Lane Matthews led us in the flag salute.

Quorum Established

Lane Mathews – High School ASB President

• Overview
  • Great start to the year
  • Dawg Chow is a hit
  • House squad has been introduced and is going well
  • District wide assembly was awesome
• Areas of Focus
  • School wide shirts are on the way
  • Dawg Chow is going well
  • Early preparations for Veterans Day
  • Promoting involvement
  • Homecoming

Audrey Shaw – Elementary/Middle School ASB President

• Areas of Focus
  • ASB will be having extra fundraisers this year – 3 are planned
  • Involve the whole student body in activities
  • More parent participation
  • After school dances
  • Homecoming week
  • A goal of having strong connection with community and work towards same goals as the high school to get students involved and excited to participate in more activities
  • Hoping it continues into high school

FSD Levy & Tax Update

Overview

• During the 24-25 school year, FES will focus on Multi-Tiered Systems of Support, Professional Learning Communities and Freeman School District's three focus areas:
  • Embrace challenging and necessary conversations with students and staff;
  • Expect Civility and Respect from everyone; and
  • 3. Enhance our MTSS grades TK-12.

Areas of Focus

• This week, Weekly Professional Learning Collaboration (PLC) meetings started. Each grade-level team meets to review data, interventions, and next steps and celebrate success.
• Field Trips—Third grade went on their annual Town of Rockford tour and SE County Fair, 5th grade went to Dorris Morrison Learning Center for their water festival, and 4th grade was invited to attend the Symphony in October.
• PTSG is off to an incredible 24/25 school year.
• Scottie Dash is on September 27th!

Enrollment
TK-44, K-42, 1-64, 2-57, 3-65, 4-56, 5-54 = 382 (-4) Total

Overview

• During the 2024-25 school year, FMS staff and students are focused on our academic programs as we implement a seven-period day, incorporating social emotional learning into content classes and the consistent, constant growth of our positive learning community and culture.

Areas of Focus

• Back to School Night- 40 families attended the event on Wednesday, 9/4
• Beginning of the Year Meetings- Staff Goal, 504 & IEP
• The Social Institute/#WinatSocial- partnership on digital citizenship
• Strike A Balance: How to help your child(ren) balance social media and technology during the school year (webinar)
  • Strengthen communications with your children through student-respected conversation starters about social media and technology.
  • Empower child(ren) to navigate their well-being, social media, and technology in positive ways.
  • Develop shared family standards for balancing technology in healthy ways.

Enrollment
6-70, 7-63, 8-68 = 201 Total

Overview

• FHS is continuing to improve. As a team, we are specifically focusing on Tier 1 MTSS Instruction, Assessment in PLCs (Professional Learning Communities), and PBIS (Positive Behavior Interventions & Support).

Areas of Focus

• First Fridays
• Week of Kindness 9.9-9.13
• Our first SBIRT (School-Based Screening, Intervention & Referral to Treatment) is this week.
• Starting pre-conferences for formal observations of staff
• FHS is beginning AESD Accreditation 3-year review
• Aiming to host STCU Money Live event Oct. 9
• FHS/FMS PLCs start exploring the question: How do we know students are learning?

Enrollment
9-65, 10-76 (-3), 11-76, 12-80 = 297 Total

Overview

• Great start to our fall sports at the HS. Football is 2-0, beating both EV and Rogers.
• Volleyball is 6-1, beating GSL teams, U High, LC, and Shadle so far and they took 3rd in the Kenny Davis Rip a Shot tournament over this past weekend.
• Soccer is 3-0 beating NC at One Stadium last week.
• Cross country has performed well so far with their jamboree and Highlander Invite, lots of PRs by the kids. Both XC boys and girls teams are ranked #4 in the state in the coach’s poll.
• Cheer is having mini cheer camp at the football game this week, and doing a great job.

Areas of Focus

• Renamed the Rip A Shot volleyball tournament after longtime teacher and coach Kenny Davis, and honored the family at the Rip A Shot tournament this past weekend.
• Shot put pit, baskets inside the blue gym.
• Spring sports schedules and head tennis coach and JV softball jobs.
• Dinner/Auction fundraiser at CDA Casino on March 15th. Starting to plan for that event.

Enrollment
Football-55, Volleyball-31, Soccer-27, XC-25, Cheer-16 

Overview

• Work to improve programs and support our student athletes.
• Participate in partnership with the Greater Spokane County League (GSCL).

Area of Focus

• FMS Football – one combo team playing the 8th grade schedule in the GSCL
• FMS Softball – one combo team playing the 8th grade schedule the first half of the season and will evaluate competition level for second half
• Cross Country – great first meets of the season, amazing numbers 33!
• We will host end of season football games at Kent Smith Field again and continue to host the GSCL All-League Cross-Country Meet.

Enrollment
Football-26, Softball-16, XC-33 

Overview

• Freeman SD Nutrition Services supports the philosophy of the National School Lunch and Breakfast Programs and will provide wholesome and nutritious meals for children in the district’s schools. 

Areas of Focus 

• Negative Balance Update
  • Negative balance as of 9/16/24: -$1675.16 
  • Brenda HH balance: $3291.72
  • Working with Tawnya Becker to generate letters that will go out bi-weekly
• FHS Culinary Class
  • Lisa Frazier asked me to be guest speaker on Sept. 25
  • Sharing my work/career history
  • Q & A after as time allows

Areas of Focus

• 2023-24 Fall Ridership top 3-day count: 880/813/848
• 2024-25 Fall Ridership top 3-day count (so far) 881/903/868
• We are using GovDeals.com for surplus for transportation vehicles and buses. We’ve had success with this so far. We sold one of our surplus buses to a public school in Illinois.
• We currently have:
  • 12 Regular ED bus routes
  • 2 SPED bus routes
  • 2 After school/activity bus routes 
  • 16 Total Routes

Areas of Focus

• Sprinklers are scheduled to be blown out on October 24th; a no school day.
• Still in need of sub custodians for day and night shifts. 
• Power point presentation. 

Safety

• Nothing to report at this time

Areas of Focus

• We rostered students into Learning Ally, Discovery Education, and Math Fact Labs by importing class data from the student information system and assigning students to appropriate groups based on their grade levels. 
• After piloting Qustodio by Linewize, a digital safety platform that monitors and manages students' online activity, providing real-time insights into device usage. This tool helps ensure safe browsing practices and supports digital well-being by offering web filtering and screen time management features. We are getting ready to roll it out to our parents/guardians.
• Researching communication options for our seven district fire panels. Currently using old analog telephone lines, want to convert them to network or cellular communications to be more reliable and most importantly cost-effective.

Overview 

• School Psychologist:
  • Initial evaluations and reevaluations within FSD – academic, cognitive, social/emotional, developmental, health, and adaptive assessments within a legal timeline.
• Special Ed Director: 
  • Focused on Special Education processes, legal and team expectations.
  • Communication and collaboration with Admin/Leadership Team and Special Ed Team.
  • ELL and Highly Capable work within the district. 

Areas of Focus

• Beginning of the school year schedules, caseloads, training, assistive technology and individual & group meetings.
• PNW Special Ed & the Law conference last week to learn new and existing case law pertaining to Special Education (IDEA) and 504 within the educational environment.

• The Rockford Fair was a success – FFA, cheer, band, Robotics and trap team were involved. Many students involved with animal exhibits and working in the booths.
• Mick Hoffman, WIAA, met with a dozen superintendents discussing several athletic & activities topics. 
• Leadership Team goal meetings are finished.

• Enrollment
• 2024-2025 Cash Flow Projection
• Capital Projects Cash Flow – September 2024
• September enrollment was up 20 students more than what was budgeted which will back fill our cash flow. 
• Will ask the board to approve a recommendation for an interfund loan. All information is live on the website. 
• Difficult repair discussions will need to be made. Recommend a work session in January to discuss. May need to make additional cuts. Cannot sustain our current budget with the increased insurance costs, etc.

The board does not want to spend the money to attend the WSSDA Conference

• Jessica Whitney asked questions regarding school lunch debt. Wanted to know the group and how does the school pursue collecting the debt. 
• Gretchen Brebner wanted to know if the enrollment was ahead of projected and if we were stable.

• The next regular board meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, October 23, 2024, at the PRTC building at 6:00 pm preceded by a work session at 4:00 pm for a Capital Projects Levy discussion.
• The November board meeting will be Wednesday, the 20th, 2024, at the PRTC building at 6:00 pm.
• A board work session is scheduled for Thursday, Nov 21st, 2024, 8:00 am – 4:00 pm. Location to be determined.
• The December 11th work session is scheduled for 2:00 pm followed by a regular board meeting at 6:00 pm.