Dear Members of the Rochester Public Schools Community,
As I write this, we are nearing the end of a school year that has been eventful, to say the least. Before you head into summer break, I hope that you take a moment to glance through the summary below of some of the activities and accomplishments that have occurred during the 2023-2024 school year. This letter contains a lot of information, but I think it is important to take stock of the size and scope of the work we have done, the issues we have faced, and the opportunities we have seized. Writing this letter made it clear to me why it has been a stressful year for many of us, but it also made me even more hopeful about the future. Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, we took steps that will benefit students, families, staff, and other stakeholders in Rochester Public Schools for many years to come.
After you read through this summary of the work we did during the 2023-2024 school year, I invite you to send me an email at superintendent@rochesterschools.org that includes your thoughts on the initiatives that you are most interested in, excited for, or concerned about. I won't be able to respond to all the messages that I receive, but I will read every one of them and will keep your observations in mind as we begin to plan for the 2024-2025 school year.
The start of the next school year seems far away now, but the State Fair and that new school year will be upon us before we know it. With that in mind, here are some observations on the school year that is now ending:
The Academic Agenda
Let's start with what matters most: the teaching and learning that enables our students to master the knowledge, skills, and habits they need to succeed in school and in life. While our teachers and administrators did great work in every subject area, it was a big year for literacy in Rochester Public Schools. More than a thousand teachers participated in high-quality professional development on the most effective ways to help all children learn to read based on decades of scientific research. We also selected a new reading curriculum for use in our elementary schools that an amazing team of forty-four teachers and principals advised us to adopt. In addition, we enhanced and expanded the use of short screening tests that enable us to identify students who are struggling to read at grade level, and we began implementing targeted interventions to help fill gaps in their knowledge and skills. Our work on literacy is critical because if students do not learn to read, they can’t read to learn in any academic subject.
Speaking of academic subjects other than literacy, during the 2023-2024 school year, we also selected a new science curriculum for our elementary schools that features hands-on learning experiences that mirror the ways that scientists and engineers do their work. Toward the same end, teachers of a wide array of subjects came together in every RPS school to form a Deeper Learning Team (DLT) on which they worked together to develop new ways to help students master critical academic concepts, form personal connections to what they are studying, and use what they learn to solve problems and create new things.
During the 2023-2024 school year, we also renewed our commitment to serve students with exceptional academic abilities and replaced the term "gifted and talented education" with "advanced learning programs" to more accurately reflect the content of the extraordinary services we provide. In the area of career and technical education, we worked with members of Rochester's legislative delegation to sustain funding from the State of Minnesota for our promising PTECH program in practical nursing and information technology. That legislative effort was essential because State funding for PTECH in Rochester was dramatically reduced during the 2023 legislative session.
Over the course of the 2023-2024 school year, we also shifted from the process of evaluating student work, previously called Grading for Learning, in our middle schools. We made that shift based on extensive feedback from teachers and a review of recent research on grading. The new approach that we adopted still requires that 70% of a student's final grade be based upon their performance on final tests and projects, but it also allows teachers to base up to 30% of students' final grades on formative assessments, homework, and class participation. Our new approach also allows students to retake a final test or resubmit a final project a single time rather than multiple times, as was allowed under Grading for Learning. In addition, our new approach to grading requires that students retake a test or resubmit an assignment within two weeks of the date of the test or the date the assignment was due rather than allowing students to redo their work many months after either deadline.
I am confident that our new approach to grading is better aligned with the expectations that students will encounter in postsecondary education and the workplace. That said, because grading is an inexact science (or art), we have established a districtwide grading committee of teachers who will review and refine our grading procedures on an ongoing basis to provide students and parents/caregivers with increasingly accurate assessments of student learning next year and beyond.
Supports for Learning
In addition to strengthening what we teach, how we teach, and how we grade in RPS during the 2023-2024 school year, we also launched important new initiatives to create positive school climates and encourage students to take ownership of their own educational journeys. For example, we began the implementation of a technology platform called Xello, which helps all students develop visions and implement effective plans for their lives after high school. Our school counselors and other educators are now writing an engaging curriculum that will help students make the most of Xello. I got a glimpse of what lies ahead in this area the other day at Dakota Middle School when I walked into a classroom and had an interesting discussion with two students about the fact that the career of "social media influencer" did not exist when I was their age.
Just as technology can powerfully enable learning, it can also impede it. Schools around the world are engaged in deep and often difficult discussions about the impact that student cell phones have on academic engagement and school climate. During the 2022-2023 school year, RPS implemented red zones in which students were not allowed to use cell phones and green zones in which they were allowed to access their phones in all our secondary schools. During the 2023-2024 school year, most schools in RPS continued to use the red zone/green zone approach, while in four schools, we went beyond the red zone/green zone to pilot major restrictions on student use of cell phones. Those schools were Dakota, Kellogg, and Willow Creek Middle Schools and John Marshall High School. Those four schools all required students to put their phones away in class, but they varied in the degree to which they allowed students to use cell phones during passing time and at lunch.
Last month, we conducted surveys of students, staff, and parents/caregivers at all the schools that piloted restrictions on cell phones. At the same time, we conducted similar surveys at the other schools in RPS that did not restrict cell phone use. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey results told us that students overwhelmingly disagree with restrictions on cell phones, while staff overwhelmingly support them, and parents strongly support them. During the summer of 2024, we will dig deep into the data from those surveys, and we will also review recent research on student use of cell phones in schools to develop an approach that we will adopt for the entire school district next fall.
Another element of our strategy to create school environments in which all students can thrive is addressing the challenges that many young people face to their mental health and well-being. Data from the most recent Minnesota Student Survey shows that 23.9% of eighth graders in Rochester Public Schools report that they have a mental health problem that has lasted for more than six months. By 11th grade, the percentage of our students who report they have a long-term mental health problem increases to 31.8%.
A key aspect of our strategy to support and strengthen student well-being involves the use of screening tools to identify students who are struggling with depression, anxiety, and other challenges to mental health. We piloted two such screening tools during the 2023-2024 school year, and based upon the results of those pilots, we selected a validated screening tool that we will use on a much wider basis in the years ahead. We are also working with mental health providers in our community to expand and enhance treatment options for students who are struggling with mental health.
Another area in which we piloted new ways to create school environments in which all students thrive during the 2023-2024 school year focused on implementing restorative practices, which are techniques for building strong school cultures and promoting positive student behavior. Over the course of the school year, nine schools studied and began to use techniques such as conducting restorative conversations and circles to strengthen belonging and to heal ruptures in the life of the community that arise from incidents of bias, harassment, disruptive student behavior, and other factors.
Family Engagement
In between kindergarten and 12th grade, students in the United States spend about 15% of their time in school, which means they spend 85% of their time in other settings. Given the limited time that schools have to shape students' educational and social/emotional development, teachers and other educators need to reach beyond the school day and year to partner with parents and other caregivers to support student success. Toward that end, RPS has adopted the Dual Capacity-Building Framework for Family-School Partnerships, and during the 2023-2024 school year, ten schools in RPS piloted techniques and tools to bring that framework to life. Among other efforts, each of those ten schools identified a staff person to serve as a Family Engagement Liaison to coordinate the many activities and initiatives that the schools have underway to partner with parents, caregivers, and other family members.
During the 2023-2024 school year, we also piloted a new program called CAPE (Caregiver and Parent Empowerment) at three school and program sites, through which cohorts of parents and caregivers attended a series of sessions where they receive information on their school's educational programs and discuss ways they can support their student's success in school and prepare them to thrive in higher education and a high-skill career. In addition, we worked hard throughout the school year to use the TalkingPoints communication platform to connect with parents and caregivers at all schools in the district. TalkingPoints automatically translates messages into a parent/caregiver’s preferred language. The parent/caregiver can then respond back in that language, and the platform translates the message back into English to be read by school staff. We have sent and received over two million messages since the start of school in September.
Improving the Organization
The effectiveness with which we operate the organization that is Rochester Public Schools directly influences the quality of the education we provide for our students. One of the main strategies that we are using to promote continuous improvement in RPS is investing in the capability of our leaders – a strategy that has contributed to improvements in organizational performance in a wide array of fields, from business to the military.
In RPS, fifty of our school principals and central office administrators have completed or are currently participating in the Minnesota Principals Academy operated by the University of Minnesota. The Academy meets for two days each month over the course of approximately two school years to engage leaders in the study, adaptation, and eventually implementation of the educational practices that are used in high-performing schools across the United States and around the world. We have also created a new program in RPS to support aspiring leaders who want to prepare for service as principals in our school district, and thirty educators from diverse backgrounds across the school district are currently participating in that initiative.
We are also working to strengthen our organization by continually improving the efficiency with which we use the financial resources that the public gives us to achieve our educational mission. Among other efforts toward that end, this year, we launched a new Community Budget Advisory Committee (CBAC) to provide a diverse group of stakeholders with detailed information on our district’s finances so that they can advise the Rochester School Board and our central administrative team on our district’s financial priorities and processes.
Another effort that we have underway to promote organizational effectiveness and efficiency in RPS is supported by a grant that we received from the State of Minnesota to bring best practices in project management from the corporate sector to education. The grant has enabled us to create the position of Coordinator of Project Management, and the talented leader we recruited from the corporate sector to fill the role is already helping us make major improvements in our ability to complete complex projects on time and on (or under) budget.
School Start Times and Transportation
After many years of trying to find the right school starting and ending times in Rochester Public Schools, during the 2023-2024 school year, we developed a new set of starting and ending times that will go into effect at the start of the 2024-2025 school year. Under that new system, middle schools will begin class at 8:35 a.m., and high schools will begin at 8:50 a.m., avoiding the early morning start times that studies have shown do not work well for teenage learners. Very importantly, in our new system, elementary schools will start at 7:55 a.m. rather than 9:25 a.m. That shift will allow teachers in those schools to provide instruction at a time when most young children are up, alert, and ready to learn.
While the new school start times that we developed are more educationally sound than our current start times, implementing those new times, unfortunately, requires that we eliminate the long bus routes that currently serve some students who attend Districtwide Option Schools (DWOs) in RPS. When school bus transportation routes cover long distances in Rochester or any other school district, more time is needed between the starting and ending times of each tier of the system. Students on one tier must be safely dropped off or picked up and then each bus must have sufficient time to drive to and from bus stops on the next tier of the system. The length of transportation routes is particularly important in Rochester Public Schools because our school district encompasses an area of 218 square miles, including bus routes that take students through urban, suburban, and rural areas.
Although a team of RPS administrators and outside experts at the Center for Effective School Operations (CESO) concluded that it is not possible for RPS to implement improved school start times and preserve districtwide transportation service for students who attend DWOs, I am pleased to report that the vast majority of parents/caregivers of children who attend the DWOs plan to provide their own transportation and keep students enrolled in those schools for the 2024-2025 school year. That said, I know this has been a difficult change for some of our families, and I regret the challenges it has posed for them.
Referendums and Reductions
I have saved the series of events in Rochester Public Schools that received the most public discussion for the end of this letter because I don’t want those events to entirely overshadow the points of progress that I have outlined above. The series of events that received the most attention was, of course, the changes that were put in motion by the narrow failure of the referendum to support the use of technology in RPS that was on the ballot in November of 2023. 22,227 people voted in that election, which constituted 26% of the 84,001 registered voters who live within the boundaries of our school district. 10,930 people voted for the referendum, while 11,248 voted against it – a difference of 318 votes.
Following the narrow failure of the technology referendum, RPS faced a budget deficit for the 2024-2025 school year of at least $10 million. That deficit was largely the result of the end of federal COVID funding in September 2024, which has created financial pressures for school districts across the United States. In addition, in RPS we decided to assume responsibility for the majority of health care cost increases for our employees, which was essential because health care premium increases would have created financial crises for many of our employees' families. Taking that step cost $7 million and increased the size of our projected deficit to at least $17 million.
To address the budget deficit that resulted from the narrow failure of the referendum and changes in school district support for employee health care, we developed a comprehensive plan to restructure important elements of Rochester Public Schools, including closing schools, redrawing attendance boundaries, and reducing transportation service.
That plan was called the Attendance Options Redesign. The feedback we received on the proposal was extensive and, in many respects, understandably negative. We listened carefully to that feedback and made changes in the proposal to address as many concerns as possible while still proposing that the RPS School Board make the cuts that were needed to close the district’s projected deficit.
At this point in the story, Mayo Clinic stepped in and stepped up to make a transformative donation to Rochester Public Schools. Thanks to the one-time contribution of $10 million that Mayo Clinic announced in December of 2023, we were able to push pause and avoid closing schools and making some other painful changes that were included in the first draft of the Attendance Options Redesign. Building upon Mayo Clinic’s extraordinary contribution, the Rochester School Board subsequently approved the one-time use of $7 million from the school district’s budget reserve to fund the cost of health care premium increases for our employees. In addition, the RPS School Board also authorized my administration to make up to $2.5 million in additional reductions and/or to generate new revenue by billing public and private insurers for the services we provide to our students with disabilities as allowed by law.
If Rochester Public Schools had not received the $10 million contribution from Mayo Clinic and if we had not been able to utilize $7 million in budget reserves and find efficiencies and new revenues that totaled $2.5 million, we would currently be in the midst of making $19.5 million dollars in reductions to balance the district's budget for the 2024-2025 school year.
Because none of the steps to avoid major budget cuts that we have taken this year can be taken again next year or in the years after that, the Rochester School Board has voted to place an operating referendum on the ballot in November of 2024 that would generate $19.4 million per year for ten years, adjusted for inflation. I look forward to providing you with detailed information on the referendum proposal in the months leading up to that important election.
While we were able to pause the pain on the most negative aspects of the Attendance Options Redesign thanks to Mayo Clinic and the other temporary solutions described above, it is important to note that many other positive elements of the Attendance Options Redesign plan are still moving forward. Those elements include:
Moving Pinewood Elementary into the building currently occupied by Longfellow Elementary and operating them as two schools in the same building.
Expanding access to early childhood education for the families who need it most by moving the Mighty Oaks Early Learning Center into the building currently occupied by Pinewood Elementary.
Moving the Spanish Immersion program from its current location at Gage Elementary and Willow Creek Middle School into the building currently occupied by Riverside Central Elementary.
Expanding the Montessori program located within Franklin Elementary.
Expanding the Newcomers program for students who are new to the country by offering the program at Gage and Franklin elementary schools, Kellogg and Willow Creek middle schools, and Century, John Marshall, and Mayo high schools.
Expanding the School Age Child Care (SACC) program to provide more students and families with high-quality care before and after school.
Creating a middle school alternative learning center (ALC) for students who perform substantially below grade level, have experienced physical or emotional abuse, struggle with mental health concerns, are experiencing homelessness or have recently been in transition from homelessness, or have withdrawn from school or are chronically truant.
Revising the school attendance system to enable families who do not live in the attendance area of an elementary school or middle school that is not a districtwide option school to enroll their student in the school if all the spaces at the school are not filled by students who live in the attendance area and the family can provide transportation to and from the school.
What’s Ahead
The 2024-2025 school year will be the final year of the current Rochester Public Schools Strategic Plan. During that year, we will continue to work on many of the initiatives described in this letter. In addition, we will begin the implementation of several new initiatives that were in the planning stage during the 2023-2024 school year. For example, we will put into action recommendations from seven working groups that proposed changes in how we recruit, select, induct, evaluate, recognize, and support the well-being and professional satisfaction of our employees. We will also put into motion a new strategy for promoting youth voice and leadership. And we will complete the work of a task force of staff and community members that is currently working to rethink how we fund and staff our schools to better meet the educational needs of all our students. Still further, we will put into motion a new process for securing grant funding to support our work, building upon more than $6.8 million in grant funding that we have secured over the past two years, not including Mayo Clinic's $10 million contribution.
On several previous occasions on which I have written long messages such as this one, I have closed my message with a thank you to the small group of people who have read all the way to the end and who, therefore, saw my expression of appreciation. I have been surprised at how many people then sent me a note informing me that they did, in fact, read all the way to the end of those messages. Many of them said that they appreciated the detailed overview of the issues that I tried to provide, even if they disagreed with my analysis and my decisions.
If you are one of the people who made it through the entire letter this time around, I want to end with a note of thanks to you as well. While this letter is long, it doesn't begin to encompass all of the work that has taken place over the past year in the schools, programs, and departments of Rochester Public Schools. In the years ahead, we will find out how the sum total of our work has influenced the educational outcomes that our students achieve. In the meantime, one thing is clear: everyone in Rochester Public Schools (whether they are reading the conclusion of this letter or not) deserves a fantastic summer.
Sincerely,
Kent Pekel, Ed.D.
Superintendent of Schools