[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:01] Okay, welcome to our district boardwork meeting tonight. All board members except for Mark Grower present, along with Superintendent Dalton and business administrator Kerry Reese. We want to welcome everybody that's here with us. We'll begin by having a reverence by President Colton Henderson, after which we'll have the pleasure of allegiance.
[0:40] We pray that throughout the world there will be an
[0:50] understanding in soft hearts.
[0:52] We are grateful for all those in our communities who sacrifice and give so many of themselves
[0:57] and pray that will bless them for their efforts in making this a better community.
[1:02] We pray for those who work with you, and I will bless them to be guided and inspired to help them as they grow and develop and learn.
[1:10] They'll be guided in making good choices and keeping eternal perspectives.
[1:17] Again, we thank you for all that we are blessed with, and that's what I, the spirit to you, we hear this evening, to guide and direct good decisions.
[1:24] It's nice blessing to be ready for help and do so the name of our city of Jesus Christ.
[1:29] David.
[1:30] Good evening.
[1:30] Thank you.
[1:34] I pledge allegiance to the July of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands.
[1:41] One nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all.
[1:51] Thank you.
[1:52] President for that.
[1:56] Okay, public comment on school fees.
[2:03] You guys sure?
[2:04] Pretty expensive.
[2:06] One, two, going on.
[2:08] Chad's got a lot of fees ahead.
[2:13] Okay, we'll now have our counselors here.
[2:17] We'll have some counselor presentations.
[2:19] So I don't know if we want to go rock paper scissors
[2:22] and go first.
[2:33] Okay, so I just did a couple like pictures of some highlights that we have, so let me know if you have any questions or anything, but we had some good things going to the school.
[2:42] I think we've tried a lot
[2:46] of days, which I thought worked out better for a whole weekend instead of dressing up and more things to dissipate things like that.
[2:52] and ECYC was going to be in line with this year's gave us five Amazon gift cards
[2:57] and the last supply from Amazon are from Mark Counseling.
[3:02] And what I did is I had an email question today and the kids had answered back
[3:06] from a minute and trying as well.
[3:08] And so we gave them two kids a day winners.
[3:10] So a lot of the dress up days that we gave to you.
[3:12] I thought it would be well.
[3:14] I don't know if you guys heard from your kids right away around.
[3:16] We had started with the assembly again on Monday.
[3:19] We did the 90s, 10 to get this 90s 10 class cat podcast and it was pretty much easy to talk.
[3:24] And it was, I was crying for a better start and fun.
[3:28] It was one of those kind of assemblies with those that I found.
[3:30] I was ultimately into a lot and they put it in perspective.
[3:35] I went through both of them.
[3:35] It was really good to start it out, went through there.
[3:37] So that was a whole week.
[3:39] And then the next slide I think is, so we've been trying to do a few more tours.
[3:45] me and Amber and I were taught in the end of the year. It's always good when we take kids out
[3:49] and they get to see things because they don't really know what they don't know. But the hard
[3:52] part is it's fitting it in because you've got to get the building and you've got to get things going.
[3:57] So we actually are doing two Southwest and Dixie Tech Tours, it's shadowing one of the fall and then we're
[4:02] going to do one next March of 24, so I guess two weeks from today. We're going to take another
[4:07] group and then we took a group of kids to U Pat Tech and run a lot of programs they had to kind of
[4:12] actually program and other, it was kind of a health science
[4:14] field trip and we went and learned about all those programs
[4:16] stuff that we didn't know about and then I'm starting a program
[4:19] educator rising for students that are interested in being
[4:23] a teacher's running low and I have set the teachers away.
[4:26] Actually, once they do competitions, I had no idea what
[4:29] this was all about, but since we knew we just went
[4:31] observed, I got to be a judge and stuff and so it was really
[4:34] cool, but just to see kids get out, I don't even know
[4:36] this is here. So trying to do more and more of that stuff
[4:39] just because at the every time we go, my boy is a good
[4:41] example, we went into this fall and he's top I'm going to
[4:44] subtlest it into their own motive in the fall and out.
[4:47] So, just when they see and see what they're offering programs,
[4:50] they always have sparks, their attention.
[4:52] So, we'll keep trying to add to that, I think it's hard to pull
[4:54] off sometimes, but another couple of times we did took kids
[4:57] from the valley, you know, over to the subtlest I think,
[5:00] basically.
[5:02] So, another big thing we do in the fall is you talk college
[5:05] application week and it usually ends up going into two or three
[5:08] weeks for us just because by the time you get to college
[5:10] is here but you can see what college were able to come in person and then we had a day
[5:14] after when we meet with the college that weren't able to come like weaver was able to come
[5:20] down the Q test day, the only test day coming here at University of Utah, if you were not
[5:25] the last week, if you want to apply those schools, but I thought it was kind of cool, we had
[5:29] see what we counted today, it's 18% we're seeing to apply at least one either next school
[5:33] or college, so we're just trying to get them to go and hear the predictions and then they
[5:37] can apply it and defer it or hold it as they will.
[5:41] It's always good.
[5:42] We'll have college application links or college application
[5:46] on the terms that way.
[5:47] And then I just updated this a little bit.
[5:49] As you can see, I thought it was cool.
[5:51] We kind of ran a tracking in between the programs
[5:54] that we're offering.
[5:56] And we got more kids this year than doing the programs.
[5:58] A little bit less than the associates.
[6:00] If we knew the last year was a really high group
[6:02] that they tested all the way through, we'd have more.
[6:05] But we still have 22 students
[6:06] that are being there so such an achieve, which is really, really cool.
[6:10] But when we go down last year, we got to one in C&A, we got seven seniors this year,
[6:14] though, we have another well-being, we have more in cosmology, good by the time there,
[6:19] done with this summer, we'll have five seniors, though, I'm graduate.
[6:22] We had two students that graduated with cosmology already, which is,
[6:26] what's the first one we've ever had to make it through even though I have to go back after
[6:30] that one.
[6:30] That's great.
[6:31] And then we had one culinary student that graduated, she actually got a student of a year
[6:36] to culinary program over Southwest Texas, it was really cool. She drove home.
[6:39] That's really just, there's an easy way. I don't know if you guys, if you guys know,
[6:43] if you see her, if you guys know. Who was it? It was an easy way. Oh, okay.
[6:47] But yeah, she did a really good job over the next, so she's gathering with her culinary.
[6:51] And then we started when we did the wildland fire this year through Southwest Texas.
[6:54] We've got a couple of seniors. So those are our total numbers, those glasses, those are just seniors
[6:57] that will graduate with their certificates. And then we were still, which is, I thought,
[7:02] we have a few more seniors this year, 75, but we're still right there just very low percentage
[7:07] that are graduating with sub-sort and certificate or their general terms associates, which is
[7:11] really cool. I think to be above you 50%. So lots of kids that are taking some of those classes
[7:17] and they're starting college classes, but those ones are actually 57% of seniors are graduating with something.
[7:23] Wow, that's awesome. Yeah, that's awesome. It's cool. Man, the people are always nice. Oh, and then the
[7:29] and we'll start making that push right now.
[7:31] We have a few companies, we do scholarships,
[7:34] and so we give universities gifts to apply,
[7:36] and I said that to let it all the local businesses,
[7:38] some of you guys maybe are actually not in here,
[7:40] but he uses charity incentives probably,
[7:42] and he's spent all the money here,
[7:44] so I know I'm not getting his scholarship.
[7:45] I'm just here,
[7:47] the local scholarship is really cool.
[7:48] I wish the kids could all use the university scholarship
[7:50] and money, but that's,
[7:52] you know you have a kid that applies it every school,
[7:54] it gets like a full ride,
[7:55] it makes that number really high,
[7:57] and they can, of course, go to one school.
[7:58] We don't really get all that money, but when you have kids are doing amazing, you get lots of scholarships
[8:03] And then the local was a really united thousand local was just cool and that just goes back to our kids
[8:07] And then we have to get national, which they get like the Daniel's scholarship or something those are full-ride usually
[8:13] You know with their room aboard and everything so it makes that really high number two for our kids and the local so that last year
[8:19] We started getting some of the local scholarships in but really made a call start making a push-shipping
[8:25] and get ready for my scholarship towards night,
[8:28] but we went over $200 last year to do what's offered
[8:30] to our senior principal.
[8:32] That was really cool.
[8:32] That's another thing we do in the council on the part of it.
[8:36] I don't know if it's not on there's an answer.
[8:39] So that's kind of some of the big things we've been pushing.
[8:42] I don't know if you guys have any questions or anything.
[8:44] I think things are going well.
[8:45] We're going to appreciate it.
[8:46] We're going to have Amber help me.
[8:48] She's like really good.
[8:49] I call these slides of colorful.
[8:51] You might notice the difference, but I don't hear what she's
[8:53] like my scribble on her face forever.
[8:55] She's really good at this stuff so she does a lot of that stuff for me.
[8:58] She's helped a lot in the show with seniors, which she's been good.
[9:01] We didn't have a, what they call the last time we were going to get it back, if I should.
[9:05] We had university double sponsors and we've come up with seniors last couple of years and we didn't have it.
[9:10] And Amber's been in and so she's been a big help to, because she gets a little crazy track in all of it and what they need,
[9:15] even more than any transcripts and stuff so it's been really good but I think these are going well.
[9:20] Well, we appreciate you.
[9:23] I just want to make a comment, Mr. Castinoa, I would like to compliment you on how you have
[9:30] incorporated the concurrent enrollment into your counseling with your students.
[9:34] The student walks into your class and they don't have a badger number.
[9:36] You know who to contact.
[9:38] You kind of get on their computer, have them go in and register for their classes.
[9:41] You walk them through those courses, you tell them which class they need to start with,
[9:45] which class they need to take the next year, and your ability to counsel with those students
[9:50] is one of the key driving forces
[9:53] for the number of students in the current enrollment
[9:55] and the success that they have.
[9:57] And before I know that was in another building and all that,
[10:00] but you've learned those skill sets to help students
[10:03] and it's really been an advantage for our kids
[10:06] to have a counselor who has that much knowledge
[10:09] to help them through the higher ed portion
[10:12] because it's difficult to navigate
[10:14] and you've been able to make that easy for students to do.
[10:18] So thank you, Mr. Castino.
[10:21] One other thing on this local scholarship piece I will just add,
[10:25] I want a student graduate with an associate degree,
[10:29] or a general ed certificate, the money from like say,
[10:32] a $1,000-a-gart Cain scholarship, that money is now going towards their junior year.
[10:38] And so it's not just a freshman year.
[10:39] Usually students can go, they don't have any college classes,
[10:42] they go to college and they have that freshman year,
[10:44] they can get enough local money or some one-time scholarships to pay
[10:47] for the freshman year, but the next year is when it's difficult.
[10:50] Our kids have the concurrent enrollment and they start as a junior.
[10:53] All of that money goes to their junior year, so they have enough money to about make it
[10:56] through that first year of college, which is junior and then they have that senior year to
[11:00] figure it out.
[11:01] They're far enough down the road that if they do have to take student loans or something, it's
[11:05] something that's manageable.
[11:06] So yeah, we appreciate our community partners and you do a phenomenal job, Mr. Kirsten.
[11:12] So thank you.
[11:13] Thank you.
[11:13] I appreciate you guys, like I said, it's all more and more of these programs we're offering.
[11:17] You guys that are putting me in, I just get to have, put it in those spots.
[11:21] It's a good team effort, for sure.
[11:23] Yes, well thank you. We appreciate you.
[11:26] Okay, great job.
[11:27] Thanks, Sue.
[11:27] All right, we're super.
[11:30] Can I just add that chat is amazing, by the way.
[11:33] He's great. He's great.
[11:34] He's my kids with all those things all over him.
[11:37] He's just juggled all of our crazy things very well.
[11:40] Yeah, he's great.
[11:44] All right, I made this in Canvas, hopefully it comes across in power.
[11:50] So you can just go to the next one.
[11:52] Do you want to run this?
[11:53] Do you want to run it?
[11:54] Oh, great.
[11:56] Thank you.
[11:56] Yeah.
[11:58] All right, so I, and seven-tenths counselor at the middle school, and three-tenths at the high
[12:03] school.
[12:04] So I get to work with Jack, which is great because you know, so much, and I'm learning so
[12:08] much about him, especially this year, helping with the seniors.
[12:10] I learned a lot, and it is so much work for all of those seniors today, so that's been a really good experience for me, I don't know if it has been for Chad, but I just want to go through the three goals that we set this year and the programs that we do support those.
[12:28] So one of the first goals we set was to decrease chronic absenteeism. That's pretty high.
[12:32] You can see this circle part right there, 32% was our absenteeism rate last year, which absenteeism is high everywhere across the nation, but that's a fairly high number.
[12:46] So we said to kind of figure out what's going on there. We had a few different programs.
[12:51] We ran this one doughnut splire. We had a competition where which classes had the most attendance and things like that rewarded them.
[12:58] We have our hope squad which, you know, tries to bring me into the school to help kids feel connected to school.
[13:04] And then our teen center has been a really big part of providing resources for students.
[13:09] So I slide on this.
[13:12] Team Center, which you guys have probably heard a lot about already, is really awesome at the middle school.
[13:17] Our director has been great.
[13:20] You'll see that we provide, you know, things like food and stuff like that for students who don't have enough of that.
[13:25] that we track everything that goes in and out.
[13:29] We have clothing.
[13:30] That's been really awesome actually at the middle school.
[13:32] Kids come to school with a dirty sweatshirt
[13:35] and we'll go wash it and they can stay in school.
[13:39] They have them kids who are weaving
[13:41] because they had to miss half their school.
[13:43] That was kind of a lot of kids.
[13:44] So anyway, the teens that are placed such a big role
[13:47] and I think having the right person in there
[13:49] is helpful.
[13:49] You can see that picture on that bottom left there.
[13:51] There's like the teens that are small.
[13:53] There's just kids in there all the time.
[13:54] So, that's a pretty awesome part to help increase our attendance.
[13:59] Our second goal was to increase math rights score for students for economically disadvantaged.
[14:06] In all of the goals that we set, they like us to set specific goals towards a certain demographic
[14:12] but all of the programs are geared towards serving every student as well.
[14:16] So some of that that we try to do is like college and career awareness and that helps a lot
[14:22] with students having some motivation to better school.
[14:26] So for Second Grade, we have a career there.
[14:28] We just had a bunch of the community show up for us
[14:30] and that was awesome.
[14:32] A good variety of people too.
[14:35] And for eighth grade, we're having reality town,
[14:38] sort of like a giant came up life.
[14:39] So we'll have that in a couple of weeks here.
[14:42] We also go on college tours.
[14:44] So the seventh graders go to the Utah Tech and Dixie Tech
[14:48] and then our eighth graders go to Southwest Tech.
[14:50] and go to this ropes course which has been really effective in building some community of all the students.
[14:56] So that's pretty awesome. We also do classroom lessons.
[15:00] Well, biweekly I go into classrooms and we talk about different things. Sometimes it's social or emotional things like kind of friends and how to have coping skills and sometimes it's working on you science, so like helping their career interests and seeing what they're good at and what they can do in their lives. And coping skills will focus on, you know, rice testing is coming up, right? So we'll focus on what are coping skills we can use while testing and are feeling kind of stressed out. Things like that.
[15:29] We also have makeup hours that we grow at the end of every term.
[15:34] These are grades up.
[15:36] The last goal is to increase 8th grade CCR attendance to 95%.
[15:40] So that's those meetings that we have given them for 9th grade.
[15:43] And I think these are so important.
[15:46] All of these amazing programs that exist because of so many people,
[15:51] they're not going to get used to kids on their own.
[15:53] So I feel like 8th grade is a great time.
[15:55] and you are to get a parent in the school,
[15:59] which doesn't happen very frequently.
[16:01] You get a parent in the student,
[16:02] and I meet with them for about a half hour.
[16:04] You can see all these flyers up here.
[16:06] We talked about everything from current enrollment,
[16:08] all these tech programs, sports, things like upward-bound,
[16:12] drill programs, and other information college students,
[16:15] all those types of things,
[16:16] and all of the different programs that exist
[16:18] to help motivate them to be in school and stay in school.
[16:23] So we did work this year on developing
[16:24] in these four-year plans, which is something that we're supposed to do as school counselors
[16:28] and just helps, we send that information up to the high school, then Mr. Casano knows
[16:34] what this student is like.
[16:36] We know a lot of the kids in here, we all know, but how well you know them, you know, depends
[16:43] on the kids.
[16:43] So we're a small school, but we're not a small school.
[16:45] So these are helpful, I think, for Mr. Casano to know who's coming into this school.
[16:52] And I just put on here why it matters, all of these efforts when I sit in these classes
[17:01] or in these meetings with these students.
[17:04] I hear what they need and what their parents are seeing is lacking.
[17:08] And I think that really informs a lot of the decisions we're making.
[17:12] I put these three new flyers that Mr. Wood just said to us,
[17:16] the three new programs this coming year that are coming out let's see what do we have we have
[17:23] the wildland fire which started this year but it's going to be a full year course next year
[17:27] an electrician course and that's pharmacy tech thank you so pharmacy tech programs so you know
[17:35] these programs have been sought after by us at the schools that people in your area are getting
[17:44] funding for and I think it is just a really big team effort to get these and all
[17:48] these programs really give these kids direction I think and there's a lot more
[17:53] kids applying for even tech schools now that I think is directly related to
[17:58] them seeing what's available. I also put where you see it's circle this says two
[18:04] years of world language you know so a lot of the parents who are in this year are
[18:08] saying there's no language it's a school there's no language it's a school what do
[18:11] we do and you know it's important that's so that's something I've realized oh our high schools
[18:15] is currently on her language what do we need to do to get that and so I just think these
[18:20] these meetings are super important for our parents and brothers and to see what our school needs.
[18:25] All right and then the last thing I just want to talk about was part of our job as counselors is
[18:29] to respond to the legislation that comes out and I feel like we've done a lot of that this year.
[18:34] One was for the suicide process that we have at our schools a bunch of us collaborated
[18:40] So I've created counselors, administrators, therapists,
[18:44] everybody kind of helped figure that out
[18:46] and make sure that we're keeping students safe
[18:49] and following the law.
[18:51] So that was really important, and then, you know,
[18:54] actually, you guys have pretty bad online classes,
[18:55] and those are really big deal.
[18:57] And there's a lot of opportunity in it,
[18:58] and a lot of barriers to that.
[19:00] And so, just, I'm going to leave you to all
[19:02] work together and get that out.
[19:04] And it's been important this year.
[19:05] So, there's just highlights of some of the things that we're looking on.
[19:10] Well, thank you, Mrs. Hooper. We appreciate you. I hear very good things. So, yeah, thank you.
[19:16] I'm going to go back up one slide. What she didn't say is she was the key person to help us with the developed suicide ideation for our district.
[19:26] So, she put that all together and we got the team together and I think we have one of the best processes in the state.
[19:32] And then she also jumped into the SOEP, those are online classes that students can take through USBE,
[19:39] and there were some discrepancies with how to code those students correctly
[19:42] to ensure that we get funding coming to our district when students enroll in those classes.
[19:47] Mrs. Hooper was the first one to jump into that question.
[19:50] The state came and did a training on with us on Friday and they're like,
[19:54] because of her questions and what she was able to implement,
[19:58] it's actually helped districts all across the state.
[20:01] to Code of Crepe, so we're still working on that.
[20:04] And just like this morning, we were talking about it.
[20:06] They didn't know for sure if they were gonna be
[20:08] presenting tonight and I said,
[20:09] do you sure you wanna do this stage?
[20:10] Like yeah, I can make it happen.
[20:11] She's very positive, she's very proactive.
[20:14] Your PCCRs are so important to get parents and students
[20:17] on the right track as they go through high school.
[20:22] And I just heard great things about that.
[20:23] So you have 90% over 90% of your parents
[20:25] are sitting down and getting a plan
[20:27] for their students and they're all in our high school.
[20:32] So thank you for all that you do. You're a great resource to our students and also to our district.
[20:42] Thank you.
[20:48] You're welcome to go or stay for the long haul.
[20:53] So we will be approving your plans. The board will be considering those as an action item.
[21:00] So if you need anything from me, as a result of that approval process, just let me know.
[21:06] Yeah, but we have like a letter.
[21:07] Yep.
[21:08] I'll get that too.
[21:09] Three year review in like a week or so.
[21:13] Okay.
[21:14] Thanks.
[21:14] Thank you.
[21:15] See you.
[21:15] Thanks, Colton.
[21:16] Yeah.
[21:23] Board goals.
[21:25] Anything on there we want to talk about.
[21:27] I'll cover a little later, but we're going to need to review, revisit the board goals because
[21:31] of changing some legislation relating to third grade reading goals, and we can talk about
[21:36] that later. Okay. All right. We'll just go ahead and go down through the agenda.
[21:42] Any education articles?
[21:48] There are a few there. There's one about Weber School
[21:51] District, how they're addressing declining student enrollment. The first attempt was
[21:55] to release all part-time teachers, like 20-something in the district and
[22:00] their parents on there saying how great these teachers are and how that wasn't
[22:04] their right choice. We're obviously not advocating for that just as a point of
[22:08] information for the board and the other one was Utah Fits all voucher funding
[22:13] debate that was going on during the legislative session. So just some information
[22:18] items for you. Okay, thank you. The consent agenda items will need to to approve the
[22:26] minutes.
[22:29] Prove the check registry and we have letters and recognition. Or do we? No
[22:38] that was awesome.
[22:44] I can anticipate that next month. And then some hiring
[22:49] recommendations. I'm sure you've all seen, no, it was a super-tinsent of that.