School Board Update
October 24, 2019
Meeting Overview
Newly Approved Policies
- Policy 212 - School Board Member Development
- Policy 215 - Student Representative to the School Board
- Policy 216 - School Board Recognition and Accomplishment
- Policy 414 - Mandated Reporting of Child Neglect or Physical or Sexual Abuse
- Policy 713 - Student Activity Accounting
Additional Items Approved by the Board
- MSHSL Foundation Fund Request
- 2019-2021 Food Service Employee Contract
- Acceptance of Gifts and Donations - thank you to our community!
- 2019-20 Snow Removal Bid Awarded
- Approve Peer Solutions to begin Superintendent Search Actions
Full board agenda can be found here
School Board Showcase - Isanti Middle School/Minnesota Center
It's a GREAT day to be a Bluejacket!
Superintendent's Report - Dr. Rudolph
National Principals Month
October is National Principals Month. As you know, outstanding school leaders make for outstanding schools! We recognize, celebrate, and are thankful for the work of our amazing C-I principals who work tirelessly on behalf of every student every day.
Organizational Analysis Study
We are excited about an opportunity that has been recently offered to our school district. Dr. Roger Worner and Dr. Kay Worner (Worner Associates Inc.) have extended an offer to perform an Organizational Analysis Study for the Cambridge-Isanti School District. Drs. Roger and Kay Worner periodically conduct pro bono studies for select Minnesota school districts as a part of their commitment to provide community service throughout the state of Minnesota. In this case, they have selected us to do so. They are highly credible throughout the state and have conducted many studies for districts of all sizes and locations.
This opportunity would allow us to build an updated foundational understanding of our organization on many levels and would help the School Board by providing data that will help inform future planning for the school district.
District leadership considers this to be a great opportunity for our school district during a time when fiscal resources are extremely limited and are planning to begin the work next week. It is estimated that the study will take a couple of months to complete.
Professional Development - District Office Staff
At this month’s ESC luncheon, our professional development focused on an exercise to identify what we have in common across our varied and diverse jobs that drives our day to day service. This exercise, inspired by Simon Sinek, walked us through a process to clarify WHY we do what we do. In other words, WHY do our jobs exist? It was a great conversation that included office and administrative personnel from Community Education, Finance, Teaching and Learning, Human Resources, Food Services, and Buildings and Grounds. In the end it was determined that the WHY of the ESC is to support our district mission, students, staff, community members, and each other. It was agreed that service is at our core. Note: This is a similar exercise that our Principals and District Administrators have also gone through. Each conversation has been inspiring and rooted in our work to fulfill our district’s mission to serve every student every day and to support others.
Search and Hire Processes
We are in the middle of the search and hire process for both the Finance Specialist and Executive Administrative Assistant positions. We were pleased with the number of candidates that we had in both pools and are working on first rounds of interviews this week.
Telling Our Story
We have had great feedback from staff throughout the district regarding a challenge I gave them to tell our story. Over the past couple of weeks, I have received many emails, pictures, and social media tags that shared the celebration of amazing things happening throughout our district. From stories about students supporting others by showing kindness and caring, to a prospective Eagle Scout working in one of our schools to enhance our facilities (courtyard) and earn his badge, the stories are authentic, genuine, and heart-warming. We have amazing students and staff!
National Honor Society Induction Ceremony
On October 28 I will be speaking at our high school’s National Honor Society Induction Ceremony. I am looking forward to this event and am excited to address students who will be inducted. The four pillars of the National Honor Society include character, scholarship, leadership, and service. The event promises to be a great opportunity to honor and recognize the work of these great student leaders.
Mark Eisenbacher MASMS Award
Mark Eisenbacher, who retired in July of this year, was awarded the 2019 Lifetime Achievement Award at the annual MASMS conference held on October 3, 2019. The Minnesota Educational Facilities Management Professionals (also known as MASMS) is a professional organization committed to promoting excellence in the operation and care of educational facilities. It is a group of over 900 individuals in the areas of facilities/grounds/health & safety/operations for Minnesota K-12 and Higher Education organizations. Congratulations to Mark on his award.
Janet Coffin
Long time Finance Specialist, Janet Coffin has announced her plans to retire after serving the district for over 19 years. Janet is a dependable, hardworking employee that will be greatly missed!
Ann Venneman
The Executive Administrative Assistant to the Superintendent has announced her plans to resign from her position in order to pursue her dream of becoming a teacher. Ann too has been a dependable and hardworking employee who will be greatly missed. We wish her all the best! It is noted that Ann has agreed to work for us on a part-time basis (beginning November 01) until the transition of a new Executive Administrative Assistant is complete.
Administration Report Highlights
REPORT FROM: ADMINISTRATIVE SERVICES and HUMAN RESOURCES
by: Julia Lines
Wellness
The Wellness Committee met on October 2 and had further discussion on rolling out a bigger and more comprehensive monthly Passport to Wellness challenge. Once again we are partnering with the Chamber to purchase Chamber Bucks, employees who participate in the monthly challenges will be eligible to receive Chamber Bucks each month to be spent at local businesses. We are excited to offer this initiative which last year had the most reach for all employee groups, while at the same time supporting our local community businesses. The first Passport task sheet will go out to employees at the end of October to be completed during the month of November and the focus will be on financial wellness.
Insurance Committee
The insurance committee met on October 21, 2019 and reviewed the claims data for the past plan year as well as the claims data for the first few months of this new plan year. We finished out the July 1, 2018 - June 30, 2019 plan year very well and maintained our strong reserve status. We have also started out the new plan year in very good standing. We have very few high claims cases, and based on the analysis of these claims, it does not appear that any of the identified individuals will meet the $200,000 stop loss threshold, which is great news and means that employees are getting the treatment they need. It also means that if this holds true, we should not be looking at increases in our stop loss coverage. Mental health claims are also down, and this may be a direct reflection on the implementation of the Fairview Employee Assistance Program, which allows up to 6 counseling visits per employee per incident. Finally, the insurance committee is considering implementing a HealthJoy app, which is a virtual concierge service to help our members better understand their benefits, obtain free telehealth services, and also help navigate the daunting health care landscape.
REPORT FROM: FINANCE AND OPERATIONS
by: Christopher Kampa
Finance
The preliminary levy was certified at the last board meeting. We will hold a truth-in-taxation meeting with Isanti County and the City of Cambridge in December, and then finalize the levy at the December 19, 2019 School board meeting. The auditors were back on site this month and the finance team continues to be dedicated to ensuring we have a successful audit process and are doing an exceptional job to-date. Managing our budget is our top priority and we have done a lot of work to analyze our financial decisions and manage our expenses in a financially responsible manner.
Building & Grounds
The custodial and grounds staff are doing an outstanding job keeping our sites ready for each and every day in Bluejacket country. Staff is adapting well to the new every other day method of cleaning. Custodial staff continues to take care of all of the main spaces and going the extra mile to ensure the needs of each and every site are maintained. We have begun to prepare our needs and preliminary plans for fiscal year 2020 projects.
New Facility
Rain, rain, go away. The continued deluge of rain has presented challenges at the site, but the construction team has come up with creative ways to adapt. Multiple walls have been constructed and the building structure is starting to take shape. We are still on schedule to complete the building shell before winter hits. We have also assembled a working group to outfit the building’s furniture, fixtures and equipment.
REPORT FROM: COMMUNITY EDUCATION
by: Dave Maurer
Blue League Robotics
Staff continue to work with student representatives to develop a Blue League Robotics offering for 4th and 5th graders. Much of the work is being organized by high school robotics members with the planned offering to start some time in October.
Early Childhood Partnership
Staff and community members continue to work at raising funds for the Early Childhood Partnership for Isanti County foundation. This foundation is a part of the ifInitiative Foundation and will fund the continuing work of the Isanti County Early Childhood Coalition.
REPORT FROM: TEACHING & LEARNING
by: Dr. Brenda Damiani
Professional Development
Differentiation for licensed staff was one of the goals of the September 30 professional development day. The day began with all licensed staff together for a presentation on the Marzano Focused Framework to ensure a consistent message. After that, the staff participated in grade-span sessions which concentrated on writing growth plans, using student evidence to guarantee learning, and preparing for eLearning days. In the afternoon, 26 teams met and concentrated on learning specific to their academic content and position. Feedback was positive about how the learning impacted their professional practice, and the day was an overall success.
Differentiation of professional development continues in the new Flexible Professional Learning program. Staff are already participating in online professional development opportunities and proposing ideas for their own specific learning. Face-to-face sessions will begin in November. Flexible professional development is off to a great start. We will continue to offer new courses until March 2020.
Data & Assessment
The District Assessment Committee will be meeting for the first time this year on Tuesday, October 29th. Topics on the agenda include, district-wide assessments through the Schoology Assessment Management Platform (AMP), Assessment Portfolios in Skyward, and parent communication on purpose of assessments. Fall testing came to a close a few weeks ago with much success. We utilized a testing team, comprised of interventionists, Title teachers, and Reading Corp members to go school to school to complete the new DIBELS assessment measures for K-5. A special thank you to this group for making this a great success. We received positive feedback from the teaching staff for the efficiency of the assessment and the very limited disruption to instructional time.
Technology
As we are finishing up the month of October, the technology department has been focusing on crossing t’s and dotting i’s related to the printing implementation that happened this fall. We have now transitioned all district offset copy requests to an online version only. This will allow us to more easily track who is utilizing the district offset services that we provide for document copies to our teachers and staff.
We are also implementing “Tech Tip Tuesday” on a bi-weekly schedule. The tech tip topics covered thus far this year are: scanning a document and submitting to offset; did you know - quick links webpage footer; Windows P will allow a user to quickly change from duplicate screen projection to extended mode.
Rance and the team have been diligently working on installing our new switches that have been a part of the Category 2 ERATE network replacement project over the last 5 years. This is increasing our network speeds internally from 100MB connections to 1GB connections with 10GB speeds between internal closets.
We have also been actively involved in the Education Learning Center construction meetings which has allowed us to effectively plan for the new technology that will be installed. This project includes everything from the classroom designs to security (doors, alarms, and cameras) to network designs such as cabling, switches, and appropriate power requirements. The current classroom design is for most rooms to have a flat panel TV installed instead of a projector and/or projector with SmartBoard. This can be done for the same funding amount as a projector.
REPORT FROM: STUDENT SUPPORT SERVICES
by: Julie Williams
Special Education
With the professional development day on September 30, I was able to meet with several staff groups and facilitate training. One of the groups was learning about our new assessment library which is really exciting! With our move out of the RRSEC, we shifted special education evaluation assessments to our district. In the past, we were purchasing some assessments through the co-op and some on our own. Pearson now offers DALS (digital assessment library system). This allows us access to an online platform, print material and streamlined process for scoring to add to efficiency. As we dig into this vast resource, we will be able to look at what assessments we are using and why. This will create efficiencies for our staff.
As we have moved into the school year, our special education staff have done a wonderful job with meeting student needs! We have had several students at many of our buildings that have exhibited high behaviors. Myself, along with the special ed coordinators and behavior analysts have been working closely with admin, staff and families so we can meet the needs of our students and have the proper training in place.
MDE Review
I will continue to update our progress related to our Corrective Action Plans (CAPs) as part of our MDE Review from the 2018-2019 school year. I was able to present to staff meetings at each building during September/October, with the exception of CIHS, which will happen in November. At the meeting, I shared information related to timeline requirements for special education evaluations and the requirement for pre-referral interventions and data collection for students who are showing some needs for a special education evaluation. Special Ed will continue to work with Teaching & Learning in order to enhance our process for the student assistance teams at the building levels.
Contact Us
Email: dist-communications@c-ischools.org
Website: c-ischools.org
Location: 625 Main Street North, Cambridge, MN, USA
Phone: 763-689-6188