so much for that clarification. Well done ladies. Mr. Eastgate, I just wanted to say thank you. Mayor and pageant, like many have already said, was one of my most favorite classes. By far in my time. So thanks for being innovators.

00:17:26,100	Being willing to look at how you could get that going at the freshman level. And please pass along a thanks to those who maybe you had to. I don’t know about convince, but at least encouraged to to allow you guys to do that.

00:17:38,530	Just appreciate that we have educators like you guys that are willing to say, hey, we we think we have a way to do this better and help kids learn at a different and maybe a different way than they are right now. So just very much appreciate you. Thank you everybody. Yeah.

00:17:52,330	Thank you guys for putting the time in and coming to present tonight. The one thing that I wrote down to you, kind of echoing some of the things that other board members have mentioned, I’m going to use this one at home. We’ll see if it gets my boys to read a little bit more.

00:18:07,630	That reading is not just an English thing and how important it is across all disciplines to have have the ability to read and comprehend and how important that is. So appreciate what you guys do. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Uh, item four is public comment.

00:18:28,070	The board recognizes the essential role parents play in the education of their children, and supports active parent involvement in the education process. The board’s practice of public comment reflects an alliance with policy, Baquba and the spirit of its intent for classroom issues, it’s best to follow the chain of command teacher, principal, assistant superintendent, superintendent, uh.

00:18:47,700	For district issues, please reach out to Doctor Foster if you do speak tonight, we simply ask that you be responsible, be helpful, and be respectful. Our BS students deserve to have adults model the expectations we have for them. Groups are just select one spokesperson. Individuals will be limited to no more than four minutes and will be notified with 30s left to conclude their remarks.

00:19:04,800	The board will not debate issues as presented, but we’ll take such matters under advisement. With that, please stand and approach the podium if you wish to speak tonight. We’ve got a person there, so if you could, uh, state your name and the agenda item that you’ll be speaking about for the records.

00:19:20,100	On my agenda item is from the last month when I was in our last meeting, I wasn’t able to be here. My microphone. Am I here? Okay, okay. My name is Hannah McDonald. And my agenda item was on the last meeting agenda.

00:19:40,130	So pursuant to policy, I could come to this meeting and address that because I was had prior engagements last time. I just wanted to read a statement to the board. Good evening. My name is Hannah McDonald.

00:19:55,530	I served as a speech language pathologist in this district for seven years, and I am also a parent of young children in the school system, a business owner, and a nationally recognized curriculum developer whose work is used by all 50 states schools across the United States and internationally. I’m here to place documented facts and lived professional experience into public record regarding workplace conditions that are driving staff out of the district. Over time, my working conditions became unsafe.

00:20:16,400	From a mental health standpoint. For more than two decades, the American Speech-Language Hearing Association, our governing body, has provided guidance on responsible workload and caseload practices. That guidance was repeatedly advocated for, but was ignored. As a result, workloads failed to reflect student complexity at schools.

00:20:38,700	For example, a student seen twice monthly for fluency maintenance is counted the same as a high support non-speaking student, requiring four days a week of 1 to 1 services. These are the same in the eyes of the district. When we look at numbers, this created a workload that was foreseeable, unsustainable. As leadership became more distant, concerns were minimized or left unaddressed.

00:21:02,170	Reporting pathways were unclear, follow up was inconsistent and meaningful change did not occur. The building level Special Ed Team leads absorbed increasing responsibilities without authority or protection, which allowed continuing isolation, unhealthy power dynamics, and escalating hostility.

00:21:27,300	Although the Special Education Building Coordinator and building administrators were aware of these conditions, support at my building, specifically team dynamics, remained minimal and inconsistent. As these conditions continued, my anxiety disorder significantly worsened, experienced a sustained state of distress tied directly to workplace stressors that were repeatedly raised and not addressed.

00:21:46,200	During one meeting, a colleague above my station that I had previously trusted raised her voice, struck the table and told me, it doesn’t matter what you have to say. I was not allowed to speak. My panic attacks increased in frequency and continue to persist, particularly when I enter a school building or reflect on my work in the schools. I requested support from this Geiger.

00:22:05,370	She advised me she’d follow up the next week. No follow up occurred. Five days later. I had to have my performance review with this person. My performance was exemplary as it was in all seven years. During the same period, I was made aware of a statement by a coworker expressing a desire to harm me.

00:22:27,630	This was reported through appropriate channels and dismissed without follow up, further escalating my fear for personal safety. In an effort to remain employed and protect my health, I requested to work three days per week, scheduled at three consecutive days. This was not a request to do less work. It was a request for sustainability.

00:22:45,700	As a parent of three young children, I know my habits, my work habits. I overextend and I remain at work beyond healthy limits. A four day recovery period was a mental health necessity, and endorsed by my psychologist, and accommodation was offered, but it did not address the medical and functional need I

00:23:02,400	identified. I was told the request was not in the best interest of students. 30s I reviewed publicly available school board agendas at this time last year, the district recorded 14 resignations as of today, including the seven resignations that are recorded in the agenda. That number is 32. That’s a 129% increase, according to your own records.

00:23:24,170	Through my work, I’ve collaborated with researcher Fong Palafox, now a mentor and colleague. Her work reinforces a simple truth for every professional, supporting students in high demand roles. Leadership choices either sustain that person or push them toward burnout. My resignation was not a lack of dedication.

00:23:41,830	It was the predictable outcome of prolonged inaction. The data is clear. The pattern is clear. What happens next is a matter of leadership and public record. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Seeing no one else with that public comment is closed. Uh, moving on to item five. Monitoring district operations are two one academic achievement, literacy. Doctor Johnson. Thank you. President Hager.

00:24:19,100	Members of the school board. Um, today it’s our pleasure to talk about literacy. It’s tough to follow a great crew. But again, knowing that what was presented earlier regarding literacy and again, I like that that reading is not just an English thing, it’s an everyone’s thing.

00:24:36,970	Right? So, um, I think that what you have before you, um, we marked as, uh, making reasonable progress with exception, however, we, we note that a couple of these are baseline, but I’d ask and as we go through them, some of it’s related to act and some other, uh, new testing.

00:24:56,570	It does reflect, though that we are doing exceptionally well compared to the state in years past. So that’s part of the reason that we bring that forward, although it looks like there’s only a couple that are at making reasonable progress, there’s a few with exception. But those baselines also historically represent one areas where we’ve outperformed.

00:25:16,830	Um, so that was part of that determination as we get into that. So taking a look at this, um, you heard a little bit about the spire training and we all have the work that we continue doing around standards based education and learning. That’s, uh, referencing throughout that.

00:25:35,670	We’ll take a look, um, here, as we get into the first few measures, and there you’ll see as we take a look at the NWSa, um, we see that we’ve added grade ten now in the high school. We’ve done that for the first time that last year, again making reasonable progress. We took a look at some of the subgroups.

00:25:54,230	Again, we’re always looking to not only look overall, but dive in and have those, uh, peeling back the onion layers a little bit to see where we have room for growth or where maybe we have some outposts of excellence within that. So we’re always trying to take that look there.

00:26:09,700	These next, uh, two indicators are ones that I’m talking about with Act regarding English. And in the area of reading. And you’ll note that, uh, those are all green there for the past historical, but these are both listed as baseline now because we no longer have that state data available to us. So we’ve tried to represent it new.

00:26:25,430	And we can work with you in the board and the wishes that you have and how we might best represent that. But because we don’t have that comparability, we brought what we had for you, which was the number of students we brought. So, for example, 228 students took the act.

00:26:45,130	And of that, 76% passed the English at the minimum level of the benchmark for 18, which would be deemed college ready. Then we took a look at the reading with 228 students, and again, 63.

00:27:02,030	You might say, why are we doing so well in English and not in reading? This is where we all have to sometimes just tell you what you’re looking at, right? So for those that might look at this, you can see then in the analysis note that the cut score for the benchmark on English is at an 18. And for reading it’s at a 22. So it’s four points higher. So that’s in my world. The explainability reason for the difference.

00:27:21,800	Again reading is reading. It’s not just an English thing. As they as we were told earlier this evening. Um, likewise, this is highly correlated with those that might pursue, um, history, political science, areas that are typically more seen as social studies extension and the college.

00:27:40,000	Are you ready to be able to enter and do the reading that’s necessary to be successful in those areas? Um, then we take a look at an indicator for um, and again, we’re just taking a look at, um, the growth and, and the person. Sorry. In this, we’re looking at the percentage of students that are proficient.

00:28:00,800	And so we take in K1, the Ames web two through eight is the map. And then the star assessment. So these are just proficiency not growth I apologize for mis speaking. So that looking at the percentage that are hitting proficiency and you might say wow high school. Nice job there.

00:28:19,600	Um, that’s with an asterisk for us because they were normed nationally. And I’m going to reiterate a statement that many of you around the board have heard me say before. We fared better during Covid than the nation did. Just being honest, I I’d love to come in and swoop in and take a bow for something that, you know, seems extraordinary.

00:28:37,570	But the reality is, um, with the reforming, we’ve dug in and we feel like our students are pretty similar, maybe a little bit, a slight uptick, but that 30% jump is really reflective of the new norm cuts that were put out nationally, not necessarily a huge swing in that, of course, it’s in the right

00:28:55,100	direction that we would want, but we’re looking at proficiency there on indicator for and on indicator five. Um, I apologize again for the mix up there. The the grade targets are are wrong. They needed to be shifted by a year.

00:29:14,370	And with your permission, if you’d accept it with the indication that the 2122 would become 2223, so on and so forth. So the last year would be 2425. I apologize for missing that there, but we are looking now at growth and there we’re within about a 2%, uh, just under a 2% decline.

00:29:36,930	But I’ve shared with you before, historically, um, the NWA, the map test about 50 per. It’s designed for about 50% to be able to make the cut score of their growth or not. So we’re hovering right at that. We’re on the wrong side of that 50%. But it’s right about where we’re at.

00:29:54,030	So again, we have some grade levels that are exceeding that in a few where we probably need to make a little bit more, um, effort. And hopefully we close the gap year to year. But also those are real students. And that’s what we’ve talked about before. Behind all these instructional strategies, behind all this data are faces of sons and daughters, grandchildren, nieces and nephews.

00:30:13,570	There’s someone that’s a real student, so we need to figure out and who can best do that work is the teachers and the support staff at the building level that are working collaboratively together to be able to try and figure out how they can help support each, um student along the way.

00:30:28,770	And we look at our subgroups as well on indicator six. And again, there’s some areas there. We’re really happy about that. And it’s a few areas where we have to dig in and take a look. Again, those do vary year to year because sometimes with that inflow and outflow of students we see that.

00:30:42,500	So we’ve got a little bit different norming going on. On the last page there on indicator seven. This reflects again the 2.5 for K-5 grades. So the grade is determined by a standard score 2.5 or at the secondary level the equivalent of a B. And again those do commute um their back and forth can accommodate.

00:31:02,800	Then we can make that change. But you’ll see that we would put forward that, um, where we’ve met it in K through five, we’ve met and exceeded at the middle school and we grew. So again, that’s why it’s in kind of that green there.

00:31:23,030	But, um, we are hoping that with the new adoption standards that we’ll continue to see that we did put forward, that this is still our standards from year to year, though we continue to implement with new state adopted standards. So it’s not exactly a comparison year to year, but it’s still the English is the English standards.

00:31:38,500	For the most part there at this point. Um, we know that there’s a continued work that we need to do, and we’re always ever present. We would propose again, making reasonable progress with the exception, again noting the few changes that I would make on the years on that one indicator, and also

00:31:55,630	know that we continue to to be intentional about improving our core and what that means. Just everyone, like, we need to make sure that’s the best learning experience and that those that are doing the lift are not just your English or your reading time. So we understand that that’s on everyone on deck.

00:32:11,170	Whenever, however, it looks like, you know, you presented some examples here and many of you have heard of avid and the other strategies there. Again, these are all strategies for all, not just for some, but we also know that there is some work done with interventions. Mr. Barnhart and his crew.

00:32:29,300	There’s some reading strategies, um, and reading teachers that are helping out. And we have some reading strategies at the middle school and the high school, again, trying to provide those interventions along with others that might get specially designed instruction. So all these bring us that we care about that kid.

00:32:43,170	If you feel that your son or daughter needs a little extra support, let’s have that conversation. Come talk to the building level principal and we’ll figure out who can best sit around the table.

00:32:56,170	And we have plenty of personnel that would, you know, gladly talk about what extra supports we might be able to do because we want to join you in that parent partnership with the school and with the teacher. So at this point, I’d stand for any questions that you have. Board members questions, comments? Mr. Peterson? Thanks, President Hager. And thanks, Doctor Johnson. I think that sometimes like reports like this. First of all, thank you for putting it together.

00:33:14,630	And I appreciate, you know, kind of looking at the comparison. But also I think more importantly for the public just to be able to read some of the caveats, but also the the winds that we have.

00:33:30,270	But I think that whenever we’re trying at the system level to compare from year to year, we have to recognize, I really liked what you said. When these are actual students with actual faces, but behind. So when we roll it up to the to the district level and we’re hearing this report, I’m I’m more important not necessarily to compare what was last year, it’s like what’s happening with those kids and that continuous improvement.

00:33:47,800	And I feel like that was really clear in your in the overall report with some of the, the caveats, but also recognizing the work that you guys are doing and, and showcased with the, the teachers that were here today.

00:34:03,930	And then just what I hope is happening with across the district with the instructional coaching and the, um, kind of the continuous improvement mindset. So just appreciate the report. No, no questions. But I know there’s a lot here in terms of the changes that are happening at the state level, the district level with different data sets.

00:34:20,430	And I think that that’s I appreciate that the explanations are kind of within this report for us, but also for the public. Yeah. If I would just one other giving a concrete example to your point about the students that are different, nearly we have nearly 14% mobility, meaning in and out from year to year. So that’s perhaps 1 in 7.

00:34:36,470	If my quick math is working. 1 in 7 students is was not here last year. So we need to think about that too. Is that even when we’re comparing groups, which we do and get the ebbs and flows, that evens off.

00:34:50,330	But they are different students, so we need to meet them where they’re at. But to that point, that’s what we’re here for. Those students, whether they’ve been here since kindergarten or their whole lives or whether or not they entered last month, we’re going to take them where they are and figure out how to support them as we go forward.

00:35:01,270	Thank you for the question or statement. Mr. Eastgate. Thanks. President Hager yeah, thank you, Doctor Johnson, for the report. Um, and my question may go to Mr. Barnhart, possibly, or somebody with English background, which we have a couple in the room as well. But, um, I just noticed an indicator five in particular.

00:35:18,670	You have third and fourth grade. There’s a it’s probably the biggest drop off and they’re pretty consistent right there. And so it’s a little bit in the weeds.

00:35:32,500	But I just wonder is that is third and fourth grade at a time when maybe are kids stepping into a harder, more chapter books? Is there any kind of evidence, I guess, that you would have that you could have? I’m going to look backwards to here.. Yeah, on the mic, but I’ll be up there or. Whatever you want. Yeah. I just think that when you think about those kiddos in third and fourth, third and fourth pop up to me as well.

00:35:46,830	But when you think about their skills, you got foundational skills and letter sound fluency, and then you have deeper skills and just comprehension vocabulary.

00:36:06,130	And then when you take those fourth graders went all the way back when Covid hit in 2021, when we lost almost a trimester, and then we moved into the next year, we lost quite a bit of time at the front end. Plus, with all of those students that fell into positive Covid and then contact tracing, they didn’t get their tier one core.

00:36:22,670	Um, at the early ages, I think that has a tremendous impact on some of those scores that you’re seeing here right now. So not necessarily a historical we see this big drop in. Third grade. Well, that’s that’s kind of I was wondering yeah, they really had it going there. And our highest scores if I remember right. Just didn’t have those conversations in classrooms.

00:36:37,570	Nor did they. Even when you think about, um, comprehension background knowledge, fiction versus nonfiction, they probably didn’t have all of those texts. Sure. Because we were really working on the the priority skills for kids. And then background knowledge, being out in the community, having different experiences when everyone was locked down.

00:36:56,370	I don’t think some of those kids got some of those experiences as well. Gotcha. Thank you very much, Mr. Barnhart. Appreciate that. Um, Mr. Barnier had that question for me. So, um, beyond that, I guess just more of a sometimes we have ponderings, right, that we think about as we hear this.

00:37:10,100	And, uh, President Hager alluded to it earlier during our focus on success. But the idea of, um, being a lover of books and reading myself, and how do we get kids to do that? And it’s like I, you know, sometimes as a parent, you’re like, you’re hitting your head against the wall, feeling like

00:37:23,470	I should have made my kids read more. But I just always wonder if there’s ways we talk a lot about student choice and different pathways. And as Focused Success talked about, they’ll bring in a book that maybe they’re learning about in history.

00:37:36,300	And I just wonder if there’s other opportunities like that within our educational system. If a kid has an interest that they can also have a book that’s paired along with it, I don’t know, I just put it out there, I guess, as a way. Um, maybe there’s programs out there already, but where we’re pushing for for kids to want to want to read.

00:37:53,300	Yeah, I think throughout I’m pretty proud of the experience that my own kids have experienced. And perhaps you have that where there is choice, there’s opportunities for students to follow their interest, not only with, uh, Mr.

00:38:10,570	Frink, our, our library media services and all the librarians, a lot of choice and opportunity there, but also that if, um, the standard is here, there might be options for whether you’re finding, um, choices within the classroom. But then there’s also sometimes where it’s good for us all to be able to talk around a similar theme or the exact same text.

00:38:24,870	And so I think some of that exists, obviously, you know, we’ve talked and shared a little bit about empowered Ed programs where you can find what texts might resonate with you most, but I think that that occurs far more often than we realize at times.

00:38:38,730	Um, you know, and so I think our teachers are always looking for opportunities to provide that choice. Well, yet also saying sometimes this is this is a, a text that is worthy of us all reading together. Um, last thing I’d say with that, I think to your point is I was always a the wisdom of Sarah Wesleyan Brown.

00:38:54,770	She was a National teacher of the year, and she was from Iowa when I was down there at the time. And she used this kind of phrase that sometimes we read books because they’re windows and mirrors. Sometimes it’s a window into, um, someone else’s lived experience, and sometimes it’s a mirror for us to hold up and reflect on our own life.

00:39:10,270	And so there’s a benefit of reading texts, fiction and nonfiction that presents both of those opportunities for young readers. And I think, um, as we all can model reading and, and, and be able to do that at home, um, you know, last night my wife was reading a book and I was watching the Super Bowl, but, you know, um, my kids see her reading some of

00:39:25,570	that there along. Again, how we modeled that at home can carry over, but then also, um, there’s sometimes where we are still showing that we’re still learners.

00:39:38,600	Right? So you may walk by someone’s classroom in elementary or high school and it’s like, what am I reading right now? You know? And so I think that we’re always continuing to be learners. And that’s a good thing to model. Thank you, Doctor Thompson. Uh, I would see none. Doctor Brosnan. Um, my apologies. I stepped away for a bit. So you might have referenced indicator two and three. Did you have any comments on that? The 228. Did you mention that to the. Yes.

00:39:58,770	Okay. I so explain I think just so you’re aware, we’re going to keep putting that in there and your math and literacy report for a while, but it might need some adjustment. That indicator or at least how we report it because of the change in our kids not being required or being asked to take the act.

00:40:15,300	So, um, we’ll let that play out a little bit. So as you see that indicator change of the report within that indicator changed a little bit. So and the comment about reading, um, Mister Eastgate. Yeah it’s critical skill.

00:40:34,070	But um, interestingly enough, I do a, um, I’m in a podcast next week about social media, social media impact on kids technology’s impact on kids. Um, sent a bunch of questions out to teachers today, probably received a dozen, um, bits of feedback on that. I was trying to garner their insights into their view on social media and technology use. Several over a handful.

00:40:53,770	Reference technology is it’s the it’s reducing attention span grit to read text because we just read in short snippets anymore to actually engage in a deep text takes endurance, reading endurance, and several educators mentioned that, like the negative impact of some of our screening screen time for all of us, really to have that endurance to read or read a

00:41:15,400	volume. So interesting feedback from teachers today. But. Thanks, doctor Poznan, uh, with, uh, Mr. Lee. Uh, President Hager, with respect to our two academic achievement literacy, I move that the board accept the report as making reasonable progress with noted exceptions. Second. We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion? Seeing none.

00:41:40,230	Doctor Lee? Yes. Peterson. Yes, yes. Eastgate. Yes. Hager. Yes. Down to item six. Matters reserved for board action. Uh, academic. Jema. Mathematics. The revisions. Second reading. I don’t know, Doctor Foss. Not if you have anything to add from. I do not. President Hager no change, no recommendations.

00:42:05,830	Obviously, my recommendation is to approve second reading, but no changes since last time. And I would move to approve the revised coherent governance results. Indicators are 2.1 academic achievement mathematics as presented for the second and final reading. Second. We have a motion and a second any any discussion. Seeing none. Uh, doctor. Share. Peterson. Yes. Yes. Eastgate. Yes. Lee. Yes. Hager.

00:42:32,000	Yes. Uh. Be school board members or. Sorry, I can’t talk. Board member school visits. I think I’m the only one who has one tonight, so I’m just gonna jump right into it. So I had the privilege of going to Liberty Elementary School. Liberty rockets on Friday afternoon.

00:42:54,970	So it’s fairly fresh. Um, upon arrival, uh, Principal Hogan made some time so we can kind of sit down and talk all the hot topics going across the district. You know, Bell times, um, school congestions, traffic in the morning, you know, those those types of things.

00:43:12,600	Some of the other things we talked about too is as the day went along, um, you know, different specialties called specialty teachers in the district and how they, um, share kind of knowledge across different schools, trying different things, you know, best practices, what works, what doesn’t work, what’s worked for them.

00:43:30,930	So it’s kind of interesting discussion around that. Um, so for me, this was a first. So I got to have a tour from Emma Jo and Teagan. So they’re there responsibilities for these two young ladies is to show new kids around the school. So I’m a big new kid for the day. They did a phenomenal job. They they knew their school inside and out.

00:43:52,630	And you could tell they’d kind of practiced and thought about what they were going to say, when they were going to say it, because you’d walk into a certain area and then they would kind of look at each other. One would start talking. We walk a little bit further, they’d look at each other.

00:44:02,930	The next one would start talking. They I mean, they did a a phenomenal job, um, taking me around the school as we were, uh, wandering around the school, of course, I asked, you know, favorite subject in school? Both of them said math. Tried to compare it with gym or recess. Still math.

00:44:24,270	So pretty impressive that they were both really into math. So as we were doing the tour they have on the wall there, um, either by class or by grade, they can they can win different awards each month. And the different awards are things like, um, keeping their classroom clean.

00:44:44,030	So the janitors would hand out an award, they’d pick the classroom that was the cleanest for the month, or, um, the lunchroom staff would, would determine which which class had been the best at keeping the lunchroom clean and doing those sorts of things. So they they hand out those awards, those awards monthly.

00:45:00,970	And then one that Emma Joe is most excited about is, of course, as the Liberty Rockets. You’re going to have each class launch a rocket to see who can shoot at the highest in her. Her class happened to happen to win it. So she was she was pretty proud of that.

00:45:14,970	Um, one other thing that was kind of fun. We got to the end of the tour and, uh, Teagan had mentioned her last name, and I said, what is your dad’s name? Turns out I played baseball with her dad out at the University of Mary, and I know her dad well, so it’s kind

00:45:29,300	of kind of funny, these kind of small connections that that we have across across the district. So after the tour with the kids, um, again, something new for me. I got to be a part of the woot woot wagon. So what this was is a Principal Horgan. She has a cart full of snacks.

00:45:49,770	Like anything you could think of and a cooler full of of drinks, sodas, waters, that kind of stuff. And they have a boombox and they play this thing really loud and they walk around. It’s kind of a teacher appreciation.

00:46:04,670	They can come out, grab a grab a snack, and on a Friday afternoon, I had a few comments about, oh yeah, I could have used some caffeine right now. And as they were grabbing grabbing a soda, they tried to talk me into dancing as a part of this doing down the hallway.

00:46:17,500	But thinking of you guys, I mean that that would be embarrassing for you guys to have to hear back on that. Somebody would have probably recorded it. So I didn’t do that, but it was kind of fun to watch the kids. As the boombox was coming down the hallway, they would just start dancing in place, you know, certain kids. So it was fun.

00:46:31,230	Um, towards the end, down the last hall, as we were, as we were kind of wrapping up the wagon, um, happened to see my one of my nieces in her classroom waving away. I didn’t even notice her, waved to her. Um, it was great. And then the very last classroom.

00:46:50,000	Miss Horgan went into, uh, my other niece, kindergartner, was was in there. Well, Miss Horgan had just received a hug from her. I came in and I got a bewildered look like, wow, this is totally out of place. Like, why is he standing in my classroom right now? So at best, I got a hi.

00:47:05,370	And then we we moved on. Um, it was it was a great visit that the two kids that showed me around Teagan and Emma Joe did did a fantastic job. They know their school so well. Had a lot of fun that Friday afternoon. It was it was it was a good time.

00:47:22,070	So that’s my my liberty visit. With that we’ll move to item seven, the consent agenda. Uh, what are the wishes of the board? President Hager I’d move that. We approve the consent agenda. Second. We have a motion. And a second doctor share. Yes. Eastgate. Yes. Lee. Yes. Peterson. Yes. Hager. Yes. Uh, item eight. Superintendents report. Long range facility plans. Doctor. Foster.

00:47:51,270	Yeah. I’m going to take a little time this evening to kind of give a little background for viewers and yourself. Some of this is going to be very repetitious for your board members, but, um, providing a little bit just in case we have new viewers tonight to catch them up on

00:48:03,370	where we are with the long range plan. And then, uh, I’ll kind of define the, the scope of what I intend to present on, um, one of the forthcoming slides.

00:48:19,570	So for those of you that are maybe haven’t engaged in or haven’t realized that this is really all stemming from our long range facility plan, Doctor Bernard, on the next page, just if you want to find it, I’m going to provide the link. Um, it’s on the website. If you go to our strategic plan, you’ll find our long range facility plan on that page.

00:48:38,230	And just kind of read again, directing people back there to be aware and and engaged in this process. Um, my charge tonight, I think our charge tonight as a team was to prepare a targeted list of priorities, along with a plan and how we intend to address them in a timely fashion. Um, some of that may come tonight. You’re going to get part of that.

00:48:55,300	And over the next course, the next few meetings, I will continue to lay that out for you as we’re continuing to work on that process. But, um, to help, again, for people who are maybe just engaging with it, that long range facility plan, um, has, um, one component is deals with deferred maintenance.

00:49:15,030	Those are those long standing projects fixes that we need to do just to maintain any property. Um, we have over 2,000,000ft of property inside of Baps, so it’s extensive. Um, kind of just like your home at some point, the furnace needs replaced, the water heater breaks down, or you need to replace the sidewalk.

00:49:35,900	Those things happen for two, and they’re outlined in our long range facility plan and are part of, um, the work we just did to update it. I just want to remind people to that that was done with experts in the field, people who are trained and skilled, and every day they work on those systems to help us understand where they were

00:49:54,330	in their life cycle and where they needed to be on that ranking order from a long range priority to immediate priority. Um, greens through reds. In a more detailed version.

00:50:11,630	Um, if again, if you haven’t engaged in this document, you will find a detailed assessment of every facility and building that we have in the district and those deferred maintenance items will be ranked kind of by color order. And, uh, descriptions. And to make the recommendations this evening, we’ve reviewed all those.

00:50:29,870	We went back to the document and looked at them in detail to say, what’s the most important things? What kind of does this naturally, but to what level does it make sense to work on these projects within each of the schools? Um, the other thing that we took into account, um, to build the priorities this evening are recommendations on the priorities. Is the stakeholder feedback. You remember we had those meetings in the fall.

00:50:45,830	That was part of what we did during the, um, rewrite. The, um, the renewal of our long range facility plan. Um, so we took that input as well to, to help formulate our priorities this evening.

00:51:07,300	Um, what I’d like to share with everybody, including you board members, is like, I’ve had some people say, well, you haven’t been doing anything. What what what have you not been doing in the district for X number of years that you have this, uh, um, these, these deferred maintenance and programmatic needs? I want to tell you, um, I want to share with people in the audience that are there

00:51:23,300	listening, that we have been doing work across DPS to address the facility needs that we have. Um, we’ve listed some examples here for you. Um, the renovation of the Northridge.

00:51:38,870	I was actually just speaking with parent today that talked about her child’s experience at Northridge and how it changed once the district put an investment of dollars in there to to upgrade and renew Northridge and how much it was improved. But listing others, the work at Legacy at Lincoln, at Silver Ranch and Elkridge because Silver and Oak Ridge were funded from your building fund to to do that work.

00:51:58,970	Um, the huge renovations which many of you have toured and seen was a not only district dollars, but it was also a partnership partner with our one of our big, strong business partners and community.

00:52:18,170	Sanford, um, the CTE center, which the picture shown there that we opened last year was again a cross-section of business partnerships that helped make that a reality, along with state grant funding to help make that happen. And, um, just for awareness, um, Doctor Sher provided me like just on over the last four years, we’re averaging $3.7 million a year coming out of our funds, general fund building fund, just to do maintenance of buildings.

00:52:41,270	It is when you it’s that many square feet, that many square feet of roofs and floors and fields and grass and all those other things. It takes a lot of dollars. So, um, we continue to invest in it. I think the long range facility plan just helps articulate how big that need is.

00:52:59,300	And I again, encourage people to take a look at it. We are planning at the next board meeting to have Doctor Share present to you, um, in the focus of success, a more detailed description of what we’ve been working on, what the need, what the needs are and what we’ve been trying to tackle over the last five

00:53:14,370	years. So you can look forward to that. So that leads into, I guess, um, our recommendations tonight for you to consider is we really believe that the district needs to focus on what would be our moderate through immediate priorities. Um, the ranked that way for a reason.

00:53:31,370	Um, I mean, I’d not it’s not magic to figure out what the rankings are, but looking at the needs that were presented in the plan, talking about each individual building, um, looking at, uh, what those specific needs are and then, taking our community input that received this fall.

00:53:49,500	There was very strong support that we need to address some of these needs. And that’s our recommendation to you as we need to focus on those needs. Um, why the range in dollars if you go to the next slide, Mister Barnhardt, I think we had projected in the plan that those tiers of needs just yellow through orange is about

00:54:07,630	37 million. Um, I’m not ready to give you an exact number yet because we’re working on it. We’re working on it with, um, um, local contractors and architects to try to ascertain what we think that is. But that’s, that’s a today number. That’s a number that we projected that 37 million.

00:54:27,970	If we say that, hey, we’re it’s going to take a couple of years to get this work done because I’m just telling you there’s no way and there’s no way that we’ll get all that done in a snap. So it’s going to take years to get this work done.

00:54:39,400	If we focus on it. Um, we need to put an inflationary factor in there. So right now we’re projecting a range 37 to 43 million to address just those three buckets of needs in regard to deferred maintenance.

00:54:55,270	And we’ll tighten that up for you and bring that back to you in the next coming board meetings. So you can see that a little tighter as we work those numbers. So that’s in the deferred maintenance bucket. Um, programmatic needs are next year. You’ve been aware those to try to evaluate those because they be there.

00:55:17,030	They they fall into a little bit different, um, need than something you can just say, well, that has a life cycle because a lot of these are things that are not existing in our buildings. They’re not part of our buildings. You can’t go and say, well, that boiler was put in 25 years ago. It’s that end of life cycle.

00:55:33,630	Um, so we try to develop a criteria that we’re going to evaluate the programmatic needs on. And this is the the priority areas we felt we needed to focus on as a district. And the first one was programmatic needs that fall into safety, security and student well-being. Those for us as a as a definition are things like secure entrances.

00:55:53,370	We have secure entrances in every building you’re going to fobs in, or you’re going to buzz in to every entrance that you’re going to see. What we find is a gap is some schools lack line of sight.

00:56:10,430	They don’t have a really easy way to make sure that that visitor comes through and is physically checked before they actually get entry to the building. A lot of you have probably we experience entrances that are perfect. You walk into legacy, you go right by a secretary, and there’s a there’s a process to go through the office and check in and kind of be welcomed.

00:56:26,500	Uh, some of our elementary schools don’t have that just due to the fact of when they’re built. They were built before that time. Um, so that’s important to us in that area. What we’re also putting into safety and security is things like parking, pedestrian safety.

00:56:42,070	We’ve heard a lot of concern about, um, pull up loops, bus loops this year as we talk to parents. Um, we’ve also heard needs for additional student support service areas that particularly when we talk about student mental health and our outside service providers that are now coming in and helping serve our children, um, having a space for them.

00:57:04,100	Um, again, schools weren’t necessarily designed with that in mind when we were building them 30, 40 years ago to have places for nurses and, um, Sanford and West Central to come in and provide services to our kids. And another one is lighting.

00:57:22,070	We’ve heard that from people, too, particularly with the time change, bill, time change, having a little bit better exterior lighting, particularly in our elementary schools. Um, I would tell you to me, safety, this area security is a non-negotiable. That’s one of the highest priorities for me. If we have needs here, we got to address those. That’s why you’ll be hearing that. More of what my recommendations are.

00:57:40,630	Um, aging facilities and infrastructure is the second bucket. Um, that’s a lot of roofs, HVAC, plumbing, electrical. Um, warning systems like upgrading fire warning system. Um, those things also, um, actually in, in safety and security and student well-being. And this bucket is, uh, handicap accessibility. Um, could fit in both buckets, actually.

00:58:03,600	It’s so important. But we have schools that, uh, um, I mean, we’re physically carrying students and staff upstairs because they can’t get to the other floors because of a disability or, um, accessibility issues. That seems like an important issue that we need to address. Um, also just modernizing some spaces.

00:58:28,400	Again, that’s that Northridge example, what you can do when you go in and you just upgrade, upgrade the space, give it a new life. It’s ready for another 50 years of service to the community.

00:58:44,330	Um, so it’s this this category is about taking care of the investment that this community’s already made in the facilities, that neighborhood schools and the schools that we have, um, equity of learning spaces is another bucket that we think is important.

00:59:08,270	Um, classroom modernization and flexibility to ensure equitable, um, not necessarily identical learning spaces, but, um, I guess philosophically, my view is you shouldn’t as a child, you the, the accommodating, the learning space, the size, the benefits of learning spaces that you have should not be dependent on what neighborhood you live in. In town. Um, not saying they have to be identical, but they should be more commensurate with each other. I think right now we see some spaces that are definitely not similar.

00:59:26,300	Um, lack of instructional spaces at certain parts of town, which then unfortunately lack the courses that kids can take, the options that kids can have. And really, your zip code or zip code, we’re all about two zip codes, but your neighborhood should not determine what course offerings you get.

00:59:42,830	You should really be able to get similar offerings and simple opportunities to, regardless of what school you attend. Um, so that’s a lot of it. And again, some of this is student support spaces. Um, kids with special education needs, disability needs, mental health. Um, um, physical health care needs.

01:00:00,500	Um, I think that those all fall in there along with, um, fine arts. We’ve heard some concerns from staff or parents during our community meetings to about access to equitable fine arts spaces. You know, fine arts is a really important issue in this town. It’s really important theme in this town.

01:00:18,130	It’s great to have, but we got to make sure we can accommodate all those artists as they perform and and work in our schools. So, um, that’s the third bucket. Fourth bucket capacity and community growth. Um, we do have some areas in town that are seeing some growth.

01:00:35,770	We have some areas in town that are constricting, and it’s how can we, um, how can we address schools that have several portables outside and growing? If a portable is temporary, are we living like that? Are we as our facilities embracing that, that that’s just a temporary fix.

01:00:54,430	We should be making them a permanent fix if we really see that that population in that building is going to remain constant for the next time period, then why are we not addressing that? We should be making that those portables into full time learning spaces for our kids. Um, so we need to work on that planning ahead.

01:01:13,100	We want to be planning ahead for that capacity rather than reacting to it when it happens. And the last one is community use. This really isn’t as much focused on the kids. You might say it is kids, but, um, we’ve heard a lot of comments from parents about things like after school care, um, after school care and community is tight.

01:01:30,900	Uh, one of the things that causes that tightness is when we work with our partners like Korea and Parks, um, they can only hold so many classes, so many sessions in a school because of the capacity, we are limited by.

01:01:48,900	Um, so there are some opportunities there that if we feel that if we could work on some community spaces, we could increase capacity for some afterschool programs, which should be, I think, beneficial to our community based on what we hear from our parents, they need to have more options, more capacity to get their kids into those programs instead of being on a wait lists.

01:02:05,030	So I think we can we can address some of that. And not only address educational issues, but also support the community as well as we do that. So, um, schools are community hub, not just classrooms. And we know we need to respect that because our buildings are used, uh, um, from morning till night and way into the evening hours.

01:02:23,570	And if you drive by, um, Mr. Hager, your comment on liberty, I’ll guarantee you, you drive back to that on a Saturday, the parking lot is full because that facility is being used six days a week, and some of them on seven because, uh, they hold other community services, faith based services.

01:02:40,700	So, um, yeah, it it these are our buckets that we evaluated the programmatic on. And, uh, I guess to give an example, we went to Miri, um, looked at the Miri project. The Miri project really didn’t have any deferred maintenance because we as a district have looked at that before.

01:02:56,700	You have seen the Miri project before as a board years ago. Um, we’re rolling all the deferred maintenance up into one big project. Miri needs, um, needs a facelift. It needs some. It needs some action. It needs to be a some of their systems need to be upgraded. It needs to be modernized. Um, its list is long.

01:03:15,370	And when you roll all that up, this is just an example of a programmatic page out of the long range facility plan. So if you’re looking at it, you can see what we’re talking about.

01:03:30,570	All those things roll up into what we see as a $7 million project to to get Miri where it should be. And if you applied that list of needs to the priorities that I just articulated, really, um, four out of the five we see as needs for Miri that fit in those other buckets.

01:03:51,200	If you go to the next page there, Mister Barnhardt, um, we see that project checking four of those five boxes off. As far as the priority buckets that we’re talking about. And, um, really, um, that’s why we’re supporting that project and others in the recommendations. So, um, you have my deferred maintenance recommendation. The programmatic recommendation. We’ve taken those projects by school. We’ve provided the value for you.

01:04:15,170	And that, again, that’s that’s a raw value today. It’s not necessarily we got to work on those numbers to tighten them up, but taking those projects and tried to put them into the priority buckets or, or use the priority buckets to validate that this is a project worth our time and energy.

01:04:32,470	Um, and why it’s a needed work inside the district. So we’re recommending additional 66 to 77 million in programmatic work that we need to, um, just say, okay, if we’re going to do it and it’s important, how can we get it done? Um, the last one on that we don’t have a number for yet. We heard, um, honestly, I didn’t see this coming.

01:04:52,700	This was from our community meeting when we were at the century community meeting. Uh, very loud and clear people. The parents that were there at that meeting were we need to do something with the fine arts spaces at century.

01:05:11,230	And we’re absolutely comparing the auditorium spacious century to, um, the expansion that was done at DHS a few years ago. Um, the Legacy Auditorium. And then, more importantly, they definitely pointed out the Mandan project as really, um, exemplary examples of auditorium fine art spaces in our community that our kids can benefit from.

01:05:34,170	And the stark comparison of where century is at compared to those other three facilities. So, um, I do not have a price yet for that. That’s something we’re working on, if that’s what we want to consider. But our recommendation would include that we think that, okay, an auditorium space is worthy. Um, worthy of our energy and time to believe that’s a needed programmatic, um, recommendation.

01:05:57,170	So in totality, my recommendations tonight are the deferred maintenance that I presented in the slides. Over. That’s over 18 different sites in the district. The programmatic work extends over 19 different sites in the district. Um, so it’s a very large need, uh, across the district. But again, we’re quite large.

01:06:17,970	We have a lot of we have a lot of children in our school every day. We have a lot of community members in our schools every week, and we have a lot of space to take care of. So I guess if the board is seeing that you approve of this initial priority recommendation, there’s still time for that to work on it.

01:06:32,970	Um, then, um, it’s doctor, um, share in my charge to go out and probably come back to you because we’re not ready yet, but come back to you with how can we address these needs within our general fund and our building fund? How can do we need additional funds? How do we how do we make this happen?

01:06:50,030	And what is our timeline? Do we think we can reasonably get that done for you. So you can see like set a goal like, okay, we should have this done in this time period. So um, I would stand for any questions you may have.. Board members questions, comments. Mr..

01:07:07,570	Yeah. I just want to say thank you for all your work on this. I you know, I know this has been a lengthy process thus far, and we’re we have a lot more work to do on this.

01:07:26,770	Um, but appreciate getting the input from the community, um, to hear what’s important to our parents and students and then to really go through and look at what these, um, what the schools look like and what they really need. So really appreciate you going through it so thoroughly. Um, and we all go to the schools, so we see what, what they are. Um, here about the needs. Um, I absolutely believe the elevators are, are up.

01:07:51,430	Absolutely need to be like at the top of the list. Um, hearing the stories of kids being carried upstairs or teachers not being able to, to teach because they can’t get to their classrooms is is really a shame. So, um, but bottom line, appreciate your work on this and look forward to working through it. Thank you.

01:08:12,770	Miss Peterson. Thanks, President Hager. And again, you know something that you had said at the beginning of this? You know, first of all, this isn’t the first time we’re seeing this long range facilities plan. And it was interesting. At the last workshop, we changed the title.

01:08:28,900	But this is, it’s it’s really we’ve just been pushing it kind of we’ve actually just adding to it really because although I really appreciated the $3.7 million a year that we are actually able to continue to chip away at some of those pieces, especially in that high priority, it doesn’t allow us the amount of, of, um, dollars to do some of these more

01:08:47,100	extensive pieces. So I like how you separate it into programmatic, but really some of those are also included in some of that deferred maintenance. So that was appreciated. You know, I like that mirror example. But that really just for the public, if you want to go to any of those tabs, I think that that’s that’s really helpful.

01:09:01,830	Obviously we have and liked what Miss Presque said is that we’ve been in these schools, we’ve been hearing about it. We report out it when we do our school visits, although we get to talk about the fun things like, hopefully I’m going to be able to go to sunrises. Best week ever.

01:09:15,930	Um, you just got to go maybe dance your dance your shoes off at at Liberty. And we talk a lot about some of the academic needs. I mean, every time that we’re talking about budget, we talk about the number.

01:09:34,430	And I might be getting it wrong for sure, but like 85 to 87% of our budget is towards salary and benefits, which really only leaves a very narrow window to do all of this. And the fact that we’ve been able to do some of it with just without raising mills, and we’ve been able to build buildings, we’ve been able to add on when we when our growth demanded it, whether we’re talking Lincoln or Legacy or

01:09:50,430	even just to do some of the programming that I know is there, you can’t chip away. And if I chipped away at in my own home at things that we want to do, both cosmetically and just a little bit, you’re going to do some things.

01:10:05,370	But maybe I put new windows off because that’s a huge expense. It’s not going to take away the fact that I’m going to need to replace my windows at some point, even if I just replaced my my linoleum a different day. So I feel like that’s kind of what we’ve been doing.

01:10:20,830	We’ve been chipping away and doing the things that we can’t help because rooves are going to cave in or certain things, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that there isn’t needs that exist. So I’ve I’ve appreciated the extensive conversations that we’ve had really since the entire time that I’ve sat on the board, but also in some of the more stark workshops that we’ve had recently.

01:10:42,230	And really appreciate this long range facility plan that the Operational Excellence Team has put together or keep building on, and the community engagement. And and I really just think the majority of it is we’re going to have to figure out a way. So I’m looking forward to hearing that way.

01:10:58,230	So, doctor, are you just looking for a head nod to yes? If you’re giving me a head nod, this is the right direction. We’ll come back to you with kind of using this scope. Really, this is just helping define the scope. We’ll come back to you with a, um, an a more actionable plan.

01:11:14,230	This will take us a while. I mean, I know doctor has been meeting with with contractors and architects daily to try to get that done because we think that works important. So, um, it just it’s just going to take us a while.

01:11:29,400	We can’t get it done, but we’ll come back with a more actionable plan. And thank you for referring to that. I mean, your your comments are Member Peterson. I mean, if we all had it, we all have a budget. We all have a family budget. School has a budget.

01:11:45,770	Um, if you’re constantly having to fix the Reds, you don’t keep up with the greens and yellows that if you just address them in a timely fashion, they wouldn’t become reds. You wouldn’t get there. But when you’re constantly trying to fix the reds and and keep ahead of things, that it just makes it a challenge.

01:11:59,200	And I think that’s the, the, the, the challenge we’re in, and particularly in an environment where we are wanting to spend more to retain high quality employees and stuff, there’s not a lot of extra dollars there to to keep up with some of this work, so thank you. But that is all.

01:12:14,870	Well, thank you doctor and doctor for all your work on this. Um, yeah. Kind of look forward to the next steps, kind of seeing what you guys bring to us, bring to us next, uh,