we'll move to the next review, which is policy three, five, four, eight on bus safety. brian, you're ready to
go ahead. general directors, policy three, five, four, eight is on bus safety. i've mentioned the state previously in committee. this one actually originates back to the time when the district purchased a policy manual, april twenty fifth, nineteen. 1967, so it has origins going back quite a long time. It's of course.
This is one that's also reviewed, not annually, but on, I believe, three or five year cycle. And so this is giving us the opportunity to look more closely and wanting to get any feedback, if there was some from the policy committee. So again, we have senior officer, parent as well as Director of Transportation here, if there are questions that that's our review. Thank you. Right. Committee members, are there any questions or comments on this policy?
Thank you, Chair and thank you, Ryan for the information my question, I guess around safety a little bit more if we could talk about the driver safety. I mean,
I've seen my own eyes sometimes how busses are not following,
say traffic lights and maybe not crossing different lanes and things like that. How do we monitor, I guess the best. How do we monitor when the drivers not following city rules as far as driving and speed limits and the safety chair, normal director let me I'm going to start quick just to make sure I get this word before passing that to the actual expert. But I do, do think it's important for the audience here, a large audience, to remember that oftentimes there are hundreds of school busses that are not MPSS and sometimes it does take.
Advocate in that. So to answer your question, Director Alamein, we do have cameras that are in our fleet right now, in our contractors, as well as our district fleet, we are implementing new technology, the Samsara dual camera, which is going to be wonderful. It will also be live, where we can actually the safety managers at the Transportation Department can visually watch the driver live. And it will also if a driver is on their phone. It will alert to the transportation managers as well as the driver themselves and it will be an audio that says, you're on your phone or something like that. So, we are moving forward and we're evolving with our technology, which is exciting, but.
Speak to the hand up and the relationship between the driver and school.
And again, I really like that you're using expectations, because I've been in the industry for a long time, and it came up from the private
side. I've been in the public sector for a little almost four years, with Minneapolis being my first public sector position, and I
absolutely love it. I have always used the word expectation with the students when we spoke about school bus safety, because they're expected to act a certain way in school. They're expected to act a certain way at home, in the community, and that follows through
onto the bus. There's expectations. So I like that. I don't like the word rules. I think as soon as somebody hears the word rules, the defense comes up. So expectations, the code of conduct, or expectations, would be the driver. We're really trying to form a partnership between the driver, transportation and the schools. So we have.
i'm aware of. so typically, you know, on the special ed transportation, if there is a student that is aid required, there is a school aid that is on that route. if the school aid, this just happened today,
there was a northeast middle school student that is aid required on one of our routes. and the aids, they're pretty slim there with substitute aids so we place one of our middles or our Minneapolis, transportation, school bus aides on that special ed route, just so they had coverage, but because of.
Education, about
bus safety from your students, but if you could maybe address those couple of things, good questions. So by law, it needs to be once a year. So Minneapolis, obviously it's in their policy, so it's twice a year, I think once a year would be beneficial, and I would really Lisa back, Executive Director of Transportation. I brought this to her as well. It's, it's within the first couple weeks of school, which, to me is, is a kind of a very challenging time for everybody, right? Parents and families are starting to get their schedules.
Teachers are starting to, you know, get to know their students. I would really like to implement this either
before school starts, like, especially with our kindergarteners, do kindergarten roundup and do a bus safety for them prior to school starting, and then in October is National School Bus Safety Week, and I would like to implement our safety. We bus safety, our district bus safety that week in October where we can really focus on bus safety. Because what I it's very important, and I really think the students deserve, and as well as our drivers, we need to know, and they need to know what their expectations are and the bus safety and why the drivers say, please sit down and you know, if their eyes are taken off the road, what can happen. So my goal is really to work hard on that and orchestrate that so it's something that is a priority before school starts for our kindergar.
And then I know, when I taught in Minneapolis, we followed up at the Fall parent teacher conferences. We have forms available if there
were things that people had not returned yet. It was here, you know, I was middle school, your advisory, or your classroom or whatever. These are your list of kiddos that still need to return. And here's the forms that they need. So if they come, please try to get them to do it here. So I think there is, I think there is some effort on that, but it's primarily through the sites. Yeah, thanks, both. Yeah. Just it was so different that transition plus, and we know we had an actual mobility class, so it was, I don't want different at each school. I guess the last thing I don't know if either one of you have had any conversations with the with the city about some of the bus stops and shortening
the distance that students have to walk in some of.
And use new technology through both our GPS system as well as our new routing software to have more real time interface with public safety data that the city does provide us for what's going on in digital neighborhoods. We do have some parameters set around shortening walk zones based on we do the walk excuse me not, walk zones shorting the distance to walk to your bus stop based on what's going on in the neighborhood, that I think this new technology will really help us streamline into our process. So I'm excited to see that, but I appreciate the offer to have the conversations with the other local authorities, to be able to make sure that we are communicating a strategic level of how that really is planned out for our students. Yeah thanks I appreciate that actually answered my follow up question, too. So yeah, thank you, everybody. Thank you, Grant. I have just a couple of questions. First of all, Lynn, Director alanine was talking about the accountability.
That happens in their school. But my guess is it's a combination of those types of positions, social workers, behavior deans, potentially some other student support positions. I mean, there are some staff who serve as a transportation coordinator. It's possible they might do a little bit of that, but it really probably depends, school by school. Okay, thank you. Just a couple more questions. In, 3548, a, two, b3, it talks about the drivers, respecting students and and part of that later on in that piece of the policy, it talks about data privacy. How is that information conveyed to our contracted drivers.
Case for we allowed an hour just to answer any questions, to go over expectations that we have this school year, things that are changing, the new technology that is going to be implemented this school year, just to be more face to face and not behind a computer screen, so they know that this is this is serious you. These are our students that you're transporting, and there's an expectation. So thank you. And then I just have one last question, also in 3548, A, this is under 3b. 10. It mentions referral to school resource officers. Do we have any school resource officers anymore? Chair Norville directors? No. And we did make a set of edits some years ago, and I will make sure we get this adjustment made. It was just a miss. Thank you.
Any other questions or discussion?
Thank you, thanks. Thank you everyone.
Thank you for the presentation. Thank you for answering all of our questions and
thank you. Thank you everyone for the discussion for our final item. As I shared in our last business meeting, I would like to open a discussion for committee members to bring forward potential policy priority ideas for 2025 this will help shape our calendar and plan for the year policy, policy ideas brought forward by board members will, of course, be done in addition to regular reviews, any needed updates for legal reasons or otherwise, and continued work on our vision to align and refine our policy manual, I'll now open the floor for discussion. Please let me know if you'd like to share about any policies you want to process this year. Applause,
you. One thing I can say, didn't really go on finding specific policies on there. I do know that I would like us to be taking a look again at just sort of what we heard here today, just a little bit more on our student safety and just with our student staff. And if there's anything that we need to strengthen, or anything that we need to barriers to being a little bit more successful than we are, I guess would be one thing I would say, Thank you. Go ahead. Yes. Thank you. Well, travel, I think, would be important that's come up. And another thing that I've had questions about are which might be connected to all this right now are orchards or gardens on school property, so I can go through to find a specific I actually have that one director Callahan, what is the Same one? And it's 7000 a definitions, gardens, thank you. I will add that director Cirillo asked we would look at policy 1692, on site. Councils and I asked director Cirillo to come up with some specifics that we because we have discussed that before in policy, I would like for us to have a focus on what we're asking staff to bring to us, rather than just saying give us an update. So are we talking about how parents are recruited? Are we talking about how often they meet? But I don't know. So I did ask Director serrio If she would give some specifics with that, because I know that that policy is very important to her, so she was going to get back to me on that as well. I I'm sorry. Thank you. So just a couple questions, one looking at the Community Relations, and again, it's a number of policies under that. So definitely plan to take more time to take a look at But there seem to be a number of them that are outdated, and so wanting, again, to just understand the time frame on how do we renew or go back and revise these different policies? But there are a number, and I will go back and get a little more detailed information for you. Chair, normal, but can you explain again, just the policy around how we look at our policies? Can you ask that again, I'm sorry, the timeframe, I think Brian Halloween and who's been on the policy committee, you've heard us speak to the like cadence at which we can review policies is directly connected how many policies we have, and it's part of why there's no set number. That's like the perfect number. But we do have many, many, many, many more policies in the other school district, which does make it hard for us to go through. I think we'd be at a pace of, you know, more than 10 to 12 every single policy committee meeting if we were to look at them all, because we still have more than 200 and that's not even including our regulations. So I think that's part of the intention of the process. Working with MSBA to say, well, here are things that are traditionally a policy, and other things might be procedures or might be in the employee handbook or might be in other spaces. We have a set of policies that are like required by the policy itself to have a review every year, every three years or every five years. So we built those into the schedule so that we have a specific month that we review it. Beyond that, we have attempted in several, maybe past five years, to come up with systems to be able to do it, but it has always been so many policies at a time, so I think the approach that would make a lot of sense is to keep going chapter by chapter and saying like, do we need these policies? Is it useful to us and the if you recall, there was an EDA conducted at one point where their recommendation was to have fewer policies, because we did not. We were not able to give attention to nor can it, nor is it fair to the community to sit and look through a couple 100 policies and regulations to really be able to understand what the Policy Governance approach of the board might be. So to answer your question, there's two paths. Obviously, a board member through the chair could say, let's review these. We are reviewing them if there are actual legal issues or issues that need to be updated, but if it's something that could be improved, we're always kind of prioritizing first of things that must be improved. But this, I think it's minus be through the chair's intention to use this process to say, like, let's take a look at that section. You're right. It's one that hasn't been looked at in a while, and it's a conversation that we've been having around what is a community partner, right? That's a very broad definition. We have it in policy, but we also have layers of community partners who are actually vendors, because we contract with them, and therefore have a very different set of expectations because we're paying them money than a volunteer community partner. So we can certainly go through that chapter. I have, we have asked our colleagues who are because every single policy has a senior officer assigned to it, to be in charge of it, and they there are recommendations for revisions or repeals if it is the sense that really this isn't something that needs a policy. But that's, of course, a task for the policy committee, so we can certainly bring an analysis of that section, if that's the area that you think would be worth spending some time on. Happy to do that. Maybe we can have more discussion around it and try to come up with some direct key points of what it is we're looking for and what we would like to see done around those areas, and then prior, if you or if you can tell me, I've asked the question a number of times about gifts per c to the district, and I don't know if that will fall under the business side of it. So gifts is one and then the other is also the school trips like Camden right now with the issue of trying to travel abroad outlines for ourselves, different policies would that be under business, or where exactly would that be held? Chair Norville and director Alamein, I can slowly navigate it here, while we have a few minutes on the gifts policy, the Board did adopt the revisions to that policy which were to go are to go into effect on July 1, so that we are working through a process right now that will enable anybody, either a principal or like a department lead to be able to submit into some kind of form. The the real driver of the policy is that the board will be, will be approving all gifts and donations that come to the district. If you remember last time, this is different than the policy we have on an individual gift that someone might attempt to give me, which is not allowable. These are gifts and donations that come to the district, and the district accepts them. The board will be voting, and it'll have probably like a standing item on your consent agenda that has all the gifts and donations that have been given in the last month since your prior meeting, and you would actually be approving those it's a provision that all local government entities approved gifts and donations. And the reason is that you all should be aware of what kinds of things we're receiving if it could have an impact on the district's operations. And I'll take a little bit of liberty and use the example of the orchard conversation and gardens, for that matter, because one benefit of being here long enough is, you see, once an initial idea doesn't have the ability to sustain itself, we then get complaints from neighbors who said, This garden is not kept up, and we trace it back. And it was, you know, a grant or a gift at one point that had no long term sustainability plan. And so this is the kind of thing where, if a gift is going to obligate the district to something longer term, it should be approved by the board. So that process is going to go into effect July 1, so that we have time to retrain all the staff to be able to use this process to know that basically, when someone says, Hey, I would like to give your school of $5,000 that they can graciously but tentatively say, thank you very much. I'm going to in our process requires me to bring this forward for Board approval before I can actually accept it. Because we want to know, are there any conditions attached to it? It's also something you all need to know. If someone says, Hey, I'm giving you this money and it's got these strings attached that are going to be required. So that's the gift policy, and that'll go into effect July 1. And right, I have it on the website, where it's got the old policy that's in effect, and then the new one that will go into effect. And so we'll be training staff and building process. As far as the international travel policy is concerned, that is sort of a series of considerations, and I'll try my best to be succinct about them. A few things happening. One, when we have something that is happening in a school field trip sense, and let's just take an example of a field trip across the city, it's an expectation that if that happens because you are in school. It's part of the school day, or part of the school program, or it's happening only because it's connected to school. Our expectation, our policy, says that every student must go regardless of anything, regardless of their ability to pay, regardless of if they need supports to take that trip, because that's part of the educational program. So one consideration on an international field trip, if it's something that a school is organizing, is that same threshold must be met. So if I'm somebody who has mobility issues, there has to be a plan in place to make sure I can go on that trip. The same is said for funding, which I think we have heard from groups to say, You know what, we were able to fundraise separately. That's not really the issue. Issue is liability. And so we have been in conversation with all sorts of folks, including our insurance people and others, to understand when the district sponsors a trip and basically says, like, this is our trip. Teachers involved in planning it, and students have heard about it, because it's like, say a French class is going to France, but district basically takes. All the liability on so if there was something that were to happen that would be on us, and so you're talking about people traveling outside of our country and not being aware of what emergency protocols or medical facilities are in place, or what kind of evacuation protocols. And this really came to head during COVID Because there were a lot of international field trips that were organized through the school, and we ended up having to pay the entire bill for all of them that were canceled because they said, This is an NPS activity. It's a sanctioned NPS activity. So what we are working through groups who are interested in this is just being really clear that these things can happen, but they are not going to be MPs sponsored activities. And that's the process that I think is it can be frustrating, but it I will in in say that if that is good, there is going to be a shift. It's got to be a conversation that you all are aware of, and changing policy because it would take a lot of liability on and may actually require us to change our insurance products because they have been strongly advising us against having. MPs, sponsored field trips, I don't think it's nine. Necessarily like this in every single place, but it's my understanding, most school districts do have a similar process where they have folks sign waivers that say you're acknowledging that this is not sponsored through the school. You know, we're not preventing them from going, but we are saying, Can't use MPs funds, can't organize with NPS time. And in the past, we have had instances where these trips are actually occurring during the school day, so they'll, like, take a couple days before spring break off, and everybody goes, but some kids who maybe couldn't pay or had issues that prevented them from going, they were left out of the experience. So those are sort of the considerations and layers, and these were surfaced by an equity consideration review that was done on this probably a couple of years ago. So if it is the board's will to change this, I would say we want to spend a lot of time processing through with you all the potential considerations, because there are great and there are some to really be considered. But that's a specific provision, basically, in the field trip policy, says that equivalent of international field trips are not prohibited. So that's the advice we give consistency. Consistently, when we hear of a trip, we are really clear in saying, These are the protocols we are again having associate superintendents communicate to principals that this these are the expectations and these are the processes that these things are to happen so that it's consistent. I know there was a public comment at a prior meeting where and that hat was actually slightly different situation than it came across. It's being organized under the same parameters that were provided to to Camden. I guess that's another heading for us to put on for discussion. Thank you. And I just wanted to clarify, Director Ellison, is that what you meant when you said travel as well? Okay, I would have that down. And I just wanted to clarify was talking about beauty engagement. I don't know if this is in policy, but parent advisory committees or PACs discussion. So thank you all for bringing these ideas forward. What I have down is for us to look at student safety and then, as well as with staff international travel, the policy regarding definition of gardens, parent advisory councils, site Council, community relations and gifts. And then, I would like to add to it, mostly because of our political climate currently policy 5000 to 5099 equal opportunity. I think it's something that would be worth. While for us to be reviewing and how are we continuing to support our students within Minnesota state law? Yeah, so I just think it's really important for us to continue to have that discussion. And how are we going to support all of our kiddos and and staff during this time. So so. Thank you all so much for such a lively discussion. Discussion so. This policy committee. So that concludes our agenda for this evening, without objection, I will now adjourn this meeting. Our next meeting will be on March, 25, at 4:30pm, Good night, everyone. I.
